About Edge Webware
Edge Webware is an Ohio-based, full-service programming shop with expertise in Web development, Web design, Mobile App development, SEO, PPC and Usability services.
One of their client projects struggled to gain visibility while transitioning from B2B to B2C in a fiercely competitive fitness niche.
By combining POP with Edge Webware’s own SEO workflow, they drove a 513% increase in clicks, secured 6 featured snippets, and achieved top 10 positions for 106 non-branded keywords - all within just 6 months and on a low budget.
The Challenge
In a highly saturated fitness niche dominated by major players, one of the biggest challenges was achieving visibility for non-branded terms related to the client’s products.
Below, you’ll find the Search Console results from early 2023, before Edge Webware began working with the client.
When comparing the screenshots, you’ll notice a significant drop in clicks and impressions as the SEO team at Edge Webware filtered out branded keywords (Screenshot 2) and then further narrowed down the search to exclude product pages (Screenshot 3).
Given the client's budget constraints, Edge Webware had to carefully plan SEO strategies to maximize cost-effectiveness without compromising on results.
This case study provides valuable insights into how to use POP to achieve SEO success for a budget-conscious client.
The Solution
We spoke with Tim Upton, the SEO specialist at Edge Webware, to gain insight into the step-by-step process that Edge Webware implemented to help this ecommerce client boost traffic.
Let’s dive into the workflow:
Step 1: Identifying your keyword tier
Tim and his team used Chris Carter's Avalanche SEO Theory as a backbone for developing an SEO strategy for this client.
According to this strategy, Google categorizes organic traffic into tiers (Level 0 = 0-10/daily organic traffic, Level 1 = 10-20/daily, etc) and you should target keywords with search volumes in line with your site’s traffic tier. For example, for a Level 0 site, you must optimize for keywords with 0-10 monthly searches.
The concept is to optimize for keywords in your current tier to eventually graduate to the next tier where you can target more competitive keywords.
Since the client was primarily selling dumbbells, the idea was to create a lot of informational content around dumbbells and point it to the relevant product pages.
While conducting keyword research, Tim identified the opportunity to create content around comparison articles, like “Dumbbells vs X”.
In the following steps, let’s take a look at this particular target keyword and the workflow that Tim followed to build a page around it. This is a repeated process that Tim used to rank other informational pages for this client as well.
Step 2: Using POP Content Brief to get recommendations
After completing the keyword research, Tim and his team ran POP to get recommendations for his writers to work off to create a beautifully optimized page around this target keyword.
💡 With the help of POP, you can build yourself the perfect page outline and structure before creating a new page. By optimizing a page that hasn’t been built and blueprinting the structure of your page first, you will be at a distinct advantage when your page goes live.
Content Brief includes recommendations on the word count, keywords & variation placement, page sections and NLP suggestions with the goal to reach an Optimization Score of 100 (it’s not hard).
Step 3: Creating and scoring content inside POP Content Editor
Before Tim handed off the recommendations to his writers, he created the Title, H1 and sub headings inside the Content Editor to get the initial optimization score, which would serve as the baseline for his content team.
He also highlighted the NLP terms to make sure they get added to the content when contextually relevant.
In this specific case, after creating the outline and scoring it through POP Content Editor, he got an optimization score of 56.67% out of 100%.
Once the writers had created the content, Tim checked the optimization score once again to see the improvements that had been made.
The score would provide insights into how well the writers had followed the Content Brief.
The new optimization score was 74.03%. Typically, the goal is to achieve a score of 80% or above. However, because Tim's strategy focused on optimizing supporting pages and linking them to the target page, and considering this was one of those supporting pages, he was comfortable publishing it even though the score wasn’t in the 'green' zone.
Upon publishing the page, Tim added the URL to a spreadsheet to keep track of indexing and keep an eye on Search Console to see how it was performing in terms of impressions and clicks.
Step 4: Publishing and monitoring
Let’s fast forward to February, 2024 and review the performance of this comparison page created with POP. The page was published in early August, 2023. Since then, it got 854 total clicks and over 32,000 total impressions.
The page is currently ranking for 46 keywords and that’s the result of optimized content and the use of the NLP terms. Five out of 46 keywords for this specific page are in the top 10 results, and the page secured two featured snippets.
This page is working in tandem with other pages within the silo, supporting the product pages.
Results
Let’s review the cumulative impact of the supporting articles Tim and his team have written for this client, in line with the strategy described above.
The client increased its organic traffic by 513% and impressions by over 200% within just 6 months of working with Edge Webware.
The screenshot below illustrates the total clicks and impressions for the last 3 months compared to the same period last year before the client began working with Edge Webware.
Now, let’s take a look at the results for the last 6 months compared to the previous 6 months:
You'll notice a substantial increase in clicks and impressions, particularly for non-branded content.
Given the client's competition with major players in the fitness industry, one of Edge Webware's significant achievements was the uptick in non-branded terms:
- 4 non-branded keywords ranking in the #1 position
- 13 non-branded keywords in the top 3 positions
- 106 non-branded in the top 10 positions
These results are all byproducts of dialing in each article for one focus keyword, running them through POP and making improvements to increase the score, and no backlink strategy for these articles.
Another win was securing six featured snippets from articles optimized with POP, with the highest being seven in November 2023.
Tim and his team did a fantastic job with their SEO efforts. The strategy has significantly boosted client’s visibility for non-branded terms and is helping train the SERPs to understand what the client is about.
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