I used to believe that SEO case studies with titles such as this were unreal. Then I realized that they were written by people who know what they’re talking about and could produce such results as they claimed!
My latest success example is this post:
10 Best Clubs In Amsterdam, Netherlands To Dance The Night Away
It was first published on 12 May 2021, and I left it to its own devices. No sharing on social media, no reposting anywhere else, not even indexing on Google Search Console.
As you can see, the first 2 months I wasn’t getting traffic. Not surprising, since I never made a promotional plan for it.
Fast forward 3 months later, you see traffic increasing steadily from August, and it reached its peak in November.
As of 4 November where I’m reporting now, 90% of the traffic came from organic search on Google.
Running it through Ahrefs, we can see that it:
- Has earned 10 backlinks;
- Of which it came from 6 unique domains
- Ranks for 924 keywords
- Gets 2500 monthly average traffic
I rank in position 3-4 for the keywords “club amsterdam” and “amsterdam clubbing”, which gets ~1900 searches in the US, my target demographic country.
They were all obtained organically; I’ve not done any backlink outreach work on this article.
Still wondering how I did it? Here’s how.
At A Glance
- How to grow page traffic organically with no social media promotion
- 1) Included a number in the titles
- 2) Put target keyword close to the front of the title
- 3) Sprinkle keywords throughout the article
- 4) Use a mixture of primary, secondary keywords and LSI keywords
- 5) Organize text with H2/ H3 headings
- 6) Include images to split up text and make it readable
- 7) Include authoritative external links
- 8) Include internal links to related posts
- 9) Include real reviews from real people
- 10) Made article informational with at least 2000 words
- The Results
1) Included a number in the titles
When writing blog posts, headlines should always include numbers. For example, instead of using “How To Make Money Online,” use “10 Ways To Make Money Online.”
You can also add specific dates to make sure that your post gets seen during those times. For instance, instead of saying “Best Free eBooks,” say “Best Free eBooks in 2021.”
That’s because the use of numbers in your title will increase CTR by 36%.
2) Put target keyword close to the front of the title
If you’ve ever read a book title, the chances are high that you’ll notice words near the beginning of the sentence. These words usually describe the main idea of the whole chapter. They’re called ‘keyword phrases.’
You quickly know what the chapter is about just from a glimpse.
In the same way, I ensured to include primary keywords close to the front of all my content titles. This isn’t only great for SEO, it also translates what the article is about clearly to the potential reader, thus giving better visibility for my post.
To do this effectively, copy/paste the exact phrase into each article headline.
If possible, try to avoid including long sentences within your headings. Instead, keep things short and simple.
3) Sprinkle keywords throughout the article
One of the best ways to ensure that your posts appear in searches is to sprinkle keywords throughout your text, without cannibalizing it.
Word of caution: Avoid stuffing your content with keywords so that you can get more search engine rankings. Keyword stuffing is not good enough anymore. Focus on quality over quantity when targeting relevant keywords.
4) Use a mixture of primary, secondary keywords and LSI keywords
To avoid keyword stuffing, it’s crucial to have both primary and secondary keywords scattered across your articles. Think of it as including synonyms of your main target keywords so that your article flow naturally.
For instance, instead of only using “Amsterdam club” throughout my article, I vary it with “nightclubs in Amsterdam.”
But there’s another type of word that we’d like to pay special attention to – LSI keywords.
Short for Latent Semantic Indexing, these are words related to your main keywords but are NOT synonyms. They’re words that are used frequently together, and that helps Google understand the context of the article.
Since I’m talking about Amsterdam clubs, some LSI keywords would be “nightlife”, “drinking”, “party” and “music”.
These types of words tend to be longer than common keywords, which mean less competition, so these keywords are easier to rank for.
Curious to learn more about how to optimise your articles with keywords that actually rank?
5) Organize text with H2/ H3 headings
When writing blog posts, it’s always recommended to organize your text using different levels of headings. For example, start with a general heading followed by subheadings. Then go deeper still.
You’ll notice that many websites follow this structure already. They usually begin their pages with a large header containing the company’s name, its logo, etc. Then below that, they list various sections which contain smaller headers. These small headers often describe specific products offered by the business.
The reason behind this organization is simple. When users read through a website, they scan it down first before reading each section individually. By organizing your text into separate sections, you give yourself room to expand upon certain topics while keeping everything neat and tidy.
6) Include images to split up text and make it readable
Images play a huge role in helping readers understand information better. This is especially true if you’re trying to explain complex concepts or ideas.
Images also help break up long paragraphs of text. I use this technique in all my content. It helped me create visually appealing pieces while keeping things easy to digest.
External links are links where you include external references and citations to back up your point in the article.
They’re especially crucial for building a SEO-optimized site as whenever you link to an authoritative site, it’s telling Google that your content is backed up by real sources, and hence it’s a credible and reliable source of information.
Internal linking can be tricky because there are so many variables involved. However, it doesn’t have to be complicated. All you need to do is include related articles inside your main body copy.
The benefits of internal linking are twofold:
- This helps keep visitors engaged throughout your entire site.
- From a SEO point of view, the more incoming internal links a page has, the higher the chance that users and search bots will find it. And since internal links pass PageRank, internal linking will strengthen your page authority.
In my case, I included several links to relevant posts within the same niche as mine. The idea was to provide more value to my audience. In turn, they’d come back again and again.
9) Include real reviews from real people
Reviews are an excellent tool for increasing credibility among potential customers. But how exactly does adding them benefit your search engine optimization efforts?
Well, let’s take a look at some examples:
- A customer who reads reviews may feel more comfortable buying something online after seeing others try it first hand and praise it.
- People trust pages that receive positive feedback over ones that get negative criticism.
- Customers tend to spend more money and time on websites that have received glowing testimonials.
- Adding reviews increases your overall reputation score. Which means a higher SERPs ranking.
So why not use these benefits to your advantage? You could include a review of past customers about your product or service on your site. That way, people visiting your site will see that you offer such high-quality products/ services vouched by others.
In ensuring that I boosted credibility to my post, I added multiple TripAdvisor reviews from past visitors of the Amsterdam clubs I mentioned. This helps back up my description of each club.
10) Made article informational with at least 2000 words
The length of content matters in terms of its ability to rank well. Longer pieces usually perform better than shorter ones.
Why? Because they contain more information.
With longer pieces of article, your target reader would most likely have their answers around the topic answered by reading your informative piece.
And remember, Google always prioritises user experience.
If a reader dwells on your page longer by reading your long and informative piece, it tells Google that your article serves reader intent, and hence would rank your article higher in search results.
If you’re writing longer content, make sure that each section contains enough information to stand alone. Otherwise, readers may lose interest before reaching the end.
Of course, there are other ways to ensure that your long piece of content is readable and easily digestible, such as breaking up into smaller paragraphs. I cover all that in detail in my SEO course.
This is exactly what I did when creating my articles. It took me around 2 hours to complete them. Yet, it contained plenty of valuable tips and advice.
The Results
After utilizing these simple SEO writing techniques, with 0 social media promotion, I managed to grow this particular blog post traffic from 0 to 5000+ page views in a matter of 5+ months!
Ahrefs reported:
- 10 backlinks earned;
- Of which 6 of them are unique domains
- Ranks for 924 keywords
- Gets 2500 monthly average traffic
This just goes to show that as long as you’re producing the most informative articles out there (also known as Skyscraper technique), you’ll attract backlinks naturally.
And guess what? I didn’t even know about it until I started getting emails from brands wanting to sponsor a spot on the page.
I’m happy to say that all those hardworking hours were worth every minute spent.
It’s been quite amazing watching my numbers climb day by day, which just goes to show that with proper implementation of SEO strategies, any – and I mean ANY – types of posts can rank on SERPs.
As you can tell, there aren’t many rules regarding SEO copywriting. However, if you follow these 10 guidelines, you’ll be one step closer to replicating such results.
Just like me, you don’t necessarily have to post your content on social media websites to get page views. But do remember that sharing links helps boost your search engine rankings.
You might want to try out some of these ideas yourself and let me know how that works out for your blog traffic! I’d love to hear from you on Instagram!
