Path Digital › Projects › WordPress & offsite SEO (8-10/17)
• Business: increase organic traffic (+ online conversions from organic traffic), and brand visibility in Google
• SEO: resolve duplicate content issues across sites in two different geographic markets, clean up onsite issues (technical SEO), improve backlink profile, improve search performance
After starting an “step 1” SEO consulting package for a small-business WordPress site, I quickly saw there were some technical hurdles to overcome in order to meet my client’s specific goals for search. Renewal by Andersen B.C.’s market – window replacement services in the Vancouver area – was fairly competitive, and there was the added complexity of past “blackhat” SEO work that had led to some undesirable (spammy) backlinks to the site. Additionally the site structure was a bit of a mess, and there were lots of “test” pages and other potentially harmful site URLs that had been getting indexed by Google for months (if not years)…
And as I would soon find out, the site had lots of duplicate content that had been reused on/from other sites. While duplicate content may not be a ranking penalty in and of itself, content that’s blatantly copied can be… and unique content is much more valuable as a precursor to improve rankings. So it became a project where just out of my own curiosity I wanted to see what was possible in the short-term in terms of both technical SEO and offsite SEO (building relevant links). In short, it was a challenge.
With this SEO audit/strategy package I provide for all new clients, I was able to diagnose and check off all onsite SEO priorities for this relatively small site quickly. I have a number of go-to plugins that make this extremely efficient for WordPress sites.
Next was:
• Structural cleanup – pages in navigation
• Onsite content revisions (to resolve duplication and provide new SEO value)
• New relevant directory submissions – local SEO
• Content guest-blogging marketing plan to attract relevant backlinks
Out of these, we had noticeable success with the directory backlinks as I was able to pick up valuable government site links (higher site authority), and also picked up a unique, relevant blog backlink from content marketing as well. Looking at competitor backlink profiles was helpful in this regard.
Fast forward to September, and the site is ranking on page 1 for its business critical keyword “vancouver windows” (screenshot) as well as keyword variations. I also did a small-business SEO consulting package for the “sister” site in Anchorage, Alaska, and that site is now #1 for its business critical keyword targets (screenshots) in a less competitive market.
All in all, a lot to build on for future growth!