The Challenge
The social brand has two subdomains (both on a Firebase server and host) and a blog hosted on Squarespace.
The brand was a great programmatic seo example of a strategic implementation as they were about to create new content without being penalized by the then rolled out, Helpful Content Update by Google.
Their blog and subdomains has decent traffic but are not organically ranking for their niche’s important keywords and both subdomains has potential keyword accommodation due to the amount of content produced everyday on their social feed + their niche-related database.
The Solution
- A website audit showed needed technical and on-page optimizations.
- Rearchitecture of their pages and subfolders to maximize the use of their user-generated content.
- A number of quality content after keyword research were created using long-tail keywords to gain traffic and rank them on the first page.
- Intensive keyword research was also done to rank low-hanging keywords and monopolize ranking for their database content.
- Framework was created for programmatic content creation for their database.
The Results
The Results
SEO optimizations, folder restructuring and web migration helped take advantage of their user-generated content to rake in traffic and rank for their niche’s keywords.
Quality content also helped create more backlinks as they started to rank on the first page and appear on Featured Snippets.
The programmatic content creation helped create more pages for their database that then also started to gain traffic and compete in ranking.
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Services Done
- Content Creation
- Keyword Research
- Consultation about Migration
- Framework for Programmatic SEO
Results and Timeline
- Recognizable result after 12 months
- Pages Ranking on Featured Snippets
- Local pages getting more traffic and ranking on first page
- 172.852% increase in referring domains
- 100% increase in Backlinks and DA
- 234.194% increase in organic keywords
- 207.353% increase in organic traffic
Inclusions and exclusions on their SEO strategy
The client was clear that they prefer to not include guest posting and other off-page strategies as they already have a number of domains linking to them. Auditing showed that their backlinks are mostly websites scraping content from their URL feed. So to compromise, the strategy included quality content creation and targeting of low-hanging, long-tail keywords instead of their usual “short survey result recap”.
The SEO strategy included a plan to restructure the subfolders for their database and their social platform with an aim to monopolize keywords especially those from URLs from user-generated content. It also included preparation for web migration to put the social app, database, and blog together under just one domain.
Another crucial part of their strategy is the creation of a template or framework for programmatic content creation for their database.
An In-Depth of the Results
Domain consolidation, site re-architecture, creating quality content, programmatic content creation, and using UGC
- Old content and pages were repurposed, edited, and optimized for on-page SEO
- New blog content targeted long-tail keywords with medium traffic.
- UGC was optimized with on-page SEO consideration (keywords in URL, titles set to H1)
- Database, social feed, and blog were migrated into just one domain after 6 months
- Long form content for the database was created in bulk using the programmatic template
Six months after on-page optimizations, updating old posts and pages, and publishing new content there were considerable fluctuations in organic traffic but keywords started to rank up.
After the web migration and publishing of the programmatic content together with site restructuring, the traffic and keywords started shooting up.
It’s never too late to harness the potential of organic search.
This SEO case study shows that incremental changes like site re-architecture, programmatic content creation, and using user-generated content can be helpful if it has systematic use and is implemented with a clear strategy. The fact that Google even launched a helpful content update last year shows that programmatic content doesn’t show as spam as long as it has uniquely targeted keywords and personalized content for each keyword.
Optimizing user-generated content for on-page SEO and opting to serve all content under just one domain is a great move for this company as not only does it ensure the creation of fresh content every day but it also ensures that keywords can be dominated in time.
Overall the site had the following increase after a year:
- 172.852% increase in referring domains
- 100% increase in Backlinks and DA
- 234.194% increase in organic keywords
- 207.353% increase in organic traffic
Now the website now only needs to amp up its blog content creation to garner more topic authority and attract valuable links.
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