Growth Hacking SEO
Growth Hacking SEO Case Study: 250% growth of traffic in 3 months for SaaS company.
What is Growth Hacking SEO?
Growth Hacking SEO is a use of unconventional methods such as SEO Avalanche Strategy to grow organic in short time. The conventional SEO techniques, such as link building and technical optimization help to sustain the growth in the long-time period.
Growth Hacking SEO Case Study
The chart shows 250% Growth Hacking SEO for a SaaS company in just 3 months. The industry is highly competitive B2B project management.
The Case Study is an example of Growth Hacking SEO, i.e. large growth of organic keywords in the shortest possible time with limited resources.
How to increase traffic by 250% in such a short time?
When it comes to Growth Hacking SEO projects, timing is key. The project took place between Google’s so-called core update, which is a change in the SEO algorithm. During an algorithm change, Google conducts what is known as re-ranking, that is, it changes the ranking positions of sites based on new criteria. This is an opportunity for sites with less authority to break through above the sites of the big players.
How to use Google Core Update for Growth Hacking SEO?
Google Core Update for SEO is like a big wave for the surfer! The project (case study) began on June 10 and trailed until August 20, which is exactly between the two major Google Core Updates (marked in the yellow box).
The graph shows that the site was losing traffic and views before the project began. Google’s Core Update lasted from May 25 to June 9. Another Google Core Update started on August 25 and lasted until September 9. Timing, i.e. finishing the work before the algorithm change was one of the keys to the success of the Growth Hacking SEO project.
Stay away from SEO during Google's algorithm change
Matt Digitty put it in one sentence, “stay the […] away from the web during the core update.” Translated, Google doesn’t disclose when exactly the changes occur. Therefore, the risk that the algorithm will change during SEO work is high enough that it’s not worth the risk (if you don’t have to).
What are the risks of SEO changes during Google update
In the case of this particular project, drySEO managed to finish the changes on time, but it was not without a setback. In early September, the new webmaster mistakenly restored the version just from the middle of the project. That is, work in progress: linking in silos in the works, texts partially consolidated, unoptimized.
This is what Google may find you when you are playing with SEO during the algorithm change: loss of positions from the 1st place outside the 100, not to mention 404 on the 1st place in Google US.
Growth Hacking SEO
The timing was a main factor supporting the Growth Hacking. The second was on-page SEO. On-page SEO is what is known as technical SEO, mainly bug fixing. Google does not disclose the algorithms, but there are some sources of information about them, such as Google patents. Koray Tugberg, a well-known SEO, says that an important signal for Google is the quality threshold. In other words, the average quality of the entire site is an important SEO Ranking Factor.
SEO error reduction – increase in site quality from 75% to 84% in just two weeks
SEO Good Practise
The good practise of SEO is don’t make changes on pages that rank is in the first position. Google uses dozens or even hundreds of positioning factors. So, if make a change, then change only 1 thing and observe the Search Engine reaction. In this Case Study, the site had already several no. 1 positions, so we focused only on unoptimized pages targeting US and UK markets.
SEO Quality for the entire webpage
The entire website had more than 350 pages, of which about 150 were in English, and the rest in local language. Positioning in local language was doing well, mainly due to links directing to the site. First Growth Hacking SEO effects were observer just after just 2 weeks.
Improving content for semantic search
Google uses AI artificial intelligence, and as a result, texts must be written to be understood by a machine as well as a human. This is called semantic search. This means that we write content not only for humans but also for AI.
Here’s a list of rules for writing content for semantic search:
- Don’t overuse marketing language
- Keep the content of sentences as simple and precise as possible – without using unnecessary descriptions and so-called marketing language
- Use short sentences instead of long ones (so that the robot understands the content)
- Divide the content into
paragraphs - Never express your opinion in an article
- Don’t use “everyday language” in articles
- Don’t use analogies
- Don’t use unnecessary words
- The text must not contain grammatical and stylistic errors because it will be recognized as spam
List of SEO improvements
Site optimization improvements for Google search engine:
- Fixed headers, metadata, and first paragraphs for pages
- Fixed lack of page map in English – resolved lack of indexing
- Elementor implementation improved the user interface and metadata and schema
- Corrected grammatical errors
- Corrected syntax for semantic SEO purposes
- Built silos for internal links (following Kyle Roof’s tactics)
NPL optimization
NPL (natural language processing) optimization involves changing the content – filling in missing phrases, and changing the tone of sentences. Example beside: analysis of how google reads sentences shows in red sentences that undervalue the content – such sentences need to be changed so that they do not cause AI google doubts.
As a rule, this applies to sentences where the author writes about people, that someone should or must do something (here authority is bowed – google protects the user from being misled). The most attention google pays to sentences that concern the user’s finances – is when the text says that some solution will translate into monetary gains. Texts should be based on facts, as few as possible assumptions, and promises. Marketing text “you will be satisfied” are negatively perceived, user reviews (real opinions) are used instead. Serving texts in the top 10, Google is aware of the responsibility, hence the google update introduced EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).
SEO Avalanche Strategy
Based on the project’s input, we can see that Google did not trust the English-language version. This means that there were low chances of Top 10 for phrases that have more than 10 searches per month. The only way to change this is to increase the number of phrases in the 0-10 range in the Top 10. This is the so-called SEO Avalanche Strategy.
A dozen or so phrases should allow you to go to the next level, e.g. 10-100. Then the same story – the right number of articles up to 100 searches and you go up to the level of 100-200 then 500 and finally 1000. The target phrases are those above 1000, only then will SEO leads be generated in great numbers.
Growth Hacking SEO Results
Results of 3-month growth hacking SEO (case study for SaaS company):
- initially, 5 phrases in English were indexed and served by Google US on average about 90 positions
after the first phase (fixing errors, optimizing headlines, and creating a link structure – without interfering with the content) google indexed more than 120 phrases in English, averaging about 80 positions - the second phase (content interference) allowed to increase in the number of keywords served to 180 with an average position of about 55. In phase 2, semantic content was used for this plan and cannibalizing sites were excluded
