How we 2X Traffic (and 3X Impressions) With Simple SEO Strategies

Here’s a short story about how we helped a major Croatian brand 2X their blog traffic and 3X their impressions with some careful planning and persistent execution.

In this post, I’ll guide you through some of the following:

• What was the initial problem
• How we approached it and what we did first
• How did we plan all the keywords and content
• How we wrote that content
• What tools did we use
• How we redesigned the blog index and blog single pages for better engagement
• Where did we promote the blog posts
• How did we use blog posts to sync with the overall business initiatives

So, the story begins.

How did we even start working with the brand?

Some time ago, we got a call from a world-leading DIY STEM kit provider. They needed help increasing traffic via their organic channels and they recognized that producing high-quality content aligned with their customers’ interests was the way to go. And they were right.

We agreed to start writing a few blog posts per month, and after some time, we’d see if there was any movement on the SERPs and if the traffic would start coming in.

Now, it sounds super simple, but there was a lot happening in the background.

After some time, the collaboration grew into something bigger, but let's just touch on the blog content side for now.

What was the initial problem?

The main issue was — their social/email/advertising was working awesome — but they felt their blogs could be a better source of targeted traffic.

They had some content writers employed previously, but there was a huge time gap between the time we got the call and the time when the last blog post was published. And naturally, these blogs weren’t as optimized as they could be — and all the topics they could have covered weren’t covered properly.

So, we had one goal. Bring the blog traffic back to life.

What was the first thing we did?

First, we took a deep dive into the website analytics. We opened up their Google Analytics and Google Search Console to see what we’re dealing with.

This gave us a great insight into:

• Which keywords are they ranking for
• What topics are really popular
• What kind of content is ranking high on SERPs
• Which pages/products are the “hottest”

Next, we opened up Semrush and Screaming Frog and did an SEO audit to find out what are some great opportunities for start — and what kind of technical fixes can we implement as early as possible.

And what we found was a goldmine. A goldmine of untapped keywords and a myriad of technical low-hanging fruits we could quickly resolve.

So, the next step was logical. We needed to plan out our activities and make sure it all made sense in the grand scheme of things.

And frankly, you can use this “template” with any of your projects, whether you’re an SEO professional or not, it’s really easy to follow:

1. Use Screaming Frog and Semrush to identify technical issues
2. Focus on the “big” errors like broken links and 404s
3. Quickly solve the biggest issues (they usually can be solved easily)

And if you’re wondering how to solve these issues — usually these tools will tell you what the exact issue might be and what steps you should generally take to solve them. Or just watch a YouTube video and read a blog post on solving that issue.

Or…. you could ask ChatGPT (or any other LLM) to help you better understand the issue and come up with a solution. 😄

Okay, now that we’ve done step 0 (fixed the most critical technical issues), it’s time to start producing some stuff. And that leads us to…

How did we plan which keywords to target (and what content to write)?

Something really important to know is — you shouldn’t plan anything before you do a reaaaaally thorough research. And this means competitor research, keyword research, and some digging in the Google Search Console.

This also means — talking to your customers! It’s scary, I know.

So, what did we do here?

• We identified several key competitors we want to outrank
• We checked which keywords they are ranking for and which keywords are bringing in the most traffic
• We checked what kind of content they are using to rank for these keywords (list posts, product reviews, how-to guides,…)
• We identified some key topics we want to position for as an authority
• We researched keywords around that topic using Semrush (and some free SEO extensions)
• We went into our Google Search Console and identified the keywords we’re ranking for on really low places (think positions #50 and lower)

Now, this is a continuous process. You just gotta dig for these keywords every once in a while. But for a start, we had a really good overview of what people are searching for in the DIY STEM kit space.

So, now came the time to plan — which keywords should we target first, and what kind of content should we write to target these keywords?

How to choose which keywords to go after first?

There were several factors we need to consider when choosing which ones to go after first:

• What’s the search volume?
• What’s the keyword difficulty? (or, in other words, how many DR90 websites are ranking for these keywords on the 1st page 😄)
• What’s the keyword intent?
• How related is the keyword to our business?
• What’s our goal with the content?

Now, let’s say you go and dig through all these keywords and find some awesome keywords you want to tackle first. And that’s when real planning starts.

Now is a good time to remember the good, old AIDA model we all learned about.

So, if we’re writing a blog post titled “10 Best DIY Subscription Boxes for Kids” — we could say that it really fits the Desire stage of the AIDA model. This is because in this stage, the potential customer is still researching the options, but they already know what they’re looking for. Kinda.

And that’s where you come in as their guide and savior, leading them to the best decision they’ll ever make — buy your product. 😄

On the other hand, if you’re writing a blog post titled “7 Best Science Experiements for Kids at Home” — you could say that it fits the Awareness stage of the AIDA model. These potential customers don’t even know that they need your product (or that the problem you’re solving is a problem they’re having), but they’ll get there, sooner or later.

And that’s where you want to provide them with as much value as possible and subtly let them know that you have something even more awesome that their kids would absolutely adore — your product. 😄

This is where their journey starts.

Also, instead of AIDA model, you can also use the ACD - Awareness, Consideration, Decision. These are the main stages in every prospect’s buyer’s journey. Here’s a blog post that will help you outline all the content types you can write per each stage.

Okay, now there’s another thing we wanted to take into account before we started planning out our content — and that is topical authority.

We didn’t want to write 10 blog posts and have all 10 of them semantically disconnected. We wanted to target a topic cluster. Several topics related to each other, but not really the same.

You want to show Google (and your potential customers) that you know what you’re doing — and that you’re generally an expert in the given topic.

In short, you want to take all these factors into account when planning your content — which stage are your potential readers in, where do you want them to go, and how will they get there? This is super important, I really can’t stress this enough.

My honest advice is to always start with the Desire stage and cover it fully. Then, write some Action stage content pieces and slowly move towards the Awareness stage.

This worked for me in 90% of the cases.

And now, we have a good overview of the competitive landscape, the topics, the keywords, the customers' interests — we can get to planning content and writing (finally!)

How did we create our content calendar and plan our blog posts?

The first thing we did here was — identify topic clusters we wanted to go after first.

And these were, in our case, science experiments for kids and DIY kits for kids. From there, we just had to dig for keyword clusters. And we found them! 😄

Let’s take DIY kits for kids as an example of a topic cluster.

Some of the keyword clusters here would be:

• DIY electronics kits
• Educational toys for kids
• Subscription boxes for kids
• DIY robots for kids
• DIY gifts for kids

You see what I’m going for here. You can even feel free to use these “keyword clusters” as your seed keywords. And then, you’re looking for some related keywords to these seed keywords.

And after some digging:

• You have 1 seed keyword
• You have 5-7 related keywords
• You’ll know what’s the approx. search volume
• You’ll know the competitors for these keywords
• You’ll know what kind of content ranks for these keywords

And voilà, you’re one step closer to planning your blog post.

Now, when you’ve decided which keywords to go after for your first content piece, you have to plan out this content piece.

I’ll let you in on a little secret of mine

Planning blog post outlines is really easy if you know what are some key things you need to look for. The best exercise here is to try to put yourself in the customers’ shoes.

For example, if we’re writing a blog post on the best DIY subscription boxes for kids, you’ll want to ask yourself:

• What are all the available DIY subscription boxes for kids?
• How do I know that they are the best? What should I know?
• What are some key specifications of each box?
• What are some pros and cons of each box? Maybe they’re beginner-friendly, maybe they have durable parts, or something else?
• What’s the pricing? Is it budget-friendly or is it a premium subscription box?

Oh wow, we already have something here!

Think about it, these are all the questions people have when searching for this type of product. They need answers. And you’re the one who needs to provide the best answer possible.

So, next we go to our competitors' blog posts and check out how they structured their blog posts — which headings and subheadings they included, what kind of information they conveyed, what did they miss, which questions they didn’t answer.

Usually, there will be plenty of questions left to answer (please be careful here, or every blog you write will be a behemoth, try to stay focused on the topic).

Then we open a Google Doc (or Notion or whatever) and just start typing out the subheadings. Once we know that we’ve covered all the questions people have when searching for that topic, we do a bit of formatting. We want to know from the start which subheading is a H2, H3, or H4. This helps us be a bit more careful in the future when we start the actual writing.

And yes, you guessed it — now it’s time to talk about…

How did we write the blog content (and made sure it’s good)?

I’ve done my fair share of content writing — enough to know that content writing takes up a lot of time. Especially if you’re not really a subject matter expert in a field you’re writing about. It takes time to check if everything is true, to learn from the real experts, to get their quotes, to get someone to review your content, etc.

Don’t get me wrong. If you’re writing about a topic you’re not an expert in, you need to get it reviewed by someone who is. This is the whole shtick. How’s it going to be the best if you’re not 100% sure it’s true?

But I digress.

Let’s talk about the actual writing.

We use this amazing piece of software called SurferSEO. For those in the SEO space, you already know it. But for those still wondering what it is — SurferSEO is a content optimization tool that helps you write content that ranks better in the search engine results.

Here’s a snapshot below.

How do they achieve this? Once you start writing a new blog post in SurferSEO, you open a new Content Editor file. You type in your target keywords and give it a few minutes. Once your Content Editor file is prepared, you’ll see some interesting stuff:

• Recommendations on ideal blog post length
• Recommendations on the ideal number of images, subheadings, and paragraphs
• Suggested keywords you should use (and how often you should use them)
• Suggested subheadings (and even content) you should use

Now, for me, the most important were the suggested keywords.

How do they know which keywords you should use and how often, you may ask yourself. If I start explaining it, this blog post will be a bit longer than I intended. So, please visit this page and learn more about how SurferSEO worksyour under the hood.

Okay, we’ve got SurferSEO out of the way now, let’s talk about the next big tool we were using. And yes, it’s ChatGPT.

How did we use ChatGPT for content generation?

I know what you’re thinking, ChatGPT spews out bad, repetitive content that no one likes. And you know what — you’re absolutely right. But writing 2,000 words takes up time.

Let’s say that writing a 2,000-word blog post by yourself is going to take around 4-6 hours (especially if you’re not familiar with the subject matter). Plus, a few hours of editing to make sure all the internal and external links are added and they flow naturally. It simply takes time.

But with ChatGPT, we managed to cut down the content generation time from 4-6 hours to 1-2 hours. This meant — more free time that we can use to properly edit the blog post and ensure it’s as good as if you wrote it yourself.

You can’t just generate stuff from ChatGPT and let it out there and claim you did it. That’s lazy, and it doesn’t work. You have to take your time to edit the content, make sure it reads well, remove all the repetitive lingo, add the visuals, add the links, write the metadata, etc.

But before you even start writing stuff with ChatGPT, it’s best to create your custom GPT.

In our case, we created a custom GPT specific to that client, imported all the knowledge we have gathered on the brand in general (not the confidential stuff tho), imported our style guidelines, trained it with some rules on what to write, what not to write, what kind of language/tone/formatting style to use, etc.

And after some time playing around with the custom GPT, we had it — the Blog Ninja we called it (it’s lame, I know, sue me).

The only thing left to do was to correctly prompt it and to keep both eyes open when reviewing the content it generates. And that’s okay. We still knew that you’d have to invest a few hours to properly edit it.

I’ll let you in on my prompting style another time! For now, let’s keep moving.

How did we promote these blogs?

Okay, so we have:

• Written our blog post
• Added all our visuals
• Prepared the metadata and URL
• Added all internal and external links
• Made sure that everything we have written is 100% true

The only thing left to do is — hit Publish.

WRONG.

This is only the beginning. Once you hit Publish, you must make sure people discover this blog post. It won’t happen by itself (sometimes yes, but not always… indulge me, please).

The first thing you should do from here is — open your Google Search Console and enter the URL of your newly published blog post — and get GSC to index your blog post. After some short time, it will be indexed and discoverable on Google. Congrats!

Next, you need to think about other ways on how to get more eyeballs on your blog post. And the answer is simple — use other communication channels you already have!

In my case, this was email and social channels. So, whenever we’d publish a blog post, we would make sure to:

• Repurpose the blog post for social media channels and gently guide users toward the blog post (this could mean even 3-5 posts per each blog post)
• Repurpose the blog post for the newsletter (this could mean including it in your weekly newsletter and even including some of the “more important” ones in your automated email sequence)

And this is great — the more people you get on your blog post — the more people you can instruct to take the next step. And that next step could be to visit the shop, check out the subscription box, maybe even subscribe to a newsletter, apply to the Black Friday waitlist, or something else.

It all depends on what kind of goal you want to achieve with your blog post — and how does that fit in with the overall growth strategy of the company.

For example, if the company is preparing for Black Friday discounts, your blog post could guide users toward signing up for your VIP Black Friday list to get early access to huge discounts. And then they get on your special VIP Black Friday email sequence — and then they get some awesome discounts — and they buy your product. 😄

The blog posts are just a stepping stone towards the final goal. But if you’re smart about how you plan them and use them in combination with your email/social/website communication, you could achieve something great.

We’re nearing the end of this post, and there’s only one thing I wanted to write about, and that is…

How did we change the website’s blog index and blog single pages to increase website engagement?

It’s one thing to get someone to visit your blog post, but getting them to take action once they visit? Not so easy. Luckily, there are some page layouts that help facilitate this.

Blog index page layouts

When we say blog index page, we mean the page where all your blogs reside. Something like the blog page we have.

Now, when you have tens of thousands of website visitors per month, making even a slight change to this page can have a large impact. In the beginning, the blog index page looked very simple — image, title, description, CTA button — image, title, description, CTA button — all centered, all in one column.

Now, this isn’t the ideal format, especially if that’s all the information you’re providing.

So, we switched it up a bit.

We wanted to categorize these blog posts into 4-5 distinguishable categories. For example, first we have the Featured Articles section. Here, we have one super-important blog post we want to promote and several featured articles listed on the side. We even changed the background color for that section so it stands out even more from the rest of the posts.

Next, we went on to display a few blog posts for each category, with each category getting its small section on the page.

We included a newsletter signup section and a video library section (with embedded YouTube videos) — which was also categorized.

These little fixes made for some great changes — more people were signing up for the newsletter and clicking on the blog posts. All because now they could see a bit more posts on the screen without endlessly scrolling, and all of them in their respective categories.

And even the embedded YouTube videos got more views — and that’s really cool.

Blog single page layout

When we say blog post single page, we mean the actual blog post you’re reading. For example, this page you’re on is a blog post single.

Making changes to this one is super important because for a lot of readers, this could be the first time they’re interacting with your brand.

And this is what we started with — a single-column layout, featured image on top, a headline below, publish date, and the rest of the content in this single, centered column. A pretty simple format, but we knew it could be better. We knew we could impress readers with something different.

So we did the following:

• Implemented a sticky table of contents in the sidebar (huge improvement)
• Separated the featured image and the headline in a separate section
• Added the author info
• Added the social media links below the author info
• Added a newsletter signup section with a good promise
• Updated fonts and colors
• Improved the overall look and feel of the page with brand colors
• Added the Related Articles section below the content

All these changes led to increased time on page, increased number of pages per visit, increased number of newsletter subscribers, and in the end — increased revenue. Maybe not directly from the blog post, but not often do people buy from a website after reading their blog post.

The blog post is just one of the touchpoints in their entire customer journey. But if you make it really good, you have more chance of converting on the next touchpoint.

It’s simple — this works, but you need to put in time (a lot of time)

And here it is, folks. We’ve gone through this easy process of researching, planning, and creating content. I know, with all these SEO experts, content gurus, and marketing wizards… it’s easy to get confused. Each one of them has their “secret blueprint” or some “3.2 million dollar SEO hack”… I mean, guys, come on 😄

Don’t listen to that stuff.

If you know a bit of marketing theory and you can use your brainpower to deduce why someone buys something and what are the things that influence that decision — you’re good.

Take a breather, sit down, start thinking and go write down your plan. From there, you just have to follow the steps you outlined.

You may fail the first time, but what constitutes “the first time”? 😄

Is it the first project? Or the first month? Week? We humans don’t work like that. We learn as we go.

There’s so much room to grow on just a single project — so why not start yours today and see where that gets you?

Anyway, that’s all I have for you today. Until next time!