Project Details:
- Due to its age, the site layout/information architecture was less than ideal and the site felt very disjointed and was not very user friendly.
- Many of the other ranking factors like aging backlinks, short-form articles, and slow-loading pages were dragging the site down and limiting its SEO potential.
- Concerns of relying on PPC efforts for much of the brand’s annual revenue was a worrisome and expensive fact. Organic conversions are obviously much cheaper and help build loyalty with users.
Approach & Execution:
When I first dove into the project, I pored over years of data. Google Analytics data, SEO ranking reports, behavioral metrics like session recordings, heat maps, sales funnels, even user interview data. I wanted to fully understand where we stood as I had a mountain of data at my disposal. I had a room full of white-board painted walls and on them, I printed out the top ten competitors for the various verticals we wanted to compete in. My next step was to look at our competitors not only to see what they were doing, but also try to identify what we were doing right that they were not (to define our value proposition). I also performed competitive analyses of these competitors using various tools like SEM Rush to see if I could find insights into how they were ranking as high as they were.
In SEO, content is king as they say. I planned to come on strong with an aggressive content marketing plan that would allow us to rank not only for shorter, more popular (and competitive) search terms, but also targeting long tail keywords that can help a site to quickly move up the ranks if the content is actually valuable and not stuffed with keywords. We knew that Google wasn’t dumb, and the days of content farms churning out superficial 500 word articles was over. We needed to write content that would set us apart.
To accomplish this effort, we started working with renowned marketing “guru” Neil Patel and his team. Together, we outlined a content marketing strategy/team that allowed us to start creating large amounts of high quality, comprehensive, long-form articles that sometimes clocked in at over 5,000+ words. I created guidelines for an army of writers to use when writing in addition to using tools like Market Muse to formulaically build & “measure” an article's ranking ability (as well as our competitors). These efforts were crafted to help guide writers and prevent negative things like keyword stuffing, while also maximizing our content to include the right amount relevant short and long-tail keywords, as well as tangentially related topics that Google would commonly associate with a search term.
In this initial ramp up period of content creation, we were spending almost a quarter of a million dollars per quarter on content creation – research, writing, editing, graphic assets, etc. Once we had our content strategy machine churning, I shifted my attention back to the actual organic website to identify what changes we needed to make. While a redesign of the UI was a given to make it more contemporary and bring it inline with our competition, I knew I still needed to address the information architecture problem. Keyword stuffed pages with dated content, orphan pages with no way to navigate to them, as well as pages that could be either removed or their topics consolidated into either articles or optimized pages. I spent weeks auditing content as well as using any other metrics I could to determine how valuable that content currently was – Google Analytics, click/heat maps, session recordings, etc. I then used those insights to optimize the on-page content.
Once I was able to audit the current on-page content, I set about redesigning the UI to not only look better, but also better suit the various stages of the consumer’s buying cycle. Big, bright “Buy It Now” buttons are great for some users but not everyone is ready to buy yet. What about the person who doesn’t even know if the product they’re buying is what they need? Or the person who isn’t really sure if he can trust the CreditLoan brand? How do you help them close those gaps? Well I made sure to structure the pages to account for all of these users. Articles to help inform and build confidence that the user has found the right product for their needs. Or social proof to help build consumer confidence in our brand in the form of testimonials, ratings, or “as featured on” logos with well known pillars like Forbes, CNN, or The Wall Street Journal where our brand had been previously shared/backlinked. Including a wide variety of content helps to turn these users into customers.
After many months of reviewing historical data, building a content strategy, auditing the site’s pages, and redesigning the UI – we launched the new site and within weeks, we started to see amazing improvements in our organic rankings. And this was across all keyword group positions. A huge win as our brand’s reliance on our PPC channel was always a concern. We then started to see improvements across all metrics. Lower bounce rates, higher time on page, deeper page depth. Other KPIs also followed suit and in the first 6 months, the conversion rate was up 140%, transactions were up 337%, and revenue was up 325% (compared to the same 6 month period the previous year). Needless to say, the efforts paid off wonderfully.
From there, we continued to monitor users using tools like Hotjar and Full Story, performed A/B and multivariate testing, as well as optimized/implemented an “omni-channel” marketing approach that include email campaigns, SMS text messages, browser push notifications, paid retargeting marketing, paid lookalike audience efforts, and more.
