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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

#81

Post by superasn »

From the little experience I have of this domain for me SEO still was all mostly about building backlinks, not your shitty $5 links but making something to which people want to link to naturally.

One of my sites was mentioned on Techcrunch which led to lot of other blogs linking to it and within 2 or 3 months we were dominating the first page of Google (happened around 2010 so a lot must have changed too). So yeah getting big sites to link to you is the 80% part. The rest of the SEO stuff like tags, etc is probably the 20%.

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

#83

Post by anarazel »

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…

Imo this is one of the reasons why content on the web has become so much shallow.

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

#85

Post by eb0la »

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…

SEO used to be about how to better use html tags on your sht to rank higher. Now is about the human factor, which is good ;-).

So this is what works now:

- What your customers want? customer not sure?: Market positioning (sale will follow later) -> Explain it and introduce your product in the explanation. -> Write content to _educate_ your customers and add a call to action later.

- What your customers are looking for right now? -> Write content to make your customers fix* their problem using your product. -> Write content to make your customers fix their problem using any product, then show how easy is to use yours.

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

#86

Post by Rastonbury »

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.

What a terrible analogy. SEO content is written to market the site the best you can on search engines, obviously you want to write what people are looking to meet their needs for and its easy to do this with Google. It's very different purpose from writing a good book or writing good journalism.

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

#87

Post by sixhobbits »

Why do these SEO people write so dramatically? Why do they use such short sentences and short paragraphs?

Want to know?

It's simple.

They fall fowl of Goodhart's law!

But what's that? I'll tell you!

Goodhart's law states 'When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.'

That's a lot of words, and it's really complicated, so let's simplify!

Stay with me -- I'll teach you. We can learn together.

You're still reading this, but you're not learning anything.

And yet I'm being measured by you reading. To. The. End.

So I do anything to make you do that.

Anything.

It doesn't matter if I'm not adding value for you any more.

You've probably figured it out already and are skipping to the end. Thanks for getting this far.

Basically, if you aim to game metrics, you can do it. Easy.

But why were you aiming for organic searches in the first place?

You wanted your visitors to like you. To trust you.

And to meet that goal the 'writers who weren't SEO specialists' were actually your friend.

They were (if they were good) _reader_ specialists. They created what people wanted to read. Not what would make your KPIs go up.

And ironically, now your KPIs look great. But your content is bad, and not useful.

Don't aim for your measurement. Aim for your goals, and use your measurements to see how close you got.

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

#88

Post by puranjay »

lowdose wrote: post #46
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Think of these three articles:

1. How to Choose the Right Project Management Software

This is keyword focused - "project management software". Our only objective with this article is to rank for this keyword while also sharing useful advice for search users on how to go about choosing a project management tool.

2. 25 Project Management Experts Share Their Favorite PM Tips

This is (mostly) social sharing focused. If you were to ask 25 project management experts to share their tips, then tag their Twitter/Instagram/LinkedIn handles, there is a good chance a few of them at least will share it with their followers, thus driving shares.

3. How Project Management Can Help Small Startups Scale Faster

This doesn't focus on any specific keyword. Rather, it simply talks to startup founders about using project management principles.

This is a very rudimentary example but I hope you get the idea

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

#89

Post by Alir3z4 »

I hate any SEO case study and companies that want to make it happen for you.

Just write content that help people and solve people problem.

Have you seen how Digital Ocean has lots of useful tutorials and articles, they get tons of visits and lost of customers and exposures, they solve people problem.

How about StackOverflow ? is the content written with SEO in mind ? No, they solve people problem, problem that people seek an answer for;

https://alireza.gonevis.com/how-to-write-for-seo/

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

#90

Post by CM30 »

gundmc wrote: post #74
tyre wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is particularly bad in the food/recipe space. I've wondered if it's for SEO or if it's to stretch the content length of a short recipe and allow more spots for ads.

Always heard it may have something to do with copyright. You can't copyright a recipe (in the list of instructions sense), but you can copyright original prose/content.

Adding this stuff presumably makes it trickier for other sites to scrape/copy the recipe automatically, and lets them take down those who left the 'original' content in.

Alternatively, might be because of stuff like Yoast. Those tools have a 'readability checker' which might not class a simple list of instructions as 'easily readable'.

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