SEO case: +400% increase in traffic — promotion of window store

Project inputs:

1. Abrupt removal of leased links

Data on links: in February-March sharp subsidence after the removal of temporary links. Critical technical condition of the site

2. Inability to implement changes on the site due to the lack of a programmer at the client at the start.

Errors that were on the site:

• Duplicate category pages
• Duplicate product pages
• Incorrect .xml map (pages with http in the map, duplicates in the map)
• Incorrect template application for meta tags – incorrect snippets
• Incorrectly configured canonical tag
• Double encoding (charset=windows-1251 and charset=utf-8 at the same time)
• Using HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) support
• The site contains some elements that are not protected using HTTPS.
• When migrating the site from HTTP to HTTPS, not all links were fixed to be secure with HTTPS.
• Very slow site loading speed
• Lack of micro markup
• etc.

Promotion strategy

1. Restore the link profile of the site

How we acted:

1. Removed all lost links via ahrefs, webmaster, formed an upload.
2. Analyzed the links that remained, formed an upload
3. We made a sample of direct competitors in organic.
4. Analyzed the links of competitors, generated an upload.
5. We analyzed the received links (trust, quality of sites, etc.)
6. We categorized the links into 4 camps:
   – quality links that can be restored,
   – low-quality links, which we do not restore
   – low-quality working links
   – new quality links for placement

Conclusion: About 60% of the lost links were low-quality and did not require restoration. About 20% of the remaining link profile links were also of low quality (we managed to remove about 12% of the 20%). A portion of the link profile was restored within the first 3 months.

2. Collected SN. It was broken down by pages and groups.

1. Collected the maximum number of queries by topic
2. Grouped queries by type of materials, type of shape and window components
3. Captured the frequency of queries per month in exact match
4. Removed untargeted queries
5. Removed queries with 0 frequency per month by “!”
6. Determined for each group a landing page for the issue

3. Analyzing the top 10 and competitors’ rendition
Prepared a file on competitors and analyzed for positive dynamics of queries (excluded queries with irrelevant rendition).

1. Collected data on the meta-tags and texts of competitors on the SN
2. Determined the % of sites of manufacturers and portals in the top 10.

4. Content preparation
Prepared a plan and TOR for content manager to fill the site with content, based on the analysis of competitors. As well as a number of ToRs for the designer.

How we acted:

1. We made a list of promoted pages that require analytics
2. Analyzed the content of pages in the top 10
3. Conducted a commercial analysis of sites in the top 10
4. Prepared the TOR for the finalization of the site and filling the site.

As a result, we had more than 30 tasks page by page.

TOR included:

• TOR for creating additional blocks
• Request for additional information from the client
• Cost and price data
• Data about production technology, advantages, etc.

5. Text optimization
Conducted page-by-page preparation of text optimization of 25+ key landing pages of the website.

Terms of Reference consisted of:

1. TOR for title optimization
2. TOR for meta-description optimization
3. TOR for h1 title optimization
4. TOR for optimizing the text of the page
5. TOR for optimization of graphic elements of the page
6. TOR for optimization of tables
7. TOR for text formatting

Conclusion: In the process of preparation were identified difficulties and the problem of keyword cannibalization. We made a list of intersections of pages and key phrases – as a result, we prepared a document on text deoptimization of a number of landing and non-landing pages.

6. Conducted technical optimization
Basic work was carried out to eliminate errors and remarks that were identified as a result of the technical audit:

• “cleaning” of the page code
• Duplicate category pages
• Duplicate product pages
• Incorrect .xml map (pages with http in the map, duplicates in the map)
• Incorrect use of template for meta tags – incorrect snippets
• Incorrectly configured canonical tag
• Double encoding (charset=windows-1251 and charset=utf-8 at the same time)
• Using HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) support
• The site contains some elements that are not protected using HTTPS.
• When migrating the site from HTTP to HTTPS, not all links were fixed to be secure with HTTPS.
• Very slow site loading speed
• Lack of micro markup
• Layout errors

Also:

1. Generated a modified robots.txt file
2. Replaced the old sitemap.xml created manually on automatically generated.
3. Eliminated errors in breadcrumbs (were not working breadcrumbs or not correct)
4. Fixed broken links on the site

7. Conducted usability audit
Analyzed:

1. Google analytics – all items one by one
2. Webvisor – viewing site visits and analyzing the “inconvenience” of using the site

As a result, we prepared:

• TOR for side and top menu
• TOR for redesign of the Main Page
• TOR for redesign of the benefits block
• TOR for redesign of the product card
• TOR for filter functionality
• TOR for product card previews
• TOR for filter and sorting functionality

Performance Results:

• Increase in the number of keyword phrases in Google organic search

Conclusion: the growth amounted to 300%

Conclusion: visibility growth amounted to 400%

Conclusion: the number of key phrases increased by 80%.

• Position dynamics

• Google

Conclusion: the positions grew from 15% to 30% on Google.

• Organic traffic growth

Quality of traffic: Decrease in bounce rate

Growth of time spent on the site:

Conclusion: traffic growth was from 300 to 1200 organic conversions per month (400%), increased traffic quality – decreased % bounce 3 times, increased time on site +65%.

• Restore the link profile of the site

Quality of link mass, ICS:

Decrease % of bounce rate:

Recommendations from our team

About leased links:

1. If the project has a leased link mass – the client should have access to these links.
2. A common situation: the site has been promoted for quite a long time and links could have been purchased 3-4 years ago, after which they are simply extended. As a rule, from such links remains no more than 20-25% of live donors at best. Old links should be reviewed regularly.
3. Only quality donors and a smooth transition to permanent links and alternatives (crowdfunding, etc.).
4. You can not place links without analytics and link strategy – most likely you will not get the expected result, moreover, you can harm the project.

About strategy:

1. Exclusion of unnecessary actions. Project preparation is the key to a high result. Correct semantic kernel, elimination of all technical errors, understanding of the issue and your competitors = strategy/set of correct actions to achieve results in organic search
2. Without the involvement of the business owner, there will be no results. We went through almost the entire site, finalized content, handled over 70 large collaborative tasks (within each one we needed something from the client). When preparing a strategy, you need to consider the project team’s involvement in promoting your business.
3. The team – programmer, copywriter, content manager. Specialists without whom the result cannot be achieved. At the start of project and strategy preparation it is important to take into account the features/capabilities of the project CMS, the availability of a programmer to implement solutions. 40% of projects are unsuccessful due to the inability to implement the SEO and technical part of the project.