In this case study we are going to showcase how we grew a content driven site in the finance niche.
It’s worth noting, that these types of finance products are among the most competitive SEO niches in the entire world.
TL;DR: Case Study & Quick Links
Finance Case Study Traffic Overview
As you can see this website went from having basically no traffic, to being of the top websites in the market:
Search Console view of non-branded traffic:
In fact, this website was penalized when we first took over the campaign:
Even better, the site now competes and typically outranks:
All these websites are very high authority:
When writing this case study, we even rank #3 for a very competitive keyword:
Metrics overview:
| Time Frame | Non-Branded Clicks |
| When We started | Approx 72,600 |
| Current per month | Approx 126,000 |
Highlights
- Record sales nearly every month
- Record sign ups nearly every month
- Record traffic highs nearly every month
- Share % instead of clicks?
How Did We do it?
Resolve Technical SEO (Javascript) Issues
We have very strong technical SEO skills. This example actually took place 6 months after the site recovery, but the beginning of this case study is a great place to showcase our technical skillset.
Without notifying our team, their developers updated the sitewide navigation menu to front end Javascript:
After this update rankings for key pages tanked. Luckily we caught it very quickly and rankings returned around 2-3 weeks later.
Not clear what poorly rendered Javascript can do to your website? Here is an example from another client we helped, its a screenshot of the HTML cached by Googlebot:
In our client’s case from this case study, Googlebot was unable to ‘see’ the internal links from the menu.
Why is this important?
Googlebot can query and render javascript, however they are not very good at it yet. It requires additional resources to fully render, meaning it can take Googlebot weeks, if ever, to fully understand what the end page is about.
In this case the only internal links from the homage page were in the navigation. Once the navigation was changed to Javascript, Googlegot had trouble accessing internal pages and rankings dropped.
Frequent OnPage Optimization of Key Pages
Being that the niche is so competitive, to keep up with and “out optimize” the competition we update key pages at least once per month.
Although the list is somewhat endless, we generally analyze the following factors:
- Keyword Usage in titles/headlines
- HTML Raw density of keywords (ie keywords within the code itself, alt tags etc)
- Keyword Density
- Entity Density
- LSI Density
Why is this so important?
For starters, onpage SEO is an increasingly important factor. Most SEOs “set it and forget it” – meaning they do it once and kinda forget about it.
With the SEO tool Cora, we focus heavily on making sure all important densities are met.
For example, in this screenshot below a client we are reviewing has 0% density for very important entities:
In this case, there are a lot of key phrases they don’t mention even once. These phrases or words help Google understand what your website is about. If your competition is better optimized for them, Google will understand THEIR page better.
What is an entity again?
Arguably, this is one of the most important factors in today’s SEO.
For example, if we Google “SEO”, an entity would be “Search Engine Optimization”
Effectively these are “topics” associated with your keyword. Google now understands that these topics are related to medium to high volume keywords.
Simply put, if you don’t optimize entities, you don’t rank in medium to high competitive markets.
Resolve Architectural Issues
When we took over the website it had quite a lot of backlinks already, including backlinks pointing to the homepage.
The home page when we took it over, due to reasons from their legal staff, was not allowed to link to internal pages.
Once the update hit, we were lucky enough that their internal SEO team convinced their leadership team it was a must:
Homepage internal links before recommendations:
Homepage internal links after recommendations:
Why is this so important?
Googlebot frequently visits your homepage. Without links from your homepage to internal pages you are:
- Signaling that internal pages are of low importance
- Googlebot does not have pathways to visit internal pages, the more Googlebot visits your website the more it can check on the status of individual pages and blog posts.
- Links built to the homepage are not transferring authority to internal pages. Legitimate businesses attract a lot of links to the homepage, this leverages them.
Internal Anchor Text Optimization
The internal links pointing to key pages were largely under optimized. We are referring to links from helpful articles that point to important landing pages:
Why is this important?
Internal anchor text should tell a story about the page you are trying to rank in Google or any other search engine.
For example if we are selling technical SEO services, the anchor should be:
………We offer technical SEO audit services…….
NOT:
………We offer technical SEO audit services…….
The word ‘audit’ on its own is very vague and doesn’t help search engines understand what the end page is about.
Reverse Silo Content With High Ranking Probability
In short, we planned an article that linked “up” to the key page that we wanted to rank. In ‘normal’ silos the key page would link back to the helpful article.
While we did plan with normal silos, we planned a lot of content that was likely would rank for that would link to the key pages we wanted to rank.
Why is this important?
Traffic is one of the most important ‘trust’ signals from Google. Meaning is someone searches for something in Google and you rank for it naturally with no backlinks, over time your site will receive an overall boost.
In addition, we can leverage these pages to build more meaningful internal links to key pages.
Over time, this builds an avalanche of trust and internal links to your key pages.
Leverage New Reverse Silo Articles for Link Building
In addition to building links to key pages, you can leverage links to internal pages. Meaning the new pages you produce, or perhaps pages that also have a value and link directly to key pages you build links too.
Why is this important?
Over time, you build an avalanche of authority to key pages. The amount of external backlinks will add up over time.
In addition, you can use backlink authority more effectively, your supporting articles can link to more than one page.
In short, spreading authority to more than one important or key page.
Want Similar Results for your Website?
Well…. A lot of the above is easier said than done. Strategic SEO is our speciality, Contact us today and we will review your website.
