And those kind of results are common across this niche.
But if you pay close attention to the green boxes in the image above…
…you’ll see an opportunity!
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.
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.
We also paid close attention to search intent when selecting our final keywords.
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:
There’s 1x part of keyword research people usually miss.
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.
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.
That helped increase visibility of the homepage which now ranks for over 11,200 keywords-
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-
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
The website should follow a logical structure (flat structure or silo structure) with a clear with your core pages located within 3x clicks from the homepage.
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)
A lot of people don’t pay attention to site structure.
But trust me:
Building a healthy site structure from day #1 is critical to your growth.
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
Based on what we had learned about the thin content issues during the SEO audit…
…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-
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:
Backlinks are the most important ranking factor in Google.
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 profilefrom 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-
Month 1
12x PBN Links
1x Outreach
Month 2
10x PBN Links
3x Outreach Links
15x Quora Links
Month 3
12x PBN Links
3x Outreach
Month 4
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
And that’s all we did.
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-
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!
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://searchlogistics.com/seo/ecommerce/I hope it’ll help you:
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.
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?
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!
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)
Hi MathewGreat 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.
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
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.
Learn how we increased our clients’ new leads by 50%, overhauling their service pages, optimizing their Google Business Profile, and growing their domain authority.
This site was hit with a manual penalty from Google so we had to act fast. We cleaned up the site and had our reconsideration request accepted first time.
If you need help increasing your search & sales or recovering from a penalty please fill out\ the form below and one of our search specialists will review your site-
I’m currently making my 2nd case study and this was put together well. Been a fan since BHW in 2012. Cheers!
Cheers Joshua 😀
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://searchlogistics.com/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 MatthewLot 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://searchlogistics.com/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://searchlogistics.com/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://searchlogistics.com/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://searchlogistics.com/seo/link-building/strategies/ & https://searchlogistics.com/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://searchlogistics.com/seo/ecommerce/https://searchlogistics.com/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 MathewGreat 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!
HiVery 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!