Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

apollodigital.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 101 posts

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

#61

Post by walshemj »

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…

Actually working in the same area (enterprise SEO for huge brands) a lot of page copy is written in shall we say a very poetic and abstract style.

Instead of actually being written for the user - which is the point here, its almost like the English grads would rather be publishing a small book of limpid poetry

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

#62

Post by walshemj »

codingdave wrote: post #53

Keep in mind that this is posted on the site of an organization that provides SEO services. In my experience, the SEO game is a waste of time if you are looking for long-term traffic. Not that it doesn't work in the short-term - it does. And there are good practices in how to structure your pages, and making sure they perform well on multiple devices. But all of my personal and work-related sites have gotten their lo…

Sorry that is bunkum, I see plenty of sites that cant even size and optimise images correctly - for example a mobile hero image that is 1200x800 FFS

Last month I had two huge background images fixed and we saw every page go from slow to moderate for mobile use.

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

#63

Post by usr42 »

Traffic is of course nice but in the end not the goal, just a tool. Traffic by itself even increases costs. In the end, you usually want to have customers, not traffic. To be even more precise, you want HAPPY customers, because then they will remain customers and also bring new ones.

That means you still need good content and a good product more than a lot of traffic.

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

#64

Post by tyre »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #16
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…

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…

Now the first eight results are articles like:

Title: How to poach an egg that's easy for everyone

Content:

Are you looking for a way to poach an egg? We have found the easiest recipes for poached eggs anywhere and compiled them for you here. Don't worry, if you want the cleanest, mess-free way to simply poach an egg, this is how to poach an egg.

## Why would you want to poach an egg?

Poaching eggs is a delicious way to prepare eggs. You can poach eggs for breakfast, you can put poached eggs on toast, or make poached eggs for eggs benedicts. There are many simple and easy recipes for poached eggs.

etc. etc. etc.

with the actual instructions/recipes at the bottom.

Garbage.

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

#65

Post by joshvm »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #16
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…

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…

> When price comparison search engines were all the rage, Google realised that if the "purchase" button led off-site, that was a marker that an intermediary was pushing the price up through affiliate schemes, so started to push those down in the rankings.

This hasn't gone away at all. Do a search for any "best X" and you'll find a slew of review websites for the best X which are stutfed with Amazon affiliate links.

It's virtually imoossible to find reviews of household items that are trustworthy. I've resorted to appending things like "reddit" and looking on eg /r/buyitforlife.

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

#66

Post by octavn »

dgudkov wrote: post #26
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?

>SEO is still one of the few free ways to get customers. If you have to hire and manage a team of content writers it's not that free.

It's not free even if you put in just your time. In a startup, everything competes for your time. You could spend it on your product or other growth channels.

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

#68

Post by alvah »

codingdave wrote: post #53

Keep in mind that this is posted on the site of an organization that provides SEO services. In my experience, the SEO game is a waste of time if you are looking for long-term traffic. Not that it doesn't work in the short-term - it does. And there are good practices in how to structure your pages, and making sure they perform well on multiple devices. But all of my personal and work-related sites have gotten their lo…

Your last paragraph doesn't negate the value of SEO. IMO you still need good product / good content / some reason for people to visit your site for long-term success, but if 10 others have an offering (of any quality) in the same category & they all make at least some attempt to optimise their websites, how is anyone going to find your site at the top of page 2?

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

#69

Post by alvah »

lxcfan wrote: post #14
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?

I do SEO work for a large (DJIA component) tech company, so I'm pretty far removed from startup-land, but I'll still share the number one piece of advice I give out internally: Write high-quality content about topics that people are searching for. Simple? Yes. But it still seems so hard to get people to do it. Everyone would rather talk about page load time and HTML markup and structure and meta tags and exactly how…

Absolutely. SEO is content & links. Good (valuable to the searcher) content earns links (over time), low quality content needs various tactics of increasing dodginess to gain links.
Post reply on HN