Details
Project: lovehairstyles.com
Area: beauty salon for haircuts and coloring
Region: USA
Platform: WordPress
Domain age: registered in 2016
Period of service: > 2018
Initial website traffic: the client faced a problem – after a slight increase in traffic, it began to decline sharply and amounted to only 450-600 / person per day, the number of incoming domains also decreased.
Work objective: find out the reasons for traffic and key indicators drop, create and implement a strategy for their renewal.
Project specifics: The client had an old portal, there were problems with pagination pages, which did not allow search engines to index articles correctly. Incoming links were built, but the link profile was gradually reduced, the site was losing its status.
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The team interaction process
In addition to working on the site itself, we pay great attention to communication with the client, therefore, an instruction was created for working with the site if there is a team working with website for SEO optimization. We have created the following instructions:
- The account manager maintains full communication of the project, the client is always aware of the changes. For example, what mistakes can lead to what, so that the client understands the responsibility for the project;
- Continuous monitoring of processes, weekly phone calls to discuss completed tasks and set goals for the next week;
- A specially created chat in the messenger where quick questions can be addressed as soon as they come in;
- Correction of published materials, day-to-day discussion of the issues why changes are required and how to work with similar ones in the future.
Stage 1
The process of website promotion
To begin with, we conducted an analysis to find out why the site ranks for such a small pool of keywords. Since it was very strange, because copywriters wrote articles regularly.
Internal site optimization included:
The next stage is internal optimization, which included a full site audit. As a result of which we found out that the articles were separated by pagination pages and Google saw them as short texts, although in fact they were quite large and were not indexed beyond the first page. We decided to remove pagination pages from articles and make the article on one page, which, in turn, allowed Google to index the entire text and draw a high-quality conclusion on it.
Detailed description of the work carried out to promote the site.
The main work carried out for the internal optimization of the site:
- A robust audit (with permissions) and checking the proper tuning of:
- Sitemaps, redirect;
- Meta tags, headers;
- Micro-markup;
- Download speed checks;
- 4xx and 5xx error code checks;
- Site content analysis, namely uniqueness, duplication, spam, and text size;
- Site’s main mirror;
- Monitoring page speed metrics (site loading time, server response time, etc.);
- h1, h2, and h3 header monitoring and correcting if necessary;
- Metric monitoring for site visits;
- Duplicate title and description metadata check and critical error elimination;
- Server response code 200 check for site’s main sections.
- Monitoring of all technical edits by programmers;
- Adding a sitemap to the dashboard for webmasters;
- Building a semantic core that best represents the website;
- Utilizing clustering and balanced keyword distribution across site pages;
- Checking keyword agreement, getting into the TOP 10, generating a month-end report. Queries are selected from the compiled semantic core;
- Formation of new meta tags (title, descriptions) based on the established semantic core. They are created right away for approved website categories and their agreement;
- Working with meta tags and writing and correcting tags for site’s main pages;
- Resolving duplicate headers and meta tags;
- Detailed file verification for robots.txt and tuning when needed;
- Setting technical specifications for proper implementation of hreflang tag for different versions of the site;
- Checking canonical tags and drafting technical specifications for their implementation, if necessary;
- Scanning site pages, determining weight, and comparing them with traffic and promotion priority. Based on the results — developing a plan for re-linking site pages;
- Organization of project manager’s work — Coordination (communicating with client monthly, coordinating workflow, proofreading and approving additional agreements, invoicing);
- Defining terms of reference for landing page and/or blog section text;
- Monthly report.
Stage 2
From the second month we connect the following work activities.
We connected more technical types of work on the site and started monitoring settings indicators in the first month, namely:
- Analyzing site content (uniqueness, duplication, spam, and text size);
- Ensuring proper configuration of the site’s main mirror;
- Monitoring page speed metrics (site load time, server response time, etc.);
- h1, h2, and h3 header monitoring and correcting if necessary;
- Metric monitoring for site visits;
- Identification and closure of leaking and hidden links;
- Checking site for duplicate title and description metadata and eliminating critical errors;
- Checking site’s main sections for server response code 200;
- Monitoring for the appearance of affiliates and, if detected, providing instructions and support for their closure;
- Monitoring previously optimized pages and, if necessary, updating them to better meet relevant search result conditions. For example, say the relevance of some key queries has changed because of a behavioral factor. In this instance, we change phrases, edit SEO texts, and tune the optimization;
- Analyzing site semantic core and adjusting it if necessary;
- When errors are detected, either terms of reference are compiled for programmers or a proposal drafted for overcoming the highlighted difficulties;
- Optimizing the site’s main landing pages;
- Validating site through the W3c service.
- Internal site linking;
- Working with site’s meta tags, writing or generating Descriptions for pages with blank descriptions;
- Working with micro-marking, defining of technical specifications for addressing error;
- Working with incoming domains, rejecting “toxic” domains using the disallow tool;
- Monitoring site positions and promotion dynamics;
- Defining of technical specifications for writing texts for landing pages on website or in the blog section.
The technical optimization was carried out correctly and website quickly began to be indexed, traffic began to flow and visibility in the Google search engine increased.
External website optimization
The next step was the external optimization of the site. First of all, we started cleaning the link profile, cleaned website of spam, as there were a lot of low-quality links (about 1000) that harmed it. We analyzed competitors, selected the top 10, uploaded all their links and then divided them into categories: shareware, crowd forums, profiles, articles.
We did an analysis and compared that there are matches in some and came to the conclusion that the best solution would be to repeat them. Thus, according to the above points, we developed a link schedule that would be as comparable as possible with competitors and continued to work.
Works on internal and external optimization:
- Market analysis of the client’s niche, identification of the best in the niche;
- Full audit of competitors and their links;
- Compiled a promotion strategy based on quality links;
- Choosing a platform for work;
- Defining of technical specifications for copywriters to improve our existing articles, for those requests that bring the main traffic to competitors;
- Placement of links to dilute the link profile (catalogues, forums);
- Placement of SEO articles on external blogs and other sites;
- Ordering and posting a press release if necessary.
SEO results:
As a result of our cooperation, website has become one of the TOP in its niche. Having done a great job of correcting errors in planning and adjusting the strategy for new Google updates, the site created such a high-quality page as “about us” (one of the first).
TOP Queries:
At the beginning of promotion in TOP 1-3 there were 241 words.
At the moment, queries in the TOP 1-3 – 141,829 words.
Data from Ahrefs by link profile:
Website organic traffic (before promotion was started it had 25 thousand visitors per month, at the moment organic traffic is 2, 756, 384 thousand visitors per month):
Traffic sources (organic issuance):
Ahrefs keywords (site ranked by 602K keywords):
Top 1-3:
Note:
After 6-8 months of work on the project, we identified all the errors and corrected them, website reached its peak and stagnation began again, traffic did not grow and did not fall.
It was decided to experiment, just at that time Google released a new update YMYL i E-A-T) (The core of YMYL is the criteria for evaluating the quality of E-A-T pages. These are 3 important attributes: Expertise, Authority (Authority) and reliability (Trustworthiness). Their assessors are used to rate the pages being checked).
To meet these criteria, we have created author pages:
https://lovehairstyles.com/about-us/
The real people were taken, those who were registered as authors on various specialized sites, indicated their data in their LinkedIn/Faceebok profiles, and ordered guest articles from them. Also, we thought that our in-house copywriters should also create similar profiles for them to maintain and fill out.
Example:
Thus, we increased the expertise of the site, and also showed users who is behind these articles. Each reader could get acquainted with the expert author, and not just read anonymous information on the Internet. After the profiles were created, re-indexing began and the site grew rapidly again.
If you already know what kind of business you want to open, and don’t know where to start, contact us! We will analyze the potential market and your competitors and help you launch your project from scratch to first sale!