⬆️ Winners in nomination Search Innovation
Google Partner

6x traffic growth for “Study in Poland” niche

Author:
Optimizer
Reviewer: Oleg Gavrilyuk
Head of Optimizers
5.00 1 rating
,
6x traffic growth for “Study in Poland” niche

Client

The educational center, which provides support for applicants to study in Poland, has more than 25 offices in different Ukrainian cities, with official representatives of the admission committee of Polish universities.

Having more than 15 partner universities, this center is an official representative of their admission committee.

Our goal

Improvement of positions and traffic in priority directions:

  • “Study in Poland”
  • “Universities in Poland”

Input data:

Region: Ukraine

Start of work: February, 22 2022

Language: Ukrainian

Search engine: Google

Seasonality: The peak season is from mid-July to October

Difficulties encountered during the project

The competition in the selected niche is particularly high: the top-10 is so well-established that even when Google’s algorithms change, the competing sites have not fallen out of the top. It is extremely hard to “move” someone out of the top.

Competitor and niche analysis

Our experts have studied the niche in detail, selecting competitors with the help of Ahrefs.com:

Target Domain Rating Domains Total Backlinks Total Keywords Total Traffic
Client’s website

19

279

11885

6341

8488

Competitor 1

17

258

1471

4355

7563

Competitor 2

32

413

1299

3499

7774

Competitor 3

22

155

762

5291

17208

Competitor 4

30

427

17053

11081

33385

Competitor 5

27

431

1654

3892

8058

Unfortunately, the link mass quality of our project is lower than that of most competitors. The number of links is optimal, yet it is important to continue building them up, since our competitors are doing link building on a regular basis, and in order to “move” them from the top, we have to do more and perform better than them.

Searching for site growth points

Based on the priorities of the client, we have studied the possible points of growth and identified the most frequent and appropriate ones:

  • General page “Study in Poland”
  • Page “Universities of Poland” as well as:
    • Separate pages for each university
    • City pages by “Universities in Warsaw” type
  • Pages of specialties, e.g. “Cosmetology doctor, training in Poland”

Working process

Semantic core and working with the content

All of our proposed growth points were agreed upon with the client, and the team started collecting the semantic core and clustering. We collected a total of more than 40 semantic groups.

 

 

Having collected the Semantic Core, we studied the current positions of the site pages and made a decision on revising or writing new content. The optimizers drafted the terms of reference for writing and re-optimizing existing texts, and copywriters promptly proceeded to the task.

Technical audit of the website

We accepted the site for promotion with a fairly large number of errors.The technical audit consisted of 45 items, including 28 where we found errors and areas for improving the site.

For all errors, the team prepared a detailed ToR for implementation.

Program implementation Inspection result Priority Contractor
1. IP website analysis correct high software engineer
2. Checking the website for viruses, malicious scripts, and blacklisting correct high software engineer
3. Domain history analysis on WhoIs and web.archive ОК
4. Checking for the elements that may negatively impact user’s interaction with the website ОК
5. Recommendations for migrating the site to a new CMS correct high software engineer
6. Checking for availability and correctness of forming SEO-Friendly URLs (human-readable URL) correct high software engineer
7. Checking for the gluing of mirrors and complete duplications correct high software engineer
8. Checking for a complete duplication of content correct high software engineer
9. Setting up canonical URLs correct high software engineer
10. Checking for technical pages, pages with duplicate content, or with no content in the index correct high software engineer
11. Checking for correctness of the server’s responses to the page request correct high software engineer
12. Checking the page code for HTML and CSS errors correct high software engineer
13. Checking for availability and errors in SSL certificate correct high software engineer
14. Checking for hidden or spam links to external resources correct high software engineer
15. Checking for the correctness of robots.txt file set up correct high software engineer/content manager
16. Connect GWT ОК
17. Connect GA ОК
18. Check Sitemap.xml correct high software engineer
19. Checking for CSS and JS availability ОК
20. Checking microformats ОК
21. Checking social media buttons ОК
22. Checking website loading speed correct high software engineer
23. Checking for the availability and optimization of multilingualism correct high software engineer
24. Checking for mobile version of the website correct high software engineer
25. Checking for the website customization on other devices correct high software engineer
26. Checking for the correct output of the text content ОК
27. Checking the adaptability of the site on different types of devices correct high software engineer
28. Tracking Stat.Aweb content in the SEO-monitor correct low software engineer
29. Checking for the elements (commercial factors) on the pages required for ranking in this topic correct high software engineer
30. Checking for the partial content duplication ОК
31. Eliminate the removal of irrelevant and out-of-stock items correct high software engineer
32. Checking for the content pages in the code, which is not displayed on the site pages, comparing the content with cache. ОК
33. Is the content visible with the JavaScript turned off ОК
34. Checking the site for compliance with the requirements of the Instructions for Assessors correct high software engineer

Content

Program implementation Inspection result Priority Contractor
35. Checking for affiliates correct high software engineer
36. Checking GCS geo-settings ОК
37. Checking for the correctness of forming meta tags correct high software engineer
38. Checking for availability of landing pages for semantic core correct high software engineer
39. Checking for availability and uniqueness of the web content correct high software engineer
40. Checking for the text content optimization correct high software engineer
41. Checking for availability of content formatting ОК

Structure and re-linking

Program implementation Inspection result Priority Contractor
42. Checking for availability of “bread crumbs” correct high software engineer
43. Checking for re-linking on the website correct high software engineer
44. Checking for indexed, optimized filter pages ОК
45. Checking for the broken links ОК

Building up an external link mass

Since the site’s DR is not high, the first thing we did was to review all the links the site has, rejecting low-quality ones using Google Search Console.

Then we started selecting donors and gradually built up quality links

In addition to the standard linkbuilding methods we generally use, the team also used:

  • Outreach
  • Purchasing through link exchanges
  • Registrations on trust directories and sites
  • Registration on review sites
  • Crowd-marketing

Results on the project

After about a year of working on the promotion, our team managed to achieve great results, and the last Google update showed that we were moving in the right direction and used exactly those ways of optimization, which are important for the search engine.

Group «Study in Poland»

The top priority group for the client, which he always emphasized. Reaching the top 10 was not difficult, yet it took around 10 months of work on the internal and external optimization of the page to reach the top 2.

Group «Universities in Poland»

Group «Cost of study in Poland»

Group «Study in Poland for Ukrainians upon the completion of 11th grade»

Group «Universities of Warsaw»

Group «Vistula University»

Group «Cosmetology doctor, training in Poland»

Conclusion

The team managed to achieve excellent results during a year of promotion. According to the ahrefs.com service, there has been a 6x increase in traffic since the start of the promotion.

The actual data in Google Analytics differs from Ahrefs, but in general, a serious positive dynamics is the same. Such results were achieved thanks to an integrated approach to the promotion of the project.

Project participants

Project Managers: Oleksandra Nesina

Optimizer: Yurii Oshchapovskyi

Linker: Yevhen Fedchenko

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