Firestarter SEO provides monthly services to a company offering premier golf instruction to customers throughout the United States. With a focus on individual training versus group instruction, their mission is to provide personalized, first-rate training from professionals who boast over 350 years of collective golf experience.
THE STARTING POINT
In October 2014, the client reached out to Firestarter SEO to see how they could improve their online visibility. They had a big vision for the growing company, but didn’t know how to bridge the gap to reach that vision. At the time, our client’s rankings looked like this:
- Rank #1-3: 4 Keywords
- Rank #4-10: 34 Keywords
- Page 2: 21 Keywords
- Pages 3-5: 22 Keywords
- Not in the top 5 pages: 13 Keywords
They were getting just over 800 visits per month to the site from organic traffic.
THE STRATEGY
At the beginning of the campaign, a relatively standard strategy was pursued. This involved a combination of on-site optimization (implementing target keywords in titles, descriptions, alt tags, etc.), technical SEO (resolving crawl errors), and off-site optimization. Within the first month of service, rankings began climbing – evidencing the power of simply getting the basics right.
Further into the campaign, most technical issues and on-site optimization had been resolved. At this point, they had seen steady growth, though they were beginning to plateau in both their rankings and their traffic.
After reviewing the data, a determination was made to pivot the strategy going forward. The strategy would revolve almost entirely around link building.
It is crucial to understand the parameters used for targeting quality & organic links, as they played a large role in the success of the campaign.
- Relevance – First and foremost in determining which links to pursue was relevance. In many cases, quality opportunities presented themselves with more generic sites, but they were overturned by sites relevant to the golf world.
- Type – Acquiring a wide variety of link types was also important, as it introduced a diverse portfolio of links for Bird Golf. Some of the link types are below:
- Press Releases – A press release served as a valuable tool for times when the client would introduce its services at a new premium golf course, or in a new state.
- Guest Posts – Many opportunities presented themselves for guest posting. With simple manual outreach, multiple guest posts were acquired as a result.
- Sponsorships & Events – With a wide array of golf-related events, and an almost countless number of golf-related businesses, sponsorships were easy to come by. These were great ways to improve awareness while still capturing the link value.
- Authority – An ideal link would involve a highly relevant site to the golf world, which was also very authoritative in terms of Domain Authority. Of particular note was in most cases, relevance trumped domain authority in the targeting of a link.
- The Eye Test – The final factor in the evaluation of link opportunities was the eye test. We would simply ask ourselves “Would our client be proud of a link to this site?” Boiling it down further, if a site looked and felt valid, legitimate, and at least somewhat quality, we would consider it worthy.
With all these parameters in place, outreach efforts began and the link building strategy was underway.
RESULTS
Upon implementation, results came slowly. This was a test of the principle that SEO is truly a process of accumulation. Sure enough, a few months into the process, rankings began to climb further. As we remained consistent with our efforts, the client’s rankings continued to soar. In November of 2016 – 2 years after beginning the campaign – they ranked on the first page for 94 different keywords, nearly tripling their 1st page rankings from the start of the campaign.
It got better. Over the next one and a half years, links remained a constant in their campaign. The result was more of the same. Traffic improved, with organic traffic increasing by over 40% compared to the previous year. The rankings continued shooting up. Final Rankings at the time of writing were as follows:
- Rank #1-3: 82 Keywords – Increase of 78 from the start
- Rank #4-10: 41 Keywords – Increase of 7 from the start
- Page 2: 19 Keywords – Decrease of 2 from the start
- Pages 3-5: 7 Keywords – Decrease of 15 from the start
- Not in top 5 pages: 6 Keywords – Decrease of 7 from the start
The evidence was resounding – 123 rankings on the first page, more than 3 times as many compared to the start of the campaign. While rankings continue to grow, link building remains the core of the campaign, as it has served as the unquestionable catalyst to our client’s success.
