Growth of targeted organic traffic and leads for the official website of the Signature residential complex

The Client

Corporation “Continuum” is the developer of the premium-class residential complex “Signature”, built in Pechersk on Mechnikova Street. Our specialists took over the official website of the new building.

Our Task

The client’s global goal is to sell apartments, so they expect from our work not so much an increase in traffic as an increase in leads, which is what they planned to evaluate the effectiveness of cooperation.

Considering the high cost of apartments, the limited target audience, and the difficulty in finding and segmenting them, our team got a very difficult task.

Initial Data:

Region: all of Ukraine. Separately allocated Kyiv and large cities.

Start of work: May 15, 2018.

Features of the project: in summer, there is a seasonal decline.

The site is written in the CakePHP framework.

Analysis of Niche and Competitors

For almost all target queries, the top 10 were occupied by various aggregators. And only the following two sites of one of the real estate developers were more or less ranked in the top 10 for most priority groups:

• https://jackhouse.com.ua/;
• http://royaltower.com.ua/.

The rest of the competing sites were ranked only by individual groups:

• https://busovhill.com.ua/;
• https://volodymyrskyy.com.ua/ru;
• https://www.the-garden.com.ua/;
• http://pecherskplaza.ua/.

At the same time, for almost any request, except for low-frequency ones, the top 3 and top 5 were completely occupied by the strongest aggregators. Accordingly, the probability of reaching the top 3 and top 5 was only for individual requests.

Using the services of SimilarWeb, Ahrefs, SemRush, SerpStat for analysis, our SEO-specialists thoroughly and scrupulously studied the structure, content, usability and external link mass of these sites to determine our next steps.

An example of a table with an audit of site metrics:

Based on the results of the analysis, we summarised the following:

1. The main page of the promoted site, in comparison with competitors, was weak and uninformative; therefore it required urgent improvement.
2. Top competitors had a much larger number of pages indexed – we planned the development of information topics with the implementation of relinking to priority pages.
3. Competitors enjoyed a high level of trust since, from their main site pages was possible to get to the section with licenses, permits and other documentation. Considering that this was the most important part of a site’s credibility in this niche, we need to publish as many documents as possible confirming the legitimacy of the development.
4. The first two competitors had a strong clustering: according to the queries we were interested in, there were several more pages on their sites. We decided to create additional landing pages on the promoted site.
5. Our SEO-specialists threw their energy into actively building up the link mas, and after a short time, they became the leader among competitors. Further, the specialists of our company decided to change the work strategy moving to the search and purchase of links only on trust sites. As a result, the number of extended domains per month decreased but remained at a fairly high level compared to competitors.

Work Process

Semantic Core

Taking into account the set goals, our SEO-specialists assembled a semantic core, which includes 270 maximally targeted commercial queries divided into 13 semantic groups.

The screenshot shows an example of the assembled core:

We did not provide finalising the content of the main page and placing a text description on it. Therefore, for promoted groups, we used internal pages as landing pages.

Taking into account the semantic core, our specialists prepared an extended page structure for implementation:

Challenges

At the start of work, the site loading speed was at an unacceptably low level. Besides, it worked on Ukrainian and English versions, and our team had to implement the Russian version.

Of the entire list of landing pages, only the main one was ready, so for the first year and a half, our specialists worked only with it. Accordingly, the semantic core was limited: in addition to brand queries, only a few groups included mid-range queries. The chances of bringing in a maximum of targeted traffic with such a limited core were negligible.

It took a lot of time to coordinate and implement the extended site structure, including the necessary landing pages. In particular, the rendering and layout of the main pages for all types of devices were delayed.

The client completed the improvements only in December 2019, and in fact, only from that moment, our specialists started working from scratch since they had already received a completely different site.

Before this:

• not all the content of the pages had got into the Google cache;
• the structure on the site had been limited;
• due to the implementation of language versions, all page URLs had been changed;
• meta tags had not been optimized;
• there had been no purchases for new URLs.

The mobile version of the site looked unpresentable, and we needed to understand:

• why the current layout was not adaptive?
• how to solve this problem?
• were we able to help with that?

After analyzing the site by our company’s programmer, we found out that the layout drawn by the client’s designer is far from the standard site layout: it was drawn without using the grid familiar to web design, so it became more difficult to adjust the layout of the blocks. In addition, the lack of a grid also affected the display of fonts and indents between them.

Given this, one of the main challenges was displaying images in landscape orientation on a mobile screen that has a landscape orientation.

We proposed an effective but radical option – to develop a new design using grids and implement a new layout with a minimum number of scripts. In the meantime, the specialists of our company continued to work on the existing version of the site, helping with spot edits.

Also, during the work, we were faced with the creation of a fake site on the signatures.com.ua domain by a competing company that violated copyrights. Our specialists have prepared and sent a DMCA complaint in order to restrict access to the content of this site from Google.

Elimination of Technical Errors

On the updated version of the site, critical software errors were eliminated – and our SEO-specialists performed a 44-point check.

Part of the table with their results:

Later on, our programmers managed to increase the speed for mobile devices from the “red” zone (less than 50%) to the “yellow” zone (66%). Unfortunately, the specialists were limited in their actions, finalising only what did not affect the layout and pictures. So, to increase the speed indicator, we set up font preloading and delayed loading of third-party scripts, compressed and packaged static CSS and JS files into a minimum number of files, tested replacing image formats with webp, added <link rel=preload> and accompanying <link rel= tags “preconnect”> <link rel=”dns-prefetch”>.

In addition, we corrected the display of the video block on the main page so that it does not overlap the rest of the content for the Google bot.

For users’ convenience, we have implemented a virtual 3D tour and built a navigation button for a quick transition to the “Gallery” section.

To increase the attractiveness of the site’s pages in the search results, due to the extended snippets, we implemented micro-markup on the pages: “Questions / Answers”, “Page Rating”, and “Local Company”.

Our programmers improved multilingualism on the site by implementing a full-fledged Russian-language version with static URL generation. We displayed all text entries on the pages following the language version selected by the user, and added attribute output rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”.

After creating new pages, we generated a static sitemap sitemap.xml.

Our SEO-specialists prepared and placed optimized meta tags for landing pages and added Emoji to them to increase the attractiveness of snippets in search results.

We constantly monitored the appearance of errors on the site using the Google Search Console and internal services (pages with a 404 and 500 response code, site availability, the presence of landing pages in the Google index, the implementation of configured 301 server redirects).

Development of Pages Based on the Instructions for Google Assessors

In terms of functionality, the client´s site was inferior to the sites of business-class competitors: they were more functional (for example, site contained an overflight video, a panorama, an infrastructure map, video from webcams), filled with a larger amount of content (placed permits, information about the management company, about the merits/awards of the complex) and thus formed more confidence in the developer company. Following the analysis of competitors for functionality and the Instructions for Google Assessors, our company’s SEO-specialists compiled a list of recommendations for the site to improve the quality of its content.

Unfortunately, the client rejected the list of improvements: he did not plan to invest additional resources in website improvements, and the achieved intermediate results suited him.

Content

The main content requirement set by the client was to write a high-quality text both from an artistic and journalistic point of view – “with restraint and taste”.

An important aspect: in the texts, it was unacceptable to use the query “flat” (despite the presence in the semantic core) – only “apartments” since this was how the client positioned his product.

For most of the landing pages, the texts were originally written by the client’s copywriters, and on our side, they were checked. Later, Aweb copywriters were attracted to write articles.

When writing new materials, it was necessary to familiarize yourself with other client articles on the site in order to adhere to the same style.

After completing trial tasks by several of our performers, a copywriter was identified and assigned to the project, to whose texts the client had the fewest comments and the style of presenting the materials was suitable. The editor of our company checked the text for grammar and spelling, as well as for its compliance with all content requirements.

Texts for the site carried additional image value, so they were written in an individual format, with a detailed study of the content and style, according to the client’s wishes. In addition, copywriters took into account the primary evaluation criteria for ECR (expertise, credibility and reliability) and YMYL from the Instructions for Google Assessors. The main ones were:

• unique content – 100%;
• the benefits of the text for users – in each material there was a story to the reader about something new;
• thoughtful structure, logical paragraphs;
• the presence of headings and subheadings related to each other;
• each block should provide comprehensive answers to questions that the reader may have.

On an ongoing basis, we published information materials in the News section, including articles optimized for frequency key queries (for example, “What is a club house”, “Advantages of a view apartment”) to attract additional search traffic to the site.

Work on the Reputation of the Site and the Company

The purpose of the task was to help build a positive reputation on the Internet about Residential Complex “Signature”.

Project SEO-specialists worked out catalogs and real estate guides and placed information about the residential complex in them, as well as monitored review sites for timely writing responses to questions and comments from users on behalf of the developer.

We completed the registration and optimization of the card in “Google. My business”, where they published thematic posts and photos of the complex.

Increasing the External Link Mass

In the first month of work, our SEO-specialists analyzed the link mass, taking into account the data from the Ahrefs service and the Google webmaster.

The first external links to the project appeared in February 2017.

The curve of the dynamics of the number of referring domains to the project for the whole time had a smooth appearance:

The growth of the link mass on the project was fragile – until June 2018, the number of donor domains remained at the level of 20-30 resources:

Temporary links from aggregators (Sape, TrustLink, etc.) d) were absent.

No manual action was taken (according to Google Search Console).

The anchor list of the project before the start of work with Aweb included mostly non-anchor links, and today it is optimized for priority key queries.

The project SEO-specialists prepared a link strategy that was followed during the work:

• periodic placement of 10-20 natural non-anchor forum links and links in trust directories for promoted pages;
• monthly purchase of 6-15 “eternal” links on exchanges for promoted pages. Anchor types were non-anchor links, PV links, links with diluted anchor texts.

  Platforms included news and thematic resources, with Ukrainian ones in priority.

  The number of purchased links was alternated: in order to maintain the volume of the link mass at the level of competing sites, links were placed on news sites in terms of quality above average, and in order to increase the trust of the site being promoted, they were placed on expensive authoritative resources;

  • periodic placement of 2-4 press releases on trust sites;
  • monthly review and adjustment of the link strategy based on the results of the analysis of achieved positions for target queries;
  • monitoring the appearance of spam donors on the project — if sites with low-quality indicators were found in the list of donors, we rejected them using the Google Disavow service;
  • monitoring the dynamics of the volume and quality of the reference mass of competing sites leading in the top.

Our experts paid special attention to the selection of sites for placing links: SEO-specialists used a scoring model for assessing the quality of domains. According to it, donors were evaluated according to 11 parameters, including the volume of general and organic traffic, the domain rating (Ahrefs), the ratio of incoming and outgoing links, and behavioral factors on the site.

In addition, we paid attention to the quality of the texts that were posted along with links on third-party sites. Our company’s copywriting department wrote all articles. In addition to the growth in the volume of reference mass, the second task was also taken into account – forming a positive reputation for the residential complex.

Key requirements for copywriters:

• the article must necessarily correspond to the theme of the advertiser’s site;
• the content of the article must be written in accordance with the anchor list;
• the title of the article must contain anchors;
• links in the text should be placed as naturally as possible in a readable form – placement in the first and last sentences, in headings, as well as at the beginning or at the end of a sentence is prohibited;
• the first link should be as close as possible to the beginning of the article, the second – in the middle of the article, while the links should not be located close to each other;
• at least one paragraph of text should be about the Signature residential complex – the client provided official information about the complex, which was used by copywriters (data on design, facade, service, security, smart home systems provided, as well as slogans and metaphors of the residential complex).

For 3 years and 7 months of our work on the project, the number of donors has increased from 30 to 309 resources. The dynamics of growth is shown in the chart below:

According to all the main metrics of the link mass, the site https://signature.ua became the leader among competitors.

Ahrefs donor growth dynamics compared to competitors:

Ahrefs data on key metrics:

Results

During the period of work on the project, our team managed to increase the percentage of output requests for priority categories:

• to the top 10 – growth from 11% to 61%;
• in the top 5 – growth from 6% to 27%;
• in the top 3 – growth from 5% to 15%.

The dynamics of growth in the top 10, top 5 and top 3 of the search results is shown in the screenshot:

The first tangible results on the project were noticed during the December Core Update 2020. The percentage of queries in the top 10 increased from 20 to 32%. The improvement of positions on the project was due to increased links from trust sites in the period May-October 2020. Also, presumably, the results were influenced by the expansion of texts on the inner pages due to the placement of voluminous blocks of “Questions / Answers”.

At the end of 2020, the site achieved the desired indicators – 60% of the apartments were sold.

As of November 2021, 80% of the apartments was sold. All the “best options” of apartments was sold, leaving only “a couple of penthouses”.

Work on the project was stopped in January 2022, as the client sold almost all the apartments, and decided to use contextual advertising to promote the rest.

The screenshots below show examples of position dynamics in several priority groups.

Conclusion

In the context of limited opportunities for making software changes and improvements on the site, our specialists focused on increasing the volume of high-quality link mass. Thanks to this strategy of work, we achieved the main goal of the client: the growth of the site’s position in Google search for priority key queries, the generation of leads and the sale of apartments in a residential complex.

Project participants:

Project Manager: Kateryna Tymoshenko

SEO-specialist: Tetiana Khramova

Linkbuilder: Yevhen Fedchenko