SEO for a website subject to "Online service for masters search"

What did we have at the start

Initial metrics for the website:

• 1000-1200 visitors from search engines;
• visibility of the website 0.00058 for the serpstat.com service;
• the website was ranked by 606 queries (data from the serpstat.com service);
• dynamics of the link profile according to the ahrefs.com service (donor domains = 6, donor pages = 9).

The Client's main goal was to increase organic traffic to the website. At the same time, the priority task was to increase the number of precisely those users who are looking for masters in various areas of repair (plumbing, electrician, etc.). As a result, the number of calls to masters should have increased and, accordingly, the number of hired masters through the website.

Let's see what we have done and what the result was. What features were never implemented, and what unexpected factor prevented us from getting the maximum effect.

Workflow:

The first stage of work - technical analysis of the project.

We found that the website is not optimized and contains a large number of errors. All this prevents the correct promotion and correct perception of the website by search engines.

Main problems:

• lack of correct CNC (pages were available with parameters);
• duplicate pages (duplicate pages with “www” and without, with “/” at the end of the URL and without, duplicates in upper and lower case);
• incorrect sitemap xml (the sitemap contained all possible duplicates that were only available);
• lack of a block for adding content (it was not possible to add content to the categories / subcategories of the site, this item was not included in the functionality of the site);
• lack of search functionality;
• lack of mobile adaptability;
• lack of bread crumbs;
• lack of a Russian-language version of the website (the website was designed only for the Ukrainian audience);
• lack of structured data;
• incorrect H1 titles;
• lack of correct metadata (a template was added to the website that only pulled up the category name);

• etc.

Based on the results of the analysis, we prepared a file with proposals for improving the project, where we described in detail the ways to eliminate the errors found. We also made an item on creating a Russian-language version of the website.

The Client's first priority was to increase traffic to the already existing Ukrainian version of the website. Therefore, the process of implementing the Russian-language version was delayed - we launched it only after we had eliminated all the technical errors of the website in the Ukrainian.

However, there are almost never projects without "pitfalls" in our practice.

During the implementation of technical recommendations, we began to refine the website structure according to the following principle:

• Niche analysis.

We analyzed the search results and market leaders to understand how the structure of websites with similar services from top competitors is implemented.

• Analysis of selected competitors. 

Based on the analysis of the product niche, we selected several worthy competitors, which we focused on further.

• Collection of the semantic core.

We had a list of the main categories that we used as a mask for parsing keys and extending semantics.

• Clustering semantics. 

The collected queries were divided into groups.

• Rendering the website structure.

The proposed structure was visualized for a better understanding of the range of works. 

After these steps, we realized that the structure of the website requires significant revision, namely, the building of new additional pages for each type of service.

Example of structure for some types of services:

Fig. 1 — Example of a website structure for some categories

Coordination and approval of the new project structure took a lot of time. As a result, the Client did not agree to expand the structure of the website, arguing that the creation of additional pages would be unprofitable for him. 

Then our specialists decided to rework those pages that will definitely remain on the website. So, without wasting time, we were able to immediately start optimizing content, metadata, headlines and other on-page indicators, such as:

• Metadata template.

Compiled unique templates for each type of service with reference to cities/towns/regions.

• Drawing up a ToR for a copywriter to write unique content for priority areas and cities.
• Template for content by non-priority cities. 

After the start of work on SEO promotion, the Client reduced the budget for writing content. Therefore, we made the decision to create generated content for non-priority cities.

We wrote several texts and replicated them by city, maximally uniqueizing the articles using additional keys and LSI.

At the same time we started to work on external optimization.

Since the link profile of the project was critically small, we used the following strategy: 

• crowd links (50% non-anchor, 50% brand mention);
• perpetual links (anchor links for priority optimized pages);
• outreach (contacted large visited sites in order to place links in relevant articles).

Since the budget was limited, we tried to distribute it as efficiently as possible over the months of work. 

The challenges we faced with:

1. The main problem is inconsistency and non-implementation of the website structure, namely, the Client's refusal to introduce a large number of additional traffic generating pages. The Client considered it inappropriate to expand the structure.
2. A limited number of characters in articles (the length of any article should not exceed 1000 characters). 
3. Monthly budget reduction for external optimization.
4. Monthly change of the website structure by the Client (for several months in a row the Client changed the number of categories on the website, merged and separated the created categories, and also deleted the categories for which unique content was created and links were purchased).

Deliverables

For 6 months we managed to get a significant increase in traffic - since the start of work it has increased by 742%.

It is important to note that even better results could have been achieved by implementing all the proposed recommendations (in terms of website structure, content creation, improvement of commercial and behavioral factors), which, unfortunately, were not accepted by the Client.

• The attendance of the website from Search has grown from 1200 people per month to 10 000 visitors:

Fig. 2 — Organic traffic (data taken from analytics.google.com service)

• Comparison of website traffic before and after SEO:

Fig. 3 — Comparison of attendance (before the start of work and after, the data is taken from the analytics.google.com service)

• While working on the Client’s website, the visibility of the resource increased from 0.00058 to ~ 0.1 (serpstat.com):

Fig. 4 — Project visibility from the start of work

• The number of ranking queries improved from 606 to 85,251 (serpstat.com):

Fig. 5 — Number of ranking queries

• Link Profile Dynamics (ahrefs.com):

Fig. 6 — Number of referring donor domains

Fig. 7 — Number of referring pages

The key factor for the high performance of the project is the methodical work on promotion.

What’s next

In June 2019, the Client decided to change the website's domain. We prepared technical recommendations for the programmer and checked the correctness of their implementation and website relocation (domain gluing, redirection settings, etc.). Therefore, firstly we saw a slight decrease in the volume of traffic from search engines and traffic in general.

Expect the continuation of this case.