Organic SEO Case Studies - More Than 400% Increase in Traffic With On-Page and Technical SEO

By: Joseph de Souza

Introduction

Note that SEO, or Search Engine optimization is a continous process, and there is no end to the SEO work and promotion one can do for a website. The amount of traffic is only limited by the total searches for the particular keywords being targeted. Certain Niches, most notably companies in many B2B, or Business to Business will have a low number of searches in their niche.
Here I will give examples of how websites can achieve a good increase in traffic and maintain it for many years just by on page and technical SEO in many niches after they opt for the Kickstarter SEO Package which includes a Website Technical and On-page SEO Audit.

Please note in highly competitive niches you will much more than just On Page and Technical SEO, although it remains an essential first step.
You will require to continuously promote your content, keep adding new content and updating existing content. All methods used by me in the SEO process are fully approved by all search engines and are as per the Google Webmaster Guidelines. For more case studies check out the Denmark E-Commerce Company Case Study

Case Study 1: International Motorcycle Tour Company - More Than 400% Increase In Traffic

The website of the international motorcycle tour company was based on Joomla. The website had enough content and provided good information on the motorcycle tours offered. I modified the code to add the canonical url instead of keywords. I also activated the built in SEO friendly URLs from the Joomla control panel and created SEO friendly URLs for all pages of the website. Besides that I did the keyword research and rewrote the content with the targeted keywords. The page titles, description meta tags as well all other elements of On Page SEO as detailed in the Kickstarter SEO Package were completed.
Awesome SEO results were obtained. The website got to 2,000 plus visits soon after making changes. It rose to 8,700 plus visits a month a year later (Jan 2014) and even today is around 8,000 plus visits a month.

Case Study 2: Beach Resort in Calangute Goa - 2148% Increase in Traffic

When this beach resort in Calangute Goa approached me they had a website with afew pages basically like an online brochure. I started making changes to the website and started monitoring it in October 2008. All the changes including addition of new content and the SEO work was completed in May 2009.

Here's What I Did

The content pages were increased and the new website had 50 pages of content. The keyword research was done and the new content was created relevant to keywords. All the steps detailed in the Kickstarter SEO Package were also completed.
I have also to mention here that the hotel hired a photographer to take good pictures of views inside and outside the resort, as well as beautiful pictures of the areas close to the resort. The content written included information regarding Places of tourist interest, Places to visit close to the resort, Shopping for Souvenirs and other stuff not available elsewhere, Local events and celebrations, Facilities offered, Holiday packages offered and Sightseeing tours. Information regarding local crafts and delicacies including their recipes was also included.

An over 2148% Increase in Traffic After SEO was Done

The traffic was just 267 visits in October 2008 while in October 2012 the traffic had risen to 5,737 visits - a stupendous 2148% increase in traffic.

Case Study 3: Beach Resort Located Near a Popular Beach in North Goa - 366% Increase in Traffic

   When this particular client came to me, his website had a full flash home page, basically a slideshow of images. Looked impressive as a splash page but no good for ranking in Search Engines ... There was also very little content on the other pages of the website, which were less than ten in number.
Note the screenshot shows more that is because Google indexes each flash element on the web page separately and tries to read if it can find text outside of the images in flash. Note that even today Google cannot read flash properly and fully flash pages cannot be optimized.
The titles were like "Welcome to ABC Resort" on all pages. Now as per SEO basics, that any one with little SEO knowledge will tell you is that you have to have unique titles on every page relevant to the content on that page and preferably including keywords that people search if they are relevant to the topic of the page.
Remember, this project was done in the middle of 2009, and though SEO awareness has gone up considerably there are still websites which use similar titles. I have even come accross a customised Content Management System (CMS) commissioned by a local travel agency that did not even have the ability to specify a unique title for each page, but that's a topic for later. Below is the screenshot of how the website was indexed in Google at the start of the SEO.

Here's What I Did

Firstly a website SEO Audit. I have already mentioned about it earlier. Since the website was not conducive for SEO a new SEO friendly website was required. So firstly a new website was designed with SEO friendly features.
Since the resort was a small one, and not requiring frequent changes a static website was developed. The content pages were increased and the new website had 24 pages of content. The keyword research was done and the new content was created relevant to keywords.
I have also to mention here that a photographer was hired by the beach resort to take good pictures of views inside and outside the resort, views from the windows as well as beautiful pictures of the beach and sea just next to the resort. The content written included information regarding Places of tourist interest, Local events and celebrations, Facilities offered, Holiday packages offered and Sightseeing tours conducted by the resort.
The titles and descriptions of all the pages were written as per keywords researched and relevance to the page being optimized. Complete on page optimization was done as per the Kickstarter SEO Package.
This also included Search Engine as well as visitor friendly urls. I did not have to bother with redirection as the website was being totally redesigned also. Besides the website was not ranking for anything besides the name of the resort and variations thereof which included a part of or the complete name in the search query.

How Long Did the SEO Done Take to Show Results?

Since the website was in existence for more than 2 years before I took up the SEO work and website redesign, I started seeing first page results after a month had passed since I uploaded the website. The traffic started moving upwards after about 10 days. The website was uploaded in the second half of September 2009.

An over 360% Increase in Traffic Within 1 Year After SEO was Done

Since hotels have seasonal variation and giving time for SEO to kick in you can see that the traffic has increased many fold - For example in May 2010 the traffic was 1,939 visits compared with 529 visits the previous year, an increase of 366%. Also, in June 2010 the traffic was 1,715 visits compared with 469 visits the previous year.

About The Author

Joseph de Souza is a leading Freelance SEO consultant and Web developer in Goa, India with more than 15 years of experience in internet marketing.
He has a proven track record and has has helped several companies increase their traffic many times over and thereby increase their revenue and profits.
Besides English, Joseph has also successfully optimized two German language websites and a Danish language website and obtained outstanding results.
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