How This Site Beat The May 2022 Core Update

Google makes significant changes to its search algorithm several times per year.

That means it’s absolutely critical that you stay up to date with the latest changes whether that be FAQ Schema or Image Exif data.

In todays case study, I’ll show you the precise SEO strategy that:

Keep reading to find out how you can achieve similar results by following our recommendations below.

A Closer Look At The Case Study Site

This site offers a package forwarding service.

So, let’s say you live in Australia but want to purchase a product online that cannot be shipped outside the US.

What you can do is use a parcel forwarding service like this to deliver your package to a US-based address first before being forwarded to your home address.

Pretty helpful, right?

The client had joined Search Logistics after seeing mediocre results from their previous SEO agency.

Their primary goal was to bridge the gap between their site and the competition by improving rankings for existing search queries whilst expanding their visibility for new keywords so as to drive more organic traffic.

The Biggest Challenges We Had to Overcome

The biggest challenge of the campaign was to improve the keyword visibility for both:

This meant that the main focus for this campaign was on making sure that the content on the website was optimised for the keywords that we wanted to target.

Here are the three main challenges that we tackled for the client:

1. Finding relevant long-tail keywords to create new website content
2. Optimising and updating existing articles on the blog to maintain content freshness
3. Optimising the content on core landing pages (homepage and service pages) for target keywords

This is how we broke that down into simple steps…

Create A Plan Of Attack

Here’s a breakdown of the three-step algorithm-friendly content strategy that we employed for this client:

Step #1 – Finding Long-tail Keyword Opportunities

One of the first steps of any SEO campaign is keyword research i.e. identifying which keywords you want to rank for, but importantly, which keywords are worth targeting.

Why? Because some keywords are “easier” to rank for than others.

Whilst there are many types of keywords, in their simplest forms, search queries can be classified into:

1. Broad Keywords

These keywords (also known as short-tail keywords) are usually one or two words long, have higher search volumes and are more competitive.

As a result, they’ll allow you to reach a much larger audience but are significantly more difficult to rank for as they have “mixed intent”.

For example, when a user searches for “chocolate” are they looking to:

This is reflected in the top search results, where Google displays a range of informational and eCommerce pages.

2. Long-tail Keywords

These keywords tend to:

This is because they have a much more specific search intent.

For example, “what is the difference between white chocolate and milk chocolate” has a monthly search volume of 150 in the U,S.

And importantly, Google displays the same kind of informational pages in the top results, making it much easier to compete for.

With this in mind, it’s good practice to identify long-tail keywords to target so that you can build keyword visibility for these less competitive keywords before moving on to the broader search terms.

Step #2 – Improving Content Freshness

If, like our client, you’ve already published lots of articles on your blog, but for whatever reason, they just aren’t climbing the search results, it’s likely that you’re actually sitting on a gold mine of juicy potential traffic.

This is because many webmasters miss out one key step in their SEO content strategies – re-optimising or updating old content.

Why should you keep your content up to date?

Think about it this way, Google’s mission is to provide the most relevant and useful content to users’ search queries.

This is especially important for keywords where what the user’s looking for may change over time.

For example, if you’re searching the keywords “olympics” or “football world cup”, it’s more likely that you want to learn more about the next olympics or world cup as opposed to previous tournaments.

Google released an algorithm in 2011 that focuses on this, it’s called “Query Deserves Freshness” and you can find out more about it here.

With all of this in mind, it’s important to make sure that your website content; especially old blog posts that you may have written years ago and forgotten about; continues to provide useful and relevant information over time.

What kind of keywords requires freshness?

1. Recent events or hot topics: These are any trending topics like celebrity news, natural disasters and general news items where users want to find the most recent information.
2. Regularly recurring events: These are events that occur on a regular basis like annual conferences or sporting events like the Olympics.
3. Frequent updates: These are searches where the most recent information may be required for example product reviews, list based articles etc.

SEO HACK: Use Our 28 Day SEO Process To Boost Traffic To Any Page

The key point to remember when updating your old content is to make sure that the new additions that you make are aligned with what Google is rewarding in the search results for your target keywords.

Step #3 – Optimising Content on Core Landing Pages

The final piece of our content strategy for the client was to optimise the content on the client’s core landing pages by primarily focusing on the homepage and service pages.

If you don’t have service pages, you can apply the steps outlined below to any important page on your website (i.e. a page that is on your website’s main navigation).

Here’s a checklist on what to look at when optimising these core pages:

1. Identify The Main Keyword

Select one primary keyword that the page should rank for – this is the one that you will optimise the rest of the content for and should define what the page is about.

2. Identify The Search Intent Of The Target Keyword

Search intent is the reason behind the keyword i.e. what the searcher is trying to achieve with their query.

There are four main types of search intent:

• Informational – are they trying to learn something?
• Navigational – are they trying to find a specific website?
• Transactional – are they trying to purchase something?
• Commercial Investigation – are they researching something with the intention of buying in the future?

PRO TIP: This Is The Easiest Way To Optimise Existing Content

3. Optimise The Page Title

Ensure that the page title:

4. Optimise The H1 Heading

Your H1 heading should:

Disclaimer: you’ll see further below that the H1 tag on this page is actually “Custom stickers: Most popular”.

But the better optimised H1 heading would be: “Find your perfect custom stickers”, as it’s more engaging yet is still optimised for the primary keyword.

5. Optimise The Meta Description

Your meta description should:

6. Identify And Bridge Content Gaps

To do so, look at the top ranking pages for your target keyword and analyse what they’re talking about. More importantly, see if there are any topics or points that are missing from your page.

A quick way to find these gaps is to compare the heading structures between your page and the competitors.

Top Tip: Install the SEO META in 1 Click Chrome extension to quickly extract meta information (such as page titles, headings, meta descriptions etc) from any page with just a single click.

Here’s an example of what it’ll look like:

And how it’ll show you the heading structure of the page:

Once you’ve identified what’s missing, it’s time to bridge the gaps by adding this new content on your page.

7. Optimise Internal Linking

Internal linking (aka internal link building) is all about adding hyperlinks from one page on your website to other relevant pages on your website.

This is a great SEO tactic that has benefits for both:

You can guide users to other pages on your site that they may find useful (hence keeping them on your site for longer).

Whereas search engines like Google use internal links to find new pages on your site as well as understand the relationships between them.

When adding internal links, remember to:

Here’s an example of internal linking in action:

Following the above checklist will help you to align the content on your core landing pages with that of your top competitors.

The Results Are In

The most important result is the fact that monthly revenue increased by 51% from £11,823 to £17,874 with organic traffic growing by 111%:

View all our SEO case studies here

Wrapping It Up

This content focused strategy has shown how important it is to make sure you’re following the latest trends when it comes to content intent and freshness.

It really is as simple as:

One of the easiest way to do that is with our 28 day SEO process that shows you how to update content to make it relevant and fresh easily.

But:

If you would prefer to have my team increase your sites organic search traffic you can submit an enquiry here.