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SEO case study: 8k to 200k monthly organic traffic

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Re: SEO case study: 8k to 200k monthly organic traffic

#31

Post by AlchemistCamp »

noelceta wrote: post #13
tilolebo wrote: post #12

> The main issue was that the writers weren’t SEO specialists: they knew how to write good content, but good content is NOT always the same as SEO content. > The main difference between SEO content and generic content is that the first is written with user search intent in mind. You need to keep in mind what the Googler is looking for when they search for any given keyword. Then, you create content based on that inte…

That's not the case, actually. Your content should be based on the intent of the search. For example, if someone's Googling "how to improve a process," they're looking for practical advice on improving processes. They're NOT looking for "benefits of process improvement," "why you should improve your processes," etc. Sure, you can write the BEST article on one of these topics, but it's not going to rank because that's…

Some of the best content isn't searched for by anyone at all before it was written, though. In the extreme case, consider the Harry Potter series—fantastic content, but it would have been horrible SEO content when it was written.

Re: SEO case study: 8k to 200k monthly organic traffic

#32

Post by rchaud »

samscully wrote: post #11
diminish wrote: post #2

> done right, SEO can be a game-changer... SEO is still one of the few free ways to get customers. Any ideas how to best leverage it for startups?

Here are some notes I made when I worked for a company that did very well in SEO. This was a few years ago now, so this might be horribly out of date now. Hygiene factors - Never expose an error page to Google. - Never expose an empty page. - Make sure all content is visible on first page load (e.g. not behind pop ups). - Show the same content to Google as to users. - Make sure all relevant content is in the HTML (no…

Most of these are still current SEO practice, however:

> Use PR and social media to generate good backlinks for your site. - Use social media like reddit, pinterest and others as well as facebook and twitter. -

FB, Twitter and Reddit may not mark external links as "nofollow" explictly (which would kill their backlink value), but searc engines are smart enough to reduce the power of these links as these are "user-generated content" links and are less valuable as they're not authored by the "site owner" in the way a blog post or web page would be.

The impact of these links on social isn't zero, but it's not great either. You're better off trying to get qualified, organic traffic to your site (say from a backlink on a related site or from an email newsletter) as those clicks will likely have a lower bounce rate, which is good for SEO.

Re: SEO case study: 8k to 200k monthly organic traffic

#33

Post by tobr »

tilolebo wrote: post #12

> The main issue was that the writers weren’t SEO specialists: they knew how to write good content, but good content is NOT always the same as SEO content. > The main difference between SEO content and generic content is that the first is written with user search intent in mind. You need to keep in mind what the Googler is looking for when they search for any given keyword. Then, you create content based on that inte…

This seems to be the opposite insight from a recently discussed article[1], which put more emphasis on consistency than keyword optimization.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22179383

Re: SEO case study: 8k to 200k monthly organic traffic

#34

Post by noelceta »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #31
noelceta wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the case, actually. Your content should be based on the intent of the search. For example, if someone's Googling "how to improve a process," they're looking for practical advice on improving processes. They're NOT looking for "benefits of process improvement," "why you should improve your processes," etc. Sure, you can write the BEST article on one of these topics, but it's not going to rank because that's…

Some of the best content isn't searched for by anyone at all before it was written, though. In the extreme case, consider the Harry Potter series—fantastic content, but it would have been horrible SEO content when it was written.

True, but in most cases, you won't write Harry Potter - you just want to drive leads from people searching for process management solutions, haha.

What you did mention IS an actual strategy though. The idea is, you coin a new term or strategy, and if you PR the content enough, the term will have a ton of searches (and you'll rank #1). More often than not, though, you have to be a big fish to really pull this off

Re: SEO case study: 8k to 200k monthly organic traffic

#35

Post by a13n »

dhruvkar wrote: post #4

>> Tallyfy, a SaaS startup based in St. Louis Ironically, I'm based in St. Louis, looking for business automation software for my company based in St. Louis and the only reason I know Tallyfy exists is because of this HN article.

Check out Pipefy instead https://www.pipefy.com/

Re: SEO case study: 8k to 200k monthly organic traffic

#36

Post by noer »

tilolebo wrote: post #12

> The main issue was that the writers weren’t SEO specialists: they knew how to write good content, but good content is NOT always the same as SEO content. > The main difference between SEO content and generic content is that the first is written with user search intent in mind. You need to keep in mind what the Googler is looking for when they search for any given keyword. Then, you create content based on that inte…

I think you're missing the point. They're creating content to answer questions that someone is searching for. If you're creating content for "cat adoption", the likely intent of the search is to learn more about the process of adopting cats. You're not answering a question if you create content around how great it is to adopt cats. You're more likely to answer the question by writing about the process of adopting cats.

Re: SEO case study: 8k to 200k monthly organic traffic

#37

Post by noelceta »

rchaud wrote: post #32
samscully wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are some notes I made when I worked for a company that did very well in SEO. This was a few years ago now, so this might be horribly out of date now. Hygiene factors - Never expose an error page to Google. - Never expose an empty page. - Make sure all content is visible on first page load (e.g. not behind pop ups). - Show the same content to Google as to users. - Make sure all relevant content is in the HTML (no…

Most of these are still current SEO practice, however: > Use PR and social media to generate good backlinks for your site. - Use social media like reddit, pinterest and others as well as facebook and twitter. - FB, Twitter and Reddit may not mark external links as "nofollow" explictly (which would kill their backlink value), but searc engines are smart enough to reduce the power of these links as these are "user-gene…

Yep, the impact of social links is pretty low on their own. You do, however, get these 2 benefits:

- If your content gets a ton of views, people will start Googling for it and clicking your result, specifically. This will increase your CTR, which is a known ranking factor. - People who LOVE your content on Reddit or wherever will link to your website from their blog (hence, more backlinks).

Re: SEO case study: 8k to 200k monthly organic traffic

#38

Post by wolco »

lhuser123 wrote: post #18
PaulRobinson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but interestingly (to me, at least), Google have modified their search engine crawler over many, many iterations so that what it values is the same as what a user would value. When people would keyword stuff, Google developed techniques to spot that and stop it from working. When people would work on backlink farms, Google developed techniques to spot that and stop it from working. When price comparison search e…

You kind of describe the reason I can’t get rid of Google. Many people keep saying that DuckDuckGo is good enough. But no matter how hard I try use it for everything, always end up googling a few questions. Many times, Google knows what I’m looking for better than myself.

This is the reason why google isn't working as well. Google tries to guess what I want in doing so hides the sites I do want.

Re: SEO case study: 8k to 200k monthly organic traffic

#39

Post by teejmya »

ncallaway wrote: post #30
lhuser123 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You kind of describe the reason I can’t get rid of Google. Many people keep saying that DuckDuckGo is good enough. But no matter how hard I try use it for everything, always end up googling a few questions. Many times, Google knows what I’m looking for better than myself.

DuckDuckGo will let you prefix any query with "!g" and redirect that query to Google. That was the feature that let me switch everything over to DDG. DDG works great for 80-85% of my search queries. For the others, I just prefix with "!g" because I suspect Google will give me better results.

I've recently learned that it does not have to be a prefix. If you put !g anywhere in the query as its own word, DDG will do the thing.

Re: SEO case study: 8k to 200k monthly organic traffic

#40

Post by kehphin »

Felt very meta reading this article about SEO while the article itself was employing all the SEO strategies - backlinks, infoboxes, etc :P

It was great that the company had already started its SEO pipeline, but what about for companies with no strategy at all? Are there any good tools to help decide which keywords to focus on?

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