Client Case Study
How I Grew This Website’s Organic Traffic by 554% in Just 12 Months
John Rampton is an expert in content marketing. If there’s one thing he knows, it’s how to write copy.
When he started Due.com, an online payments processing service, he knew exactly what type of content he needed to engage his customers and get them excited about the company.
But John is the first to admit that he doesn’t know that much about the technical side of SEO.
Like any smart business owner, he understands his blind spots, and seeks out experts to help him fill in the gaps. While he knew what the people coming to his site wanted, he just wasn’t sure whether Google’s algorithms would love his content too.
Over the years, John had worked with a number of SEO consultants. Some were better than others, but they all made one key mistake: they would simply hand him a report the size of War and Peace, and leave him to implement it.
Of course, he tried. But what business owner has time to execute hundreds of fiddly technical recommendations?
Heck, most business owners probably don’t even have time to read a report that long. Still, he knew he needed an expert to audit his site, and recommend fixes where they were needed.
FIRST STEPS ON THE PATH TO NUMBER ONE
One day John decided to give Stephan a call.
Although John had known Stephan for years, they had never actually worked together. He was optimistic, but he half-expected things to go the same way they had with other consultants.
Like many SEOs, Stephan began with an audit of the Due.com site, and an analysis of John’s competitors. And, he put his findings in a report…
But there was one crucial difference to Stephan’s approach:
Instead of simply handing over a list of recommendations, he got on a call with John, and walked him through the problems on his site, one by one. There was no jargon, no baffling technical stuff, just a clear explanation of what needed to be fixed.
Then, at the end of the call, Stephan gave John 10 simple, actionable items to complete.
It was that easy.
Proof of Concept
The first major issue that Stephan noticed was that Due.com had around 50 different categories, which made the site unnecessarily complex—both for Google, and John’s customers. The first step was to trim these unwieldy categories down.
Next, they set about retroactively optimizing Due.com’s existing content—over 500 blog posts and 2000 images—and developing SEO guidelines for the creation and publishing of new content.
Soon, John and Stephan had reduced Due.com’s categories down to 20, selected keywords for each blog post, and updated title tags, descriptions, and alt tags on the images.
With Stephan’s guidance, each task was broken down into bite-sized pieces, and completed quickly and efficiently.
Quick Results
Once these initial changes were made, it wasn’t long before John and his team started noticing small but significant increases in traffic.
In fact, it took only three weeks before they realized that something magical was happening!
Normally, Due.com experienced month on month increases of between 3-5%.
Then, one month they were shocked when they received a staggering 40% increase in traffic.
The next month’s stats proved that this was no fluke: traffic increased again by 60%. Then, the following month they saw another 40% gain.
Where was all this traffic coming from?
Stephan’s recommendations had been spot on, and Due.com was climbing in the rankings.
Eventually, they managed to achieve high page-one rankings for competitive terms such as “online invoicing” and “invoice,” which were driving qualified traffic to lucrative parts of their site.
In addition, Stephan had noticed that Due.com wasn’t ranking for their own brand name, “due.” With his help, they managed to secure the number one spot for this highly-searched term, along with a laundry list of other valuable keywords.
The Pay Off
While John was happy with the month on month increases, it wasn’t until the 12 month mark that he really understood how much Due.com had achieved. When Stephan suggested he compare January’s traffic figures to the previous year, he was stunned.
In just 12 months, organic traffic had increased by over 554%!.
Despite using SEO consultants in the past, John had never been able to achieve results like this…
Not only that, but traffic was still steadily increasing by an impressive 15-20% per month. Now, with a solid set of rankings, Due.com has emerged as a major player in the online payments game.
John credits Due.com’s SEO success to Stephan’s vast knowledge, along with his ability to work with his clients to produce results.
“One thing I really love and respect about Stephan,” John says, “is that he’s excellent at giving good practical advice that non-technical people can easily understand, and implement.”
