How We Helped an E-commerce Site Increase Traffic By 640,812 Projected Visitors Per Year

In this case study, I’ll break down how we helped an e-commerce website to get on track to generate over 640, 812 projected annual organic visitors (it's projected because we only just finished the work and they are ranked and just stared to generate traffic).

You’ll learn:

• The exact techniques I used to generate 640,812 extra projected visitors to their site.
• The importance of SEO strategy before action.
• And what Google is telling you about the future of SEO.

Let’s dive in.

Disclosure

Before we begin I must offer FULL disclosure here.

Firstly, at the request of the site owner, I will not be sharing any details of the site.

Secondly, we HELPED to generate the extra traffic. 

The team at this e-commerce site are very talented and worked very hard. While I will help to unpick the direct results of the work we did, to say we are the only reason they got to this figure would be misleading at best.

In addition, they haven’t reached 1.2 million visits yet; who knows what future Google updates will do. But for now, they look on track to generate massive success. The annual projected traffic that we have added to the site is 640,812 (according to a page by page analysis using Ahrefs). 

Now that being said, there is a lot to cover in this article.

So here we go.

Strategy First Approach

My initial work with this client came as a result of them hiring me to create an SEO strategy for them.

I do this for a lot of agencies and marketing teams.

The client already had a hard-working SEO team, yet they were inexperienced. But that’s not the only reason people hire me for SEO strategy creation.

Here are a few reasons:

• Marketing managers whose skillset just hasn’t added in-depth SEO yet.
• SEO managers looking for a different opinion.
• Business owners looking to support a younger digital team.
• Business owners wanting to validate an idea.
• Companies looking at how to grow in the future.
• Businesses wanting to regain market share from the competition.

So that’s what we did first.

A full SEO strategy.

We created an SEO strategy that was around 8000 words of content, breaking down the competition, page structure and a step-by-step plan for growth.

And that’s what they did; after receipt of the strategy, the team went through the report and got to work, generating content and improving the site.

And that’s where the journey started, with the client's team moving through the strategy.

The Power of the Light Bulb Method

Upon some further consultation, I offered the client a new service I had been working on,  my content scaling service.

This is when my team scale a website’s content in the fastest time possible.

On this occasion, we were given three months to grow the traffic to the site.

And as this was an e-commerce site, I knew the technique we needed was The Light Bulb Method.

So what’s that?

I first devised the Light Bulb Method during the first Covid lockdown for a client when I helped their Shopify store generate 7500 monthly visitors.

The Light Bulb Method is an approach to keyword research and content creation designed to target ‘drivers of behaviour’ and to generate/ fuel desire for certain products.

So what does Light Bulb Method content consist of?

These are articles/keywords that inspire a searcher to think.

“I want to have that, do that or be like that”.

It’s content that triggers a light bulb in the mind of the searcher. And as they have this light bulb triggered on your site, you are uniquely positioned to offer them solutions.

It’s like saying to the customer;

“Hey, you want that, well we have this (insert product or service)”.

So what did we actually do?

64 Pieces of Content and Over 100,000 Words

Over the course of a three month period, we created 64 pieces of content and almost all of these were what we call ‘RLL’ posts.

These are posts that are ridiculously long lists.

But here’s the thing. 

Most RLL posts aim to be around 100 items, but in these posts, we applied what is known as a ‘lean approach’ to SEO.

What’s that?

Lean SEO is an approach to SEO that focuses on the minimum viable content and scaling it, following which you can improve the content if you desire to increase rankings and promotional opportunities.

And that was the plan with this site.

However, we didn’t need to. In fact, the results of round 1 of the lean approach have been incredible.

Don’t worry.

I’m not going to bore you with each post, but I will break down the results of just a few.

The above post is on track to deliver around 165,000 yearly organic visitors and an estimated $78,000 worth of FREE traffic.

This post is on track to generate over 60,000 organic visitors annually, worth over $30,000 in FREE traffic.

And there’s this page. On track to generate over 54,000 organic visitors annually and worth over $30,000 a year in organic traffic.

And here’s another page generating an equivalent of what will be $27,000 of FREE traffic.

And another example.

This is one of the newest ranking pages and already generating traffic of value.

Now, consider that we created 64 of these pages over the course of three months and we only just finished.

So you can imagine the power of this approach.

Of course, these 64 pages are simply adding to the great work being done by the website team. 

However, something else is happening.

Content Scaling the Network Effect

If you follow my content on LinkedIn, you’ll already know that I am a huge proponent of Reason Based SEO.

That’s where you turn your site into its own search engine and give people a reason to come back.

To do this, you must turn your website into the most valuable resource of its kind on the internet and, as such, provide your consumer with everything that they need to know about your niche.

Every question must be answered, every type of post published and you should also give people content they never knew they wanted.

This creates a network effect for your website.

You create mass on the internet and this, when linked to other sites, allows you to enjoy increased visibility and signals content value to Google.

It keeps visitors on-site longer, promotes social shares and, of course, this sends positive signals to search engines.

The Results

I won’t insult your intelligence by claiming that my team’s work doubled traffic for the client or took them from 0 to 100,000 monthly visitors, because the above screenshot is from Ahrefs and this makes a broad estimation based on traffic estimates.

Needless to say, when you add hundreds of pages of content to a site that is keyword focused and targeted, you are likely to generate results and they are on track for serious growth.

But here are the precise results.

64 Pieces of Content Created (59 published so far)

Estimated Monthly Traffic From Content = 53,401 Visitors

Ahrefs gives us a traffic estimation of 53,401 visitors per month or 640,812 organic visitors per year as a result of the content we created.

Estimated Monthly Traffic Value From Content = $30,312

Using Ahrefs again, the total monthly traffic value if this traffic was purchased with PPC would be $30,312 or $363,744 annually.

Final Thoughts

The content we have created is on track for massive organic growth, and it is content that the clients audience will love.

Yes, we never know what will happen with the search rankings but the content is on point and of value to the target audience, as such it will have potential for use in other campaigns such as promotion as an e-book and on social media.

If you want to generate results, get in touch for a free digital strategy to see if we can help your online business grow.