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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
SEO doesn’t have to be complicated.
One of the things I notice as a popular SEO blog owner is that people are always looking for the “secret ingredient”
But truth be told:
If you want to increase your search traffic it is as simple as-
- Conducting an SEO audit
- Creating content
- Building links
That is the exact approach we used to 14x organic search traffic in today’s case study!
We took traffic from 2,732 visitors per month to 38,420 in just 8x months-
How did we do it?
Well it was simple really…
What Will I Learn?
A Closer Look At The Case Study Site
This is an affiliate focused website that reviews weight loss supplements targeting the USA & United Kingdom.
Our client’s website provides a platform for users to access trustworthy, specialist reviews and decide which diet supplement is best suited for them.
The main focuses of the campaign were to-
- Build the website’s authority
- Push rankings to the first page for high volume terms
That’s because it is!
Except one tiny detail…
The Biggest Challenge We Had To Overcome
The weight loss supplements niche is one of the most competitive niches in SEO (to say the least!)
Most search results are dominated by huge brands like Holland & Barrett-
Or massive content based sites like HealthLine-
Those are some pretty terrifying metrics.
I mean:
Just take a look at some of the top results for one of our target keywords–
If you click on the image above you’ll also see that we are up against-
- Sponsored product results
- 4x Google Adwords results
- 1x Featured snippet
- 1x People Also Ask box
But if you pay close attention to the green boxes in the image above…
Because many of the top 10 results are ranking purely out of domain authority rather than individual page level metrics.
That means we have a solid chance of competing with the big boys.
And I am sure you have seen results just like that in your niche right?
Remember: Any health-related content/website is part of the YMYL category, which means that they need to be treated as such and respect the YMYL guidelines.
Creating A Plan Of Attack
When forming your SEO strategy, there is one thing to keep in mind.
People tend to over complicate SEO.Our strategy was broken down into 3x stages-
- Technical SEO – Build a solid & healthy website structure
- Content – Create relevant content that helps people
- Link Building – Acquire links from relevant websites
But of all of that is easier said than done right?
So let me show you how that translates into the real world…
What Did We Actually Do?
To help you understand our process:
I am going to step you through the core SEO strategy and precisely what we did.
The strategy was broken down into a number of pieces-
- Keyword Research
- Competitor Analysis
- Content Strategy
- Onsite SEO Audit
- Site Structure
- Link Building
Often when clients come to us:
They are completely obsessed with link building.
They say things like-
“Yeah but how many links will you build per month?”
But link building is just 1x component of a complete SEO strategy.
Let me ask you this:
Just 76.
76x links to take this sites traffic from 2,732 visitors per month to 38,420–
How?
By addressing all of the moving parts of SEO rather than only focusing on the number of links we build.
(I’ll share the link-building strategy with you later)
But first:
You have to get the basics right-
Step #1 – Keyword Research
The first thing we do with any new client is conduct detailed keyword research.
First, we asked our client for a list of seed keywords that are important to them.
Then used the KeywordShitter tool to expand on them-
Once we pulled all the keywords from there…
…we expanded on them further with AnswerThePublic:
Once we had a large list of keywords we started to filter them down-
- First we removed duplicate/similar terms
- Then we mapped out topic clusters of keywords with similar topics
- And thought about the “type” of keywords to focus on
These were the types of keyword we were looking for-
- Money keywords that drive traffic to key affiliate pages: [brand] review(s)
- Generic keywords related to different forms of the products: best [product] / best [product] [supplement|brand|pills], most effective [XYZ], weight loss [XYZ]
- Questions: does [XYZ] work, how to use [XYZ]
- Strictly informational keywords: [XYZ] information, [XYZ] pros and cons, [XYZ] side effects.
It’s important to avoid keywords that return different user intent than the site can satisfy.
The final spreadsheet included additional data pulled from Google Keyword Planner and our rank tracker-
But:
Whilst you’re doing keyword research, make sure to take a look at the SERPS for each one.
Pay attention to the sites that popup and make a list of common competitors.
We will be using that list to our advantage later in the case study!
Pro Tip: Quick & Easy Keyword Research
If your site has any level of existing search traffic…
…I have a great keyword research tip for you.
With this tip you’ll be able to find all of the low hanging easy to rank keywords in a couple of clicks with Ahrefs.
Just head over to Ahrefs Keyword Explorer and paste in your domain and head to the Organic Keywords report-
Then use the filters to show the keywords currently ranking in positions 11-30-
This just returns a list of keywords that you already rank on page 2 & 3 for…
…which are super easy to bump to the top 10-
Targeting these keywords are a great starting point for any SEO strategy.
Step #2 – Competitor Analysis
I can not stress how important this stage is!
At the moment we have a good list of keywords that are-
- Topically relevant
- Match the sites user intent
Now we need to take a closer look at who our SERP competitors are.
Do some searches and pay close attention to the first page of results.
You want to look at things like-
- Content length
- Page purpose and intent
- What types of pages are ranking (inner vs homepage or product vs category)
- How strong the domains are (is it Amazon or just an average Joe)
- Page layout (e.g. CTA and banner placements)
- Monetisation
Here’s an example of a competitor site’s review my agency sends to clients:
It’s not everything:
But you can see what kind of signals we’re looking at.
Why is this important?
Because Google have been using machine learning algorithms since 2015.
And by looking at the search results we can see what the machine learning algorithm is expecting to see.
You might not realize this:
But every time you search this is what is happening behind the scenes-
- You enter your query into Google
- Google chops the query into individual words
- Google applies natural language processing to figure out meaning
- Then it analyses the intent of the query (eg informational or commercial)
- This generates a list of relevant results
- Additional filters are applied (eg Pagespeed)
- The final search results are displayed
Here’s a shot from Rad Paluszak’s Chiang Mai 2018 presentation to help visualize that-
But what is most important here is the final step of the process…
Because this is the machine learning part that is automatically analyzing the efficiency of the results and tweaking the algorithm.
What’s that got to do with competitors?
Well:
We just have to look for those things…
Pro Tip: Spot Check Your Competitors
Do a search for your target keyword and look at the top 5 results.
First look for commonalities in the results such as-
- Content length
- Page intent
- Use of images/videos
- Page layout
- Ad placement
- Trust signals
This will become the outline for each new piece of content.
Step #3 – Technical SEO & Content Audit
Now we know where we want to go with the SEO campaign…
..It’s time to figure out where we are starting from.
To do that we conducted a comprehensive onsite audit that typically spans about 30 pages.
The goal of this is to identify any issues that might hold it back from performing at its full potential.
It includes things like-
- Site Structure – Are we using the best site structure to maximize link juice?
- PageSpeed – Does your site load quickly for Google and visitors?
- Index Management – Do you have unnecessary index bloat?
- Duplicate Content – Caused by improper use of tags/categories
- Internal Redirects – Wasting crawl budget is bad for your site!
- Internal Linking – Very powerful but underused tool.
- Trust Signals – Are you sending the right signals to Google?
This site had a range of problems that we needed to address.
Here’s how we fixed some of them-
Issue #1 – Page Speed
One of the main problems with the site was that it had almost no page speed optimisation.
The site was loading very slowly in our tests.
We use 2 plugins to fix that-
- WP Rocket – to optimise pretty much everything, BUT images.
- ShortPixel – to optimise images.
Or you can checkout my full WP Rocket review which takes a deep dive into how to get the most out of it.
Issue #2 – Wordpress Taxonomies vs Duplicate Content
Wordpress is a great platform to build a website.
But:
It can also make Google index a lot of rubbish.
All this indexed bloat decreases the overall SEO value of the site-
Not only do you risk duplicate content problems but you also waste valuable crawl budget…
To put it simply:
If you have 50 pages indexed, but only 5 that Google should pay attention to…
…you should consider pruning the site.
If the remaining 45 pages are not useful for your users, get rid of them.
Issue #3 – Internal Redirects
When we conducted the technical SEO audit, we spotted a few problems with internal redirects.
This was caused by a variety of things-
- The site had recently migrated from HTTP to HTTPS (poorly)
- A lot of the internal links were pointing to old HTTP urls
- Some pages were renamed or deleted and redirected
- The theme had some hardcoded redirect loops
But luckily:
It’s all pretty simple to fix!
With HTTP -> HTTPS URLs, we just tracked all of them down and changed all http:// to https:// manually.
And to fix the redirect problems we just fired up Screaming Frog SEO Spider–
- Crawl the site
- Go to Response Codes at the top
- Select “Redirection (3xx)” Filter
- Type your domain – this will ensure you are looking at your internal links only.
- Click on the URL you’d like to review
- This is what the URL is currently.
- This is what it should be.
In our case study site for example:
We could fix a lot of the errors by updating hardcoded links in the menus and sidebars.
But every site is different!
Issue #4 – Thin Content
Whilst conudcting the audit, we found a BIG issue with thin content.
Over 50% of the website pages had under 500 words.
Every niche is different!
But after looking at search results and competitor sites…
…It was clear this is a content heavy niche.
Don’t forget:
Google rewards fresh, long form content that addresses user intent. So we adjusted our content strategy to support the main campaign goal.
With that in mind:
We increased the length of the homepage from 1,500 words to 10,911 words by answering over 20 of the most popular questions around the main affiliate product.
Following the same strategy:
We increased the average word count per page from ~500 words to 2,216 words per page.
In addition to expanding the website’s copy, we also reviewed and optimised-
- Page titles
- Meta descriptions
- Headings
All of which worked in harmony with each other to pull the sites pages up the search rankings.
Step #4 – Building A Healthy Site Structure
It’s important to create a healthy website architecture.
Why?
Because-
- It helps user finds what they need
- It helps Google understand the site
- It helps to priortise the most important content
- It helps distribute link equity throughout the site
We can check this easily in Screaming Frog using the Crawl Depth report.
Here is an example of bad crawl depth–
And here is what it should look like-
If you wanted to dig deeper…
…You can also use Screaming Frogs Visualization tools-
But what are we looking for here?
Well this is an example of a bad site structure–
And when you do things right…
…it looks like this-
So with the case study site in mind, we overhauled the site structure so everything was within 3x clicks of the homepage.
We did this by-
- Building out category pages
- Linking to those category pages from menus
- Internal linking between content (I’ll talk more about this later)
But trust me:
Step #5 – Content Strategy
As soon as you have a keyword strategy and healthy site foundation to build on…
…It’s time to get your hands dirty with content!
You should start crafting the content as soon as possible because this is often a bottleneck for many businesses.
This is how we approached it-
- First we selected our primary target keywords
- Then we reviewed our competitors in Google for each keyword
- That allowed us to create a “content specification”
- Which was then sent to our writing team
…we made sure that all new pieces of content were at least 2,500 words.
We continued to produce 2x new pieces of content per month throughout the campaign.
Step #6 – Internal Linking
Once we developed our killer content and restructure strategy…
We needed to help Google navigate the website easier to discover all the pages we updated/created.
The goal of our internal link building strategy was to distribute link value throughout the site, from pages with authority to others with less authority.
We used a balanced combination of targeted, branded and generic anchors to help Google determine the relationship between them-
Along with links we placed manually, we also installed and tested a number of plugins to help place internal links-
The one we ended up using is Yuzo Related Posts:
We chose this because it helped us customise the display on the front end of the site-
This meant we could cross-link key pages across the site structure automatically.
Very handy!
Need help fixing your SEO issues? Check out my 45+ steps SEO checklist to get rid of your most important SEO issues.
Step #7 – Link Building
There is no doubt about it:
But that is amplified 10x when you have built a good site structure backed with solid content.
With all of that in place we started to build the overall domain authority using links from relevant websites in the fitness, health and lifestyle niche.
We took the backlink profile from 27x referring domains to 374x referring domains–
How did we do that?
By keeping things simple!
First we scraped a huge list of relevant websites with SEO value, traffic & authority.
Then we published high quality content targeted at their audience to secure a backlink where possible.
We didn’t do anything beyond that.
This is the exact link building strategy and schedule we used to meet the clients budget-
- 12x PBN Links
- 1x Outreach
Month 2
- 10x PBN Links
- 3x Outreach Links
- 15x Quora Links
Month 3
- 12x PBN Links
- 3x Outreach
- 10x PBN Links
- 3x Outreach
Month 5
- 4x Outreach Links
Month 6
- 3x Outreach Links
The strategy was simple-
- First build authority and topical relevancy as quickly as possible with PBN links
- Once established (month 4), we switched to outreach only
- In month 5+ the site starts ranking & picking up links naturally to fuel growth
In month 7+ we didn’t build any additional links to the site.
Once the site started to rank it was picking up links naturally and rankings have continued to improve.
Do You Struggle With Link Building?
Take a look at some of these free resources to help you build awesome links-
- LinksThatRank: The only link building service you need.
- Link Building Strategies: A collection of my favourite link building strategies.
The Results Speak For Themselves
The site has had 8x months of amazing growth.
Traffic has grown from 2,732 visitors per month to 38,420.
Let me put that in different words…
If we take a closer look at things…
…we managed to increase-
- DR from 45 to 59
- UR from 10 to 41
- Referring domains from 27 to 374
- Backlinks from 45 to 2,540
Metrics – End of the Campaign
That increased domain authority also increased keyword visibility.
At the start of the campaign there were-
- 68x top 3 rankings
- 345x top 10 rankings
But at the end of the campaign…
There are now 637x keywords in the top 3 positions!
And 2,221 keywords in the top 10-
Although throughout the campaign we were only monitoring 48x core keywords…
..they had a net increase of 894x positions in Google–
And a number of those keywords…
…had high search volumes and were dropping into the #1 positions-
With a number of other high volume search keywords breaking into the top 10.
All of which made for some really pretty Google Search Console data-
Not bad right?
Especially in such a competitive niche (more on that soon).
If you want help ranking your website…
Wrapping It Up
So there you have it:
It really isn’t that difficult to do – you just need to follow the 3x stages of SEO-
- Technical SEO – Build a solid & healthy website structure
- Content – Create relevant content that helps people
- Link Building – Acquire links from relevant websites
Or if you want to do it the easy way:
Click here to have my team do all the hard work for you.
If you have any questions about the case study, please ask below!
346 Responses
I’m currently making my 2nd case study and this was put together well. Been a fan since BHW in 2012. Cheers!
Cheers Joshua :D
This is really nice to read. It is informative post and very good to read. Thanks a lot.
Thanks for reading!
Useful Information Keep It Up.
Thank you, Ronan!
Hi Matthew. Thanks for the post! What ratio of target keywords, branded keywords, generic phrases did you use for linkbuilding, particularly for PBN?
We do a SERP level analysis to decide how that should be broken down
Great case study! Thank you, Matt.
It also proves that PBN actually works if corrected.
That’s right. If you’re interested in PBN, I suggest you read this: https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/link-building/web-2-private-blog-network/
Wow! What a great article! Glad I followed the link in the email I got. This will definitely help influence how I continue to work on my site.
Thank you for sharing this in-depth case study!
Thank you for reading! Hope it helps you, Gale.
That’s really a result driven Case Study. Thank you so much for sharing!
No worries! Hope it helps!
Hi Matthew
Lot of value from your content, much appreciated.
Can you write about SEO in Shopify stores and how to improve it?
Thanks a lot !
Best wishes!
Hi Rodrigo,
I wrote an article about SEO for e-commerce in which I gave some good examples about Shopify.
Here is the link:
https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/ecommerce/
I hope it’ll help you:
Thanks Matthew, great job.
No problem Robert, thanks!
Can you please help me out with my website.
I am fighting a lot for a keyword. But unable to rank even if my back links are more. I have good seo and everything but even after 8 months I am unable to rank. KD is also low.
Start with an SEO audit to find out what your issues are – https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/on-page/seo-audit/
Hey Matthew, I’m new to your site and I love it! You’ve got exceptionally helpful content with terrific insights on SEO. I’ve got a question about this article. How do you get keyword data (search volume, etc.) on KWs that you find using KeywordShitter and AskThePublic? Or do you use those KWs without knowing these data points about them, and if so, how are they useful that way?
You can use a tool like https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/keywords/google-keyword-planner/ or Aherfs
Wow. Thanks for sharing these important points. I am trying to be better in link building. I want some other post related to link building.
Take a look at these – https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/link-building/strategies/ & https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/link-building/backlink-analysis/
Another good article..
was wondering if you have written any article about site architecture. The world is divided on SILO
No I haven’t but I do talk about it in these articles:
https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/ecommerce/
https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/on-page/seo-audit/
Case study is amazing! It’s real good to know some of these things from the get go, because it can really come back to bite you in the butt if you have to go back and redo everything after you’ve already built the whole website.
Will take Screaming frog into consideration! Thank you!
Hey Pablo – yes being as prepared as possible will certainly help and case studies are the perfect way to learn from someone else’s mistakes.
Hi bro ,
nice great information thank you so much.
You’re welcome Kumar
This is a f**king awesome case study. I appreciate the transparency with PBN links. Refreshing. You sir, have a new follower!
You are most welcome Kyle :)
Another brilliant post.
I get sooo much value from your blog.
Why do I waste my time watching N*** P***L videos when I can come here and learn so much more :o)
Haha thanks Michael! Neil does have some great stuff :)
Hi Mathew
Great strategy but I have a quick question.
I know that you offer SEO services, and I know that you offer PBN services too.
Do you offer SEO audit services? Where you will just audit a site for the customer? I kind of think this is the most technical part of SEO.
Also, would it be an idea for you to offer bespoke strategies to your customers who can then work on their own sites? Meaning could you look up a site, check out what it needs, in terms of audit, which keywords to use, link building (i.e. a list of links to target by reverse engineering top competitors) and prepare it as a pdf report and then the customer buys it from you and gets to work straight away.
I know your intelligent sheets do help but still, as business owners it does take our time up to do all the research, we would rather have it down and just follow it daily, putting aside and an hour or so whilst still running our other areas of the business.
Have a read of this page – https://www.searchlogistics.com/services/technical-seo-audit/
hi Matthew
recently found your blog and reading this , this case study was good , congrats
also, i have a website about tours and travels, 4 years am working on it but no more than 200 google visitors per day
contents are unique and I’m also doing some backlinks but I don’t know exactly what the problem with my site
maybe structure maybe some poor backlinks
Have you done a site audit?
Thank You for very informative post, I learn a lot, how to increase website traffic to boost business. thank
You’re welcome! Let me know how you get on with it
Greay stuff. Learned a few things. Thanks
Awesome stuff!
Hi
Very Nice and informative post. Why don’t you have any customised strategy for bing.com? Would like to have some knowledge about that search engine.
It’s on its way :)
Great insight articles. I agreed with your all points you mentioned in article. I definitely try this and audit again all website.
Let me know how it performs!
Neil Patel is good, Brian is awesome, Chris Lee opened my eye to great things and they worked well, but I will have to admit Matthew Woodward is the best.
Mark my comment man, I’ll steal and use this strategy for good, and I’ll personally send you the result, God bless you.
Hahaha awesome thanks Faruq! Looking forward to seeing those results!
Keyword Shitter tool… What a great name. I’d never used it before. Basic as fuck but gets the job done.
Awesome post mate, heaps of killer actionable content as always.
Thanks.
Rowan.
Haha yes Rowan, couldn’t agree more!
thanks for the blog post. very helpful information. we can always learn something new :)
That’s the good thing about SEO. It’s always changing so there is always new stuff to learn and keep us on our toes :)
thanks so much for this. only problem i have is that weight loss pills are fake, so not helping the world
Well you can supply the theory to any type of site, but I get the point :)
Great Article Mathew, Thanks for sharing immense knowledge.
No problem Anthony. Hope you can use the info to your advantage.
Awesome article.Thanks for sharing this great content
Thanks, glad I could help :)
Thanks for this great article. Tho this is my first time writing an article on my blog and got it index in three days then appears on page 6 on google now the website is now on page 4 on a particle keyword, still building links. I hope to get it to page one. Thanks once again for all of your great articles.
Great start Daniel!
ohh..my god… thats amazing.. thanks matthew.. i am a regular follower of your SEO strategies.. you have explained here in a great way.. hope this will help me for my new site..
Thank you very much, hope you got some actionable tips out of it!
Wow great content!
Thanks so much, always good to show tactics in action!
Great inside!
Cheers Mana!
This is so technical and useful information for everyone. Really thanks for this.
Glad I could help Nikhil!
Hi matthew,
this is very qualitative content, thanks for sharing and keep .
it’s a wonderful blog
Glad you think so Jay! Hope the SEO tactics prove useful to you!
Your new valuable key points imply much a person like me and extremely more to my office workers. With thanks; from everyone of us.
Hey Koby, glad I was able to help :)
This article is great. I agree with the information you provide in the article. Thanks for sharing this post.
No worries, hopefully you can recreate some of this case studies success!
Great Article for Bloggers. and very informative
Cheers!
nice blog.. thank you…
No problem, hope it’s helpful!
Explained very well. All points mentioned here are worth noticing. Thanks
They sure are, thanks Shins!
This article is an appealing wealth of informative data that is interesting and well-written. I commend your hard work on this and thank you for this information. You’ve got what it takes to get attention.
Wow, thanks a lot!
I want more traffic on my blog magazine site…http://blogsauthor.com/
It’s difficult to reach people worldwide…I’m trying to get more visitors…I’ve applied some seo strategy yet…but I could not get organic search…What should I do now? Please let me know your expert thoughts in terms of getting huge traffic…Thanks for your excellent article…
Read the article and you’ll get plenty of advice.
Hello,
It really awesome article
Glad you think so!
Thank for good article write and published.
You are welcome Zomirul!
I really appreciate the work you have done, you explained everything in such an amazing and simple way.
No probs, happy I could help!
Thanks for sharing a information about search traffic to website.
Hope you picked up some good tips from the case study.
Nice post!
Best knowledge sharing post. It is helpful. Thank you for the post shared with us.
Glad you found the case study helpful!
Hi matthew, this is a very nice case study, will surely try this.
Thanks and regards
Please do!
wow It is awesome article.
Thanks Fahim! Hope you put these tips to good use!
Thank you so much for this valuable information
No worries Abhishek! Hope you picked out some actionable tips.
Hi there!
Wow! It is awesome article.
Thanks for sharing
No problem, hope you learnt a thing or two :)
Very good blog. Nice post keep posting
I definitely will :)
Your articles are really amazing. love to read your blog.It will be very useful information for everyone.Carry on the hard work. Keep sharing such informative posts continuously.
Happy I could help! Glad it was so useful!
Wow Matt, this case study is amazing. So much value. I like that you insist on simplifying SEO.
Just technical SEO, content and links.
Do that and you’re golden.
Also, I like the tip of using Ahrefs to find keywords ranking on the positions 11-30.
I didn’t know Ahrefs can do that, and it’s similar to using GSC to find high impression; low CTR keywords.
Thanks Matt, I’ll share your guide on Twitter:)
Thanks Nikola, sounds like you really good some good tips from the case study! Let me know how you get on implementing them.
very nice airticle super bro
Hope it helps to give your traffic a boost!
hi
iam geeta
very nice this website usefull
Hi Geeta, glad you found my blog useful! Come back soon :)
Thank you, very useful
Hope you can put it to good use Ibrahim
Hello,
Thanks for sharing with us.”
It’s really a great and helpful piece of info. I am glad that you shared this helpful info with us. Please keep us informed like this.
I certainly will Tarun!
Thank you. I my opinion google analytics is best because it gives the each and every details about website traffic
It sure does!
Thank you for this useful article from this article i got good knowledge about seo
Hope you can use it to your advantage!
its looking good
Cheers Kapil, hope you picked up some useful tips.
The message is, your attitude shapes your life.
Haha, yes it certainly has a massive part to play!
Thank you for to sharing this. This will really help us…
Great news, exactly what it was intended for!
Thank you for such an insightful post.
Hope you can use it to your advantage!
Wow. Awesome Case study Matteew.
Learn a lot of things.
surely I will implement your advise in my next projects.
thanks and shared.
Thanks for the share and I’m glad you found the case study useful!
One of the best article on gaining traffic and that to 14x times and shared information are so genuine. I have no words to say how great you are. You are guiding hundreds of aspiring blogger in right direction. Keep it up sir. If you have youtube channel then please let me know. Thanks.
Hey Srikant, thanks very much! I hope the post helped. You can find me here on Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkL2jolLeEjcS_Iuj71KwHw
Thanks for sharing the information.
Happy to Piyush!
Great work! There is definitely a lot of work put into this. I look forward to exploring! This is beautiful, I wish I had this when I got started in the SEO game.
Thanks Adesh! Hope things turn in your favour.
Hello, Matthew
Thanks for sharing your case study with us and learn us the things practically. I am learning SEO, It helped me a lot to learn some new idea and tactics.
Happy to help, keep it up!
Thanks for sharing this nice article keep posting such type of informative content mate
I certainly will do!
thanks, nice blog
Cheers Dharmesh!
Great work. Thanks for sharing Nice info.
No worries, hope it helps increase your search traffic!
This one is amazing work to boost my traffic. I am following these tips. Thanks for sharing.
Let me know the results!
Its really hard to find such an amazing content nowadays, it feels realy good after reading your post.
Thanks Soni! Hope you can use these tactics to improve your traffic too.
Thanks for sharing this nice Article
No worries Vicky!
Very Nice Your Website Good
Thanks very much Nitish! Hope you picked up a few tips!
Thanks ! for explaining briefly topic , you have cleared many doubts of me,
Glad to help Rishi!
HI First of all many thanks greatly for Shareing ur great Article
Thank you very much for sharing this.articles for a short while and they’re extremely helpful!
Thanks for your comment! Hope my blog continues to be of use to you!
This post must to be read , really amazing to say , every problem is detailed explained with solution hats-off !
Hope you found some useful tactics Rishi
You are always my favorite Mathew Wood and love the youtube video of yours. I do my best but still not got the organic traffic as you but still working on it. Thanks for sharing such good info……
No problem Clark, keep hustling!
Great work! Thanks for sharing this information.
Happy to help!
Thanks for sharing the list man, it’s probably gonna help a lot of SEOs and newbies to get some Do Follow backlinks for their domains.
No problem Adesh. I certainly hope so :)
Thanks For This awesome article i learned more about seo
Glad to hear it Tarun!
Thanks for sharing this useful information.
No problem, hope you can apply these techniques with success too
Good work thanks for sharing
Happy to…. hope these tactics prove useful to you.
That was an insanely valuable blog post! Please keep and continue your good work ,Keep posting these type of interesting articles.This post is very helpful.I have been examinating out some of your articles and it’s pretty clever stuff.I need to thank you for this wonderful Article and aslo Thanks for this valuable information and all the guidelines you provided.
Awesome, cheers! Hope it proves helpful!
Thanks for sharing the post i hope you will share some more info with us
I certainly will. Just keep an eye out :)
Hello Mathew,
I like your article and I will apply all the strategies to my blog. Let see blog traffic will be increased or not.
Let me know how it works out!
Thanks for the article, the information provided will surely help me in my SEO.
Regards
If used correctly, it certainly will Shakil :)
This was incredibly helpful! Thank you for this article
Glad it was helpful! No problem :)
nice post thank you for your posting
No problem, I hope you learnt a thing or two :)
Thanks for this great post i love this
Hey David. You’re very welcome, hope you picked up a few tips.
Good Luck I always check you.
Thanks Roz!
Nice information thank you
You’re welcome Chakra! Hope you picked up some useful tips :)
Very useful information for SEO beginners.
Thanks Nishant :)
An excellent read. I am surely going to apply this broken link building strategy for my blog.
Thanks
Awesome news! Let me know how it goes.
hey matt great article keep posting the articles every day so that we can learn with more ease
Will do! Thanks Manchala!
I am really impressed with your blog article, such great & useful knowledge you mentioned here.
Your post is very informative. I have read all your posts and all are very informative. Thanks for sharing and keep it up like this.
Well I have plenty more in the pipeline so keep an eye out :)
SEO is very important for blogging.Especially thanks for this great article, because I have learn lot of thing from this article regarding SEO.
Awesome news! Glad you have learnt a lot about SEO – now you just gotta put it into practice.
NICE ARTICLES THANK FOR POSTING
No problem Harimanti! Hopefully you can apply what you have learnt into your own SEO.
Getting organic traffic for a new website is a real challenge for a newbie and I have been realizing it well. Hopefully, this strategy will help me to get more free organic search traffic. By the way, I have been waiting to see more SEO related article to learn something new from you. Thank you for your complement.
No problem, keep an eye out as I have a lot more on its way :)
SEO is very important for us.above article gives us an information regarding how we use SEO in efficient way. well done keep it up.
Thanks I hope you can use the case studies to your advantage :)
SEO is very important for us. It’s necessary to create Blog Traffic which is very help full for improving the performance.
Yep!
Thank you so much for posting this. I will probably have to read it a few more times to really absorb all the content that’s in there. I am fairly new to the field of SEO (been trying to improve the ranking of my business website) and posts like this help me very much. Case studies are especially great as they don’t just show generic advice – but show what the advice delivers!
I just recently found your blog will will definitely keep following it, and learning a lot!
Thanks Steffi, I’m publishing a lot of content over the next few months that will be mega helpful to you so keep an eye out :)
Everything is very open with a very clear clarification of the issues. It was truly informative. Your website is useful. Many thanks for sharing!
Hey Alisha, I try to be very transparent with my blog – helped by data, which never lies :)
Thanks. I started my Educational blog but I don’t understand what to do next. Some of my friends told me that You should buy some quality backlinks from Fiver. Should I buy Backlinks? Is it ok to buy backlinks? I don’t understand what to do Next.
Waiting for your replay
Have a read of this – https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/link-building/strategies/
impressive blog
Cheers! Any new content suggestions?
You are really generous man matt.. I don’t know what it takes to become an expert like you, spending all of your time for research and then giving those valuable information just for free, you are my mvp matt, i hope all of your readers including me can be an expert like you someday
Wow thanks very much. Work hard and don’t be afraid to make mistakes :)
Got to tell you matt your the expert here. Boosting blog SEO is really a big deal to me. Thanks for sharing your knowledge to us
No problem Paul and thanks very much :)
hey matt great article keep posting the articles every day so that we can learn with more ease
No worries, I have plenty in the pipeline for you.
lovely
cheers!
I like your presentation and agree with much of this information. You kept my attention throughout the whole article, and that’s a task. Thank you.
Haha awesome! Mission accomplished :)
very nice content full of information thank you for sharing……..
Glad to help!
Thanks For Sharing this article.
it’s really helpful for website SEO.
Glad to hear it!
I like to try all of this method except increased the length of the homepage from 1,500 words to 10,911 words. I rather do yoga with one leg stand.
Yeah we outsource the writing :)
I have found here lots of interesting information for my knowledge I need.
Great news Kavleen, I hope you can apply these techniques to your site :)
Thanks this is brilliant and I can’t believe you are giving it out free!
I struggle to rank my online magazine as each page is about something different. Beauty, fashion, interiors, health…..
Any suggestions there?
No problem at all!
My suggestion would be content + links!
Love to rea d this whole blog post!!
It looks super awesome and I now super excited to implement on my site.
Let me know how you get on Indra!
The content of this blog is really useful . Thanks for sharing such an amazing and informative blog with us and keep on blogging such excellent contents like this .
Thanks, I fully intend to. Keep an eye out over the next few months :)
Thanks for sharing such useful information with us. Hope everyone is gets benefited
I hope so too
Thanks.
No problem John
Really effective strategies. What a drastically change in traffic with health niche. This can only be done by you. So inspirational. Thanks for sharing.
Hey Farukh, thanks very much! Glad I could help :)
Great case study. To build domain authority, did you send links to the homepage only or did you send links to inner pages too?
The homepage was the primary ranking page
Thank you for sharing a great blog for reader
No problem! Hope there were some valuable tactics you can action on your site.
Hi Matthew, Great post! I’ve already gone through and deleted some thin content pages from my own blog as well as purchased WP Rocket. Can’t believe how much faster my site is! Can you tell us what ratio you used for homeage vs. internal pages when building the PBN links? Thanks.
Glad you enjoyed it!
All homepage baby!
it’s interesting how many time PBN showed up in your Link Building Strategy for your client.
that is very different from what other people are saying about PBN’s.
Great post.
If executed correctly PBN’s can be extremely powerful!
it is really nice article I love it
Thanks!
THANKS FOR SHARING THE ARTICLES AND AWESOME ARTICLES ON INTERNET.
No problem, happy to help :)
Very Good Case Study. it’s very useful for me and I am working on it, Thanks
Great news! Keep hustling
Hi Matthew,
quick question (and valuable for others as well). Have you noticed that leaving comments open benefits SEO for that particular post/site?
I have noticed my competitors doing ranking much better (no obvious reason) and the only difference I notice is they they all have WordPress comments enabled and I don’t. Isn’t a new comment the same as updating the content each time? (In the eyes of Google)
Thanks!
Why wouldnt you have comments enabled?
Nice Article
Hope it helps build your traffic :)
Great list of SEO tactics to use and double your traffic in a quick period. SEO will have huge changes in 2019 and these are very effective
Thanks, we certainly find these tactics helpful, as shown :)
How much of that traffic comes from the homepage vs internal pages?
If it’s ranking for 11,200 keywords. Wouldn’t the bulk of the website traffic be coming from this single page?
That is correct, the homepage was the driving force – great observation ;)
GOOD INFORMATION THANK FOR SHARING A WONDERFUL INFORMATION
No worries Harimanti. Hope this article helps improve your search traffic.
Amazing case study for search traffic.
Really appreciate the way you have written and explained.
I am really gonna apply this for the future. Worth reading it.
Thanks for sharing it with us.
Good work..!!
Hey Lisa, thanks! I hope you have a lot of future success with this article for reference.
Search Engine Optimization is an major tool for Digital Marketing , in this great article says about SEO , that type of things are very helpful for me and thanks for sharing.
Happy to help!
Great bump in DR. How did you make that happen? I’ve been stuck in the DR mid-40s for a couple of years.
Not obsessed with DR but it’s a fun numbers game.
What were the DRs or URs of the links from your PBNs to your site?
What were the URs of the guest posts you secured?
Do they all point to the homepage, internal pages or a mix?
Gratsi!
Off the top of my head I don’t know but we drove all the links to the homepage as this was the primary ranking target, and it was also the page that picked up a ton of natural links once we were ranking
Hi dear sir. Sir i know many Seo tools but i do not have experience in SEO. What should i do?
Learn the basics then get stuck in.
The content of this blog is really useful and very much informatic.Thanks for sharing this content with us . Carry on posting such blogs which will be helpful to the public.
I certainly will do, as they say… watch this space.
nice article it’s a very usefull article
Thanks a lot!
great case study Matt. I put in a request for you to check out my site and tell me the cost to rank. But as usual you provided awesome information about the case study.
Thanks Steve my team will get back to you asap!
Hello, Matthew. With regard to adding text to the homepage and pages, is there a plugin to do this to make it look aesthetically good and not sloppy? In categories is it also recommended to add text to help SEO? Congratulations on this brilliant article.
Every site is different but you could use WPShortcode plugin to add collapisble texts easily
Thanks! Great case study, got all answers from creating a good site structure to link building strategy. Will implement
Fantastic news – glad you were able to get the info you needed Deepak!
Wow this is very good helpful post about seo.I get more knowledge to read this.can i get more updates from you about seo
Thanks Namira, I’ve got lots more in the pipeline so check back in soon :)
Thanks for this great post i love post ,
Awesome, glad to hear it Dave :)
Great article Matthew, A few questions regarding keyword selection and site structure. How do you determine what theme and category keywords to use when it comes to site structure? The article didn’t really make that clear.
I tend to find it particularly difficult to finalise the categories for a new site especially if the market i’m targeting is broad,
Thats a manual process but if you have Ahrefs you can look at the “Parent Topic” of a keyword to help group them
You are doing Great Work. I like the way you write and always follow your valuable tips in my daily life.
Thanks very much – keep hustling :)
Very Very Nice Article
Hope you have picked up some good SEO tips to implement.
So when you update content, do you just add content (update) or you change its publish date also.
One SEO suggest to change publish date to current date if I am changing / updating more than 50% content of that page.
You recommend this?
Please see https://i.imgur.com/4Ib1hGr.jpg from the Facbook group
Hi Matt and great post as always.
Just a quick one about Screaming Frog.
I never used it before and tried the visualisations tab which is a handy feature.
In your screenshot you highlighted “Crawl Tree Graph” and it looks like the screenshots below are from “Force Directed Crawl Diagram” if I am not mistaken?
Thanks for all your good (free) work, we all really appreciate your efforts
Oooops my bad! Good spot!
Wow Matt, I’m blow away by this post. There is so much actionable content here. 1.) I took a leap of faith on your WP Rocket recommendation and can’t believe how much faster my site loads. So worth it!! (I was previously using one of the popular free cache plugins and my site was always so slow and I could never figure out why.) 2.) Then I went through and deleted a bunch of thin content. Now I’m going to check out the free version of screaming frog. 4.) My internal linking, site structure, and seo settings are pretty good but I’ll definitely look over them again for little tweeks (thanks for the Yoast setting post too!). Can’t believe you got those results with so few backlinks. That gives me some hope for my little blog! ;-)
Hey Lisa,
You are making all of the right moves, please keep me updated on how you progress!
Was easy reading for 1 AM, cheers Matt.
When it comes to redirects, How would you approach a product page where the product is sold out and the business has no intent on replenishing stocks?
Hahah thans!
With no intent of replenishing stock, if the page has traffic/backlinks – redirect to a relevant category page.
If zero traffic/backlinks – 404
Superb case study! Thanks Matt.
Think you could dig a little deeper on the link building portion? There’s a couple of points that could have been clarified a little better.
1. Of the links you built, how many went to your money page, and how many went to supporting pages / blog posts?
2. Did you reserve the big gunz (pbns) for your target page using variations of money keywords, or did you also use them going to your inner pages?
– I’d assume it wiser to use pbn’s to move the needle for your money page with some keyword anchors rather than waste that power on inner pages.
Still learning the ropes here, so this would be a great help :)
Thanks,
Sean
Hi,
1) All efforts were focused on the hompage
2) See above :P
Matt, any chance you can link to the spreadsheet from the keyword tracking section? Seems proprietary but thought I’d ask anyway incredible piece. Going to try this myself!
Which one? I’m not sure which your referring to
Impressive case study matthew: Can you tell us how to do best outreach to make sure we get publish our contemt on the sites. Cheap way to do this.?
Outreach is just a numbers game backed up by a great script. Use a tool like NinjaOutreach and make sure you script was written by a native skilled (not cheap) copywriter
What would the results have looked like without the PBN links do you figure? Same results but longer time to get there or no way to get that traffic increase?
In the niche we are competing in, there are 2x types of competitor.
1) Big huge established brands
2) Smaller sites powered by PBN’s
With that said:
If we hadn’t have used PBN’s in this instance, we would be eating dust.
What we could have done is to use guest posts instead of PBN’s – but given that 90% of guest posting is now paid for (and more expensive) there isn’t any difference between a PBN link and a guest post any more.
Excellent case study.
Question: the new content that was created was what kind of content? Was it reviews? supporting content to the affiliate offers?
Thanks
Question based content relevant to the main keyword we were trying to rank for
Amazing case study! It also proves that PBN really works if done right.
Hey Bryan. Yes they sure do :)
Wow!! moving the page length from 1500 to over 10,000 words for the homepage actually did the trick but I believe it’s the question and answer method that was applied that ranked the homepage for more traffic.
There were obviously search intent keywords that were put out to play here and the first few hundred visitors clicking on the link from the search results were spending more time reading through the content than longer than the time that were spent on the pages that ranked above for those keywords they were ranking for previous to the homepage update.
People are hung on backlinks because most of the top ranking sites show just that – a galore of backlinks besides that’s what they’re sold on average by the high priced SEO “specialists” hungry to take their money as this is the only hard evidence that they can show their clients…
Yes this helps a lot and I’ve seen similar results on the blog where I have added Q&A style content.
Perhaps where we could have improved is to embed to the new Q&A structured markup data but perhaps we will do that in the future as I’m yet to experiment with it personally.
HI Matthew. Love your work.
In regards to the PBN links, what was the spread ie Links to money pages, links to root domain?
Root domain was our focus
I see there are a lot of SEO pros here can you give me in depth input on which keywords to use on this site valuecarepharmacy.net specializing in providing free prescriptions to personal injury clients. It is a unique situation since we are not attorneys but looking for the same clientele. Thank you in advance.
Find your top 3 competitors and bang them into Ahrefs
Impressive case study! Matt. But I would like to ask. Are your sure that PBN Links won’t hurt the ranking of the site in future?
The site is gaining natural links rapidly now which far outweighs any risk of the PBN (which there is none because we built the PBN right)
Awesome case study Matt!
I like how it’s laid out and explained, start to finish,
it’s a great for a starter blueprint process to follow.
No problem Brad glad you enjoyed it!
This case study is amazing, I see so many search engine experts overlook the basics, proper on-page SEO and structure can dramatically improve any link building stratehy.
Haven’t tried ahrefs yet, think i will be checking this out
Yes you have to get the basics right before jumping into content production and link building
Awesome blog thanks for sharing your case study. I read also 12x link building way.
I want to ask a question
What PBN technique is good for SEO? how to create? Plz let me know
And share continues with me.
Take a look @ https://marketerseal.com/
Great post, most seo professional start with link building , amazing and thanks for sharing.
No problem, glad to help :)
Another Great Case Study from Matthew. How even you can manage to write this quality of Case Study..TEACH ME PLEASE
I don’t know, first you need the results – then just sit and write :)
Really good strategy, I use one which is really similar Matthew ;)
Sure you do :P
WOW! Thanks for the amazing case study matt. I will definitely apply this to my SEO strategy.
By the way, how does the keyword shitter work? I can’t seem to understand it.
Thanks.
No problem!
Just enter a seed keyword and hit go!
The first thing I suspect you had here was client commitment. Which is vital.
But 8 months work and at what cost to the client for the service you delivered? And much did their turnover go up by if you are able to share that..
I can’t give exact numbers sorry as every niche and SEO strategy is different based on competition and individual business goals
Great insight articles. I agreed with your all points you mentioned in article. I definitely try this and audit again all website.
Please let me know how you get on!
Lovely case study, Matt! More and more we’re turning to Ahrefs above other options for their Top Pages by % data and organic keywords data for initial pitches and strategy – just makes sense! Lots of other gems here also.
Cheers!
Thanks Joe!
Yes their data is second to none right now!
This one is a good article for new users and I really loved it.
Thanks for sharing.
No worries, happy to help Akash.