SEO case: +400% traffic — promotion of accounting and auditing services website

1. Difficulties encountered

At the start of the work, in fact, we have no website, no content and no priorities and understanding of the client where to start. So, we started by drawing up the structure of the site.

After that, we planned 8 iterations to prepare a semantic core:

— Over 50 pages of spot accounting and auditing services
— About 30-40 informational articles for the corporate blog.

Parallel to the BCA started the analysis of competitors:

— Picked up solutions to replace the site
— Started to prepare content structure and TOR for each page of the service

Thus the project was launched.

To sum up, the main difficulties:

1. The site was mostly empty
2. The site did not have an intuitive structure
3. Most of the priority service pages were missing (about 85%)
4. Content was not optimized: text structure, titles, meta tags
5. The site did not have most of the standard technical characteristics (sitemap.xml; robots.txt; microdata, CNC, etc.)

2. Project promotion strategy

The primary objectives of the project, which were carried out in the first 2 months:

1. Launch of the new site, choice of template.
2. Formation of basic terms of reference for the programmer of the new site.
3. Collection of the kernel of requests for priority categories of services and articles.
4. Creating the correct structure of the site.
5. Conducting a niche analysis and identifying the pool of major competitors
6. Content works based on the analysis of the content of competitors (creating the structure, text, titles, meta)
7. Expansion of the index through thematic articles
   link strategy

Stages of optimization works

3.1 First stage. Technical and SEO audit of the new template

As a result, collected and brought to the programmer implementation of basic tasks:

• Creating a robots.txt file, XML and HTML sitemap;
• Installing SSL certificate;
• Formation of the structure of pages, adjustment of the menu in the header and footer;
• Removing double pages, setting redirects;
• Connecting and configuring webmasters;
• Installing Counters Google Analytics
• Output breadcrumbs;
• Speeding up site load speed;
• Optimizing the mobile version;
• Implementation of micro markup Articles, Breadcrumbs, Organization;
• Works to remove erroneous pages from the index;
• Removing a large number of absolute links from the code with the old protocol http;
• Optimization of the footer;
• Other tasks.

Note: It was not just about starting a new site, but also to change the main part of the addresses of pages by installing 301 redirects, and removing unnecessary and empty pages from the index of the old site.

3.2 Second stage. Collection and preparation of the semantic core

Multi-iteration process with the sequential collection of queries, their distribution to their pages and subsequent approval with the client. As the kernel was being collected, we got even more coverage of related services, which allowed us to create and optimize even more landing pages in the future.

In the process of collecting the semantic core, we found frequent queries that are well suited for writing thematic articles and expanding the current set of services, which we later took advantage of. In parallel with the external optimization and iteratively increasing link mass on a number of key service pages, we were expanding the index, preparing structural TOR for new service pages and articles.

3.3 The third stage. Creation of content

Based on the study of the content of major competitors from the issuance, and its SEO. Again, based on the priorities of the client, were implemented:

• A comprehensive ToR for page content optimization (structure, text, titles, meta);
• Writing, testing and subsequent placement of the text;
• His indexing and control of movement in search.

At the stage of competitor content analysis we faced with a multi-tiered, maximally detailed content structure, where each concept and description of the service on the site is given in a capacious and clear manner. Therefore, steps were taken to identify a number of key players in the market and their content analysis with the formation of the most complete structure, the volume of texts, types of content and other.

In the process of writing and placing the texts we had to show the new and fully optimized pages to search engines as quickly as possible, so we began to reindex the landing pages in webmasters and place backlinks to the site. The result – a rapid increase in the number of indexed pages on the site:

3.4 The fourth stage – the formation of a linking strategy and monthly growth of link mass by purchasing.

• Key competitors were identified;
• Download link profiles of direct competitors;
• Search for donors;
• Checking each domain for quality parameters;
• Determining the required monthly budget for link building;
• Publication of links.

Maintaining a constant dynamics of text placement and backlinks – in a short time landing pages began to take the top places in extradition.

In addition, we have received an increase of 4-fold from the initial indicators for literally 2 months of promotion

Instead of a conclusion

Often, the promotion of the old site is impractical in terms of time and cost to bring it to the right form. Therefore, in this example, we have described a case with a complete relaunch of the site.

At the start of the project was a complete understanding of the competition in the niche. Therefore, it was decided initially to put the main time on the analytics, to determine the right strategy, at the output we got a combination:

— The launch of the new site;
— as much as possible dense grouping of services to sub-services;
— preparation of expanded content;
— the systematic development of a reference profile.

Due to what, the project has received a proper increase in organics. Thank you, we tried to describe everything in detail! We hope the case will be useful.