As experts for search engine optimization, Firmcatalyst regularly creates catalogues of measures for companies within the scope of SEO consulting, so that companies can implement solutions through their own developers. The biggest advantage is that you do not have to rely on an SEO agency.
The Project
The Hamburg-based start-up Verlingo UG asked us, as an experienced SEO agency, to point up the hidden potential of the website with our SEO consulting. The website zeugnisprofi.com offers its users for about 10€ the possibility, to have a testimonial analyzed by a programmed artificial intelligence, in order to evaluate the testimony language and to simplify hidden text phrases for the user.
The website already had a modern design and a lot of high-quality, up-to-date content. Despite this content, the rankings in the top positions failed to raise in time and the organic traffic increased only gradually.
Our Goal
Firmcatalyst has set itself the task of providing SEO consulting services that are easy and understandable for the customer. Companies or the cooperating advertising agencies can easily implement the recommendations they get, if necessary.
The aim of this research was to uncover problems and errors on the website that could prevent the crawling of the website or possible rankings in any way. An additional task was to find new and potential traffic sources.
OnPage Optimization
As on most websites, we were able to quickly identify and fix the usual triggers of these problems. For example: The website was running on very high-performance servers and could convince with fast loading times, but the images used on the website were not compressed. Due to the additional memory requirements, the page size of the website was increased, which had a negative effect on the loading time.
As a result, speed optimization had to be carried out on the undersides. Speed optimization does not only affect images, but also compression or caching on the domain. As content is delivered faster, visitors also benefit from a better user experience. Because of this reason is speed one of the many ranking criteria for search engines.
Internal links were a significant weakness of the website. We at FirmCatalyst noticed that the actual anchor text for “Zeugnissprache” on many pages of zeugnisprofi.com linked to a wrong subpage. There was the subpage /wissen/ which serves as a glossary for the testimony language. However, this URL had another subpage /wissen/zeugnissprache/ which reported extensively on the topic of the language of testimonies and is, therefore, better suited for internal linking.
Due to this fact, two Url’s existed to the search term “Zeugnissprache“. On the one hand with the subpage /wissen/ – and on the other hand with the actual landing page /wissen/zeugnissprache/. Google rates the actual landing page for the keyword “Zeugnissprache” better, therefore it ranked (as desired) better than the subpage /wissen/.
Instead of using exactly this high-quality link, the anchor text “Zeugnissprache” was linked with the subpage /wissen/ on the entire website. This meant that the search engine could no longer clearly distinguish which result was the more “relevant” result for the user. The website competes with itself through this process. A circumstance called “keyword cannibalism“.
After a successful analysis, we gave the customer individual recommendations for action, which URL structure for the website brings more advantages and can positively influence the success in organic rankings. The internal linking on the entire website was then corrected.
Detailed keyword research revealed the undiscovered potential for new traffic sources. As an expert for testimonial language, zeugnisprofi.com also provided high-quality sample templates for employers. These were collected at zeugnisprofi.com/wissen/mustervorlagen/.
The following keywords were found during the keyword search:
- Arbeitszeugnis Muster | Search Volume: 9900
- Muster Arbeitszeugnis | Search Volume: 1000
- Zwischenzeugnis Muster | Search Volume: 2400
- Ausbildungszeugnis Muster | Search Volume: 720
- Praktikumszeugnis Muster | Search Volume: 880
Since these terms have a high, monthly search volume and the competition was comparatively weaker, our recommendation was to first create specific landing pages, on which these search queries was answered more detailed and more value was given to visitors because keywords were matching with search intent now. These landing pages were optimized with regard to fit the content and URL structure.
During the keyword research, however, further keyword opportunities were identified. Services which could be interesting for the customer and for which already rankings existed.
Through years of experience and the combination of keywords and landing pages, FirmCatalyst was able to give selected terms more visibility.
Finally, there were many other optimization measures (technical errors, layout improvements, meta descriptions), which we also recommended to our customer. However, the points listed above were among the main reasons for the slowly growing rankings.
OffPage Optimization
At the time of the optimization, there were 1000 backlinks from 19 referring domains. Among them existed some qualitative backlinks, like reports of the founder scene (gründerszene.de). However, the majority of all links came from commenting on blogs and student forums.
Since Zeugnisprofi not only offers a very interesting product, but also offers many resources free of charge (information on the testimonial language, sample templates), advertising the content (content marketing) would be a more worthwhile, even passive way of generating backlinks.
As can be seen in the graph, most anchor texts have nothing to do with the service and important keywords such as “Zeugnissprache” are not included. In the future backlink-building-strategy, keywords with a high search volume or other service keywords should be chosen as anchor texts on other domains.
For the customer, we have created a list with possible and suitable backlink sources. With a little outreach, you could market your new sample templates or the unique tool there.
Results achieved
Zeugnisprofi was able to drastically increase its visibility through optimization measures on the web! According to the online tool Semrush, the following changes already occurred 30 days after the optimization:
- 19% positive changes in keyword positions
- +43% estimated traffic
- +46% saved traffic costs
Blickt man jedoch auf die letzten 6 Monate zurück, hat es Zeugnisprofi allerdings geschafft seinen Traffic zu verdreifachen! So konnte Semrush für Mai 2019 bereits +400 weitere Keywords erfassen – im Vergleich zu Dezember 2018.
But if you look back on the last 6 months, you can see that Zeugnisprofi has managed to triple its traffic! For May 2019 Semrush could already capture +400 more keywords – compared to December 2018.
Today, Zeugnisprofi ranks among the top 3 and top 10 search results for many terms such as “Arbeitszeugnis Generator“, “Zwischenzeugnis Muster“, “Zeugnissprache” and several other important terms.
A big difference compared to the keyword rankings that existed before SEO consulting in December 2018.
SEO consulting is ultimately only successful if the partner is able to carry out the tips successfully. All the more reason for us to be pleased that Zeugnisprofi has been able to implement the recommendations so brilliantly. We would like to thank you very much for the pleasant cooperation and wish the company a further increase in traffic in the future!
Artikel noch nicht kommentiert