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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

#41

Post by zahreeley »

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…

Great advice

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

#42

Post by noelceta »

kehphin wrote: post #40

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?

yeah, haha. It's super meta - we're trying to get this article to rank on "SEO case study." It will probably take a while since the domain is pretty new, but we'll get there.

As for which keywords to focus on, our rule of thumb is, find one of your competitors that's winning with their SEO, and borrow their ideas. In most industries, if you combine the keywords from your top 3-5 competitors, your keyword strategy is gonna be pretty comprehensive. As for the "how," just run your competitor's website through SEMrush or Ahrefs, and voila!

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

#43

Post by wolco »

LeonM wrote: post #3
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?

It is definitely not free. But the answer is, as always: it depends. A good way to start is RTFM. Google has many guides on how to optimize your website for their indexing service.

Step 2 ignore those and copy what your top 5 are doing.

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

#44

Post by spaceman_2020 »

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…

As a content strategist, I always advise my clients to pursue a hybrid approach. Some posts have to be purely SEO focused with heavily optimized content. Some should be focused on driving social shares. And some should simply talk to people like regular human beings, not search engine crawlers.

Even with minimal backlinking, this strategy has helped grow traffic from 10k to 250k

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

#45

Post by AlchemistCamp »

noelceta wrote: post #34
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes... thanks to books and subsequent fan fic, all kinds of Harry Potter characters and terms are both all over the web and heavily searched!

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

#46

Post by lowdose »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #44
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…

As a content strategist, I always advise my clients to pursue a hybrid approach. Some posts have to be purely SEO focused with heavily optimized content. Some should be focused on driving social shares. And some should simply talk to people like regular human beings, not search engine crawlers. Even with minimal backlinking, this strategy has helped grow traffic from 10k to 250k

Could you elaborate on the specific difference?

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

#47

Post by puranjay »

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?

Forget an overarching strategy. You don't have the bandwidth for it as a small startup.

As a start, just find 3-5 core keywords that aren't insanely competitive. Write the best possible content you can on these keywords. Promote them like hell - guest posts, forums, heck even HN. Don't just look for links; get actual people to read your content.

This alone can move the needle for small startups. A trickle of high quality leads can give you the confidence to invest more in content and SEO

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

#49

Post by noelceta »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #44
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…

As a content strategist, I always advise my clients to pursue a hybrid approach. Some posts have to be purely SEO focused with heavily optimized content. Some should be focused on driving social shares. And some should simply talk to people like regular human beings, not search engine crawlers. Even with minimal backlinking, this strategy has helped grow traffic from 10k to 250k

Agreed! For the most part, anyway. If you can create content that 1) can go viral or get a ton of shares, and 2) at the same time, be created with a specific keyword in mind, you'll get amazing results real fast.

Unfortunately, that's not really something you can do for a lot of industries or niches. But when it does work, it works!

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

#50

Post by finger »

Small nitpick but title says 0 to 200k, and 3 paragrafs down from the headline it says ~8.000 to 200.000:

> which is why we created this guide - a complete step-by-step SEO case study on how we took Tallyfy, a SaaS process management software, from ~8,000 monthly traffic to about 200,000 in less than 2 years.

I imagine there is a big difference between starting from 0 and from an already established baseline.

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