225% increase in visibility in 2 years and achieving top positions for the most important general and local keywords

Visibility increase of the website according to Visibility Analysis in Senuto

Website visibility for main keywords – January 2021

SEO strategy

The strategy we chose for Skupszop includes:

1. technical optimization of the website
2. optimization of the indexing process by Googlebot
3. creating a new category structure as well as content for the categories
4. creating a landing page structure for local keywords related to the purchase of books, as well as preparing content for these pages
5. preparing keywords and writing guide articles for the blog
6. optimization of the internal linking process

Technical optimization & improvement of indexation

After deciding on a strategy, we start every cooperation with a comprehensive technical audit, during which we verify the website in terms of approximately 150 issues divided into 4 areas:

• technical optimization
• service structure
• content analysis
• internal and inbound links

The most significant technical errors

In the case of Skupszop, the most significant errors were related to the multifaceted subpage duplication on the website. Every website should strive to have no copies of subpages – even if it contains some necessary copies (for example, a filter subpage that differs in terms of one parameter), they all redirect to the canonical page.

Below is a list of duplicate pages that we have removed:

• developer copies of the website under two different IP addresses – both indexed in Google
• copies of the website in the following versions: http, https, http + www, https + www/li>
• duplicate product subpages – each product appeared on the website twice
• duplicate category pages – originally, there were about 130 category pages in the structure, of which 30 (23%) pages appeared twice
• the entire website was copied in an additional directory – each subpage of the website appeared twice; below is an example of duplication for the “biographies” category:
  • skupszop.pl/ksiazki/biografie-145846
  • skupszop.pl/skupszop/ksiazki/biografie-145846

Indexation optimization

traffic to the website. Our goal was to increase the volume of subpages in the Google index and to keep only the relevant subpages of the website in it (those whose presence in the Google index was reasonable from a search perspective). Finally, we managed to increase the number of requests (a query sent by the Googlebot to the server with a request to download the page) from Googlebot from 5,000 to 40,000 per day, which means an increase of 800%.

We have achieved this through the following activities:

• optimization and creation of a sitemap – sitemap.xml
• creating an extensive html sitemap – https://skupszop.pl/sitemap/html
• optimization of internal linking throughout the website
• optimizing the robots.txt file
• removing redundant URLs
• applying link tags with the rel attribute set to canonical along with the correct URLs
• adding attributes with nofollow value to links
• implementation of breadcrumbs structured data

Expansion of the website structure

Another standard step connected with adapting the website to search results is explanding its structure by adding additional subpages constructed on the basis of keyword analysis.

In the case of Skupszop:

• we prepared and implemented a new category structure
• we created subpages for local keywords related to buying books
• we planned and wrote articles for the blog

New category structure

Originally, books on the site were sorted into 130 categories. After analyzing the keywords, we decided on the creation of about 300 new categories. Currently, there are 430 of them on the website.

We also prepared a description for each category page, which is located under the listing of books. This is a very important and standard element of optimization. In total, we added 287 descriptions to category pages, the average length of which is 2300 characters. The increase in categories – expansion of the landing page structure – is aimed at increasing the visibility of the website for general keywords related to searching for books by type and genre.

Landing pages for local phrases related to the purchase of books

We selected 29 subpages for the local keywords: “book purchase + city”. The goal of such keywords is to reach users who are looking for bookstores in a specific city. Each subpage is built of content that was created on the basis of a set of keywords related to a given location and a form to fill out on selling books.

An example of such a subpage can be found here: https://skupszop.pl/sprzedaj/skup-ksiazek-warszawa

The results of our activities are high positions of the Skupszop.pl website for the most popular keywords related to buying books in a given location. In Senuto, a position monitoring tool, we have created a group of the 46 most important local keywords and we monitor which positions newly created subpages achieve. Currently, all phrases are in the TOP 10, and 45 of them are in the TOP 3.

Below is a screenshot showing the top positions of the website.

High positions in Google translate into more website traffic. To track the changes our activities bring, we created a custom report in Google Analytics, aggregating organic traffic from 29 new landing pages.

In the case of SEO, the effects are not immediately visible – the planned activities need time to gain momentum. This can also be observed in the chart below. We started working on the website’s visibility in November 2019, and the traffic increase came a few months later.

As a result of the implemented changes, within 15 months, the newly created subpages provided an average of 908 sessions per month with very well targeted traffic. This is evidenced by the average bounce rate of ~5%.

Blog

In addition to optimization for keywords strictly related to the website’s activity, we also worked on planning and creating guide content related to:z:

• writing books
• literary genres
• types of books
• literary awards

We prepared articles on topics such as:

• Why is it worth it to read books?
• How to write a good book review?
• How to publish your own book?
• How to write a good book? Writing a book step by step.
• How to make a bookmark?
• How to bind a book?
• What are the types and genres of books?
• How to promote a book?
• What to do with old books uou don’t need?
• How to design a book cover?

Through guide content, we can reach a wide audience interested in books and book-related topics. Substantive articles allow us to reach potential customers and remain in their awareness. Thanks to all this, the Skupszop brand is growing. So far, over the course of our 26 months of work, we have planned and written a total of 150 guide articles.

Below are some statistics on the organic visibility of the blog.

The current visibility of the blog in Google compared to April 2019:

By January 2021, blog articles generated a total of 113,000 organic sessions.

Since April 2019, when Google first indexed the published content, these articles generated an average of over 5,000 sessions per month..

Each of the 150 articles is visible on average for 4 keywords in the TOP 10 and 1 keyword in the TOP 3.

Below is a graph showing the increase in organic traffic on the blog:

The considerable strength of the blog in the context of positioning is also evidenced by the fact that its articles occupy high positions in the search results even for very general keywords that are difficult to position, which receive a high number of searches.

Internal linking

Google rewards websites that care for their internal links and supplement them regularly. As part of our goal to improve the structure of the entire website, we worked on:

• optimization of internal linking from the main menu, side menu and website footer
• implementing internal linking in articles
• articles linking to category pages
• articles linking to thematically related articles
• articles linking to product pages of related books
• adding product widgets to articles that link to product subpages
• adding widgets to articles linking to related blog entries