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Google Partner

SEO for a U.S.-based application site in a “frontier” niche

Author:
Optimizer
Reviewer: Oleg Gavrilyuk
Head of Optimizers
5.00 1 rating
,
SEO for a U.S.-based application site in a “frontier” niche

Client

Fantasy Match — a sexual health community platform designed for dating people who love ethical, open, and polyamorous relationships.

https://fantasyapp.com — Fantasy Match website, designed to increase the recognition of application and the number of downloads.

Our mission

The growth of fantasyapp.com positions and traffic by writing thematic articles for the blog, which help website visitors learn more about the application and download it.

Source data and project features

  • Region: USA
  • Search Engine: Google
  • Language: English
  • Site platform: WordPress
  • Niche: dating

Difficulties with the project

Thematic blog articles that will drive traffic to the app page

Traffic to the blog for the sake of traffic is easy. However, traffic that will generate app downloads and increase the recognition of Fantasy Match is a rather complicated task that requires a detailed study of the app’s audience (age, interests, GEO, etc.).

Building up the link mass

Since the dating niche is bordering on the 18+ niche, standard link-building methods may not work. Prospective donors are very reluctant to post links to such websites or simply overestimate the cost of posting by 2-3 times.

Limited budget for linkbuilding

Competitor analysis

The first task of our team was to analyze the competitors. We carefully studied both sites of similar applications and competitors at the top with articles that were related to our niche and had the potential to bring in leads. We assessed our competitors based on several criteria:

  • link metrics
  • the amount of branded traffic
  • the topics of written articles
  • technical bugs
  • and many others
Target Domain Rating Domains Total Backlinks Total Keywords Total Traffic Cost of links in $ per linkdetective.pro
fantasyapp.com/

37

567

4976

6049

55127

60200

www.swinglifestyle.com/

73

2437

324168

10457

908692

324251

www.sdc.com/

75

3654

1526321

12610

336331

226519

www.thrillist.com/

88

77566

2410892

3010486

6427248

8133598

www.villagevoice.com/

83

59707

6184652

192553

538855

4686757

www.womenshealthmag.com/

87

91087

2730407

4660990

26770851

8584883

www.nightflow.com/

28

3745

18694

88068

280979

86635

When studying the list of competitors, several conclusions can be made:

  • There are virtually no direct competitors.The main bulk of sites are informational ones, and they write articles not only in our niche but in many others as well. This is the reason there is so much traffic compared to competitors.
  • Domain Rating and the number of donors (Domains) most competitors have is much higher than fantasyapp.com. However, since the competitors have a lot of articles, and not all of them are pumped up with the links, by working on each promoted page precisely, we can achieve great results in terms of positions and traffic.

Work process

Identifying points of growth

Directions for search queries of articles on the blog, which can bring downloads to the App Store, can be divided into several sub-directions:

  • Direct search terms that users use when searching for the app (swingers app, threesome app, polyamorous dating apps, etc.)
  • Queries related to community search (swinger community, swinger websites)
  • Queries related to searching for the clubs in certain GEOs (swingers club, swingers party, threesome websites, san francisco swingers, san diego swingers, swinger party nyc, etc.). In the beginning, we had doubts that such queries could bring in leads for the app, so we created two pages to test them. Once they reached the top 5, we studied the dynamics of conversions from such pages in the App Store and came up with the conclusion that such pages have less competition and are virtually the same in terms of leads

Collecting the semantic core

According to the selected points of growth, we started to collect a semantic core, collecting it for 20+ pages during the first phase. Later, we gradually increased this number.

Terms of reference for texts

When drafting the terms of reference for copywriters, first and foremost we were guided by the structure of competitors’ texts. It was also important for us to supplement the existing content in the top with some unique and useful subheadings so that Google could understand that our content is way more useful.

As our goal is not just to reach the top and get traffic on requests, but also to bring leads for the app, the team worked on the ToR from this perspective as well. We added links to the App Store page, wrote calls to action, and published high-quality comparison tables showing the benefits of our app compared to others. These efforts paid off in the future.

It is also worth mentioning that finding a copywriter who can write texts with quality and accuracy in such a complex niche is another challenge. Having selected several candidates with good portfolios, with the help of test assignments that our team checked together with the client, we have selected the best contractor.

Technical audit of the site

The audit consisted of 37 items, in 24 of which we found errors, making up the ToR for correction.

 

Program implementation Inspection result Priority Contractor
1. IP site analysis ОК
2. Checking the website for viruses, malicious scripts, and blacklisting ОК
3 Checking for the elements that may negatively impact user’s interaction with the website ОК
4. Checking for availability and correctness of forming SEO-Friendly URLs (CNC) correct high software engineer
5. Checking for the gluing of mirrors and complete duplications ОК
6. Checking for a complete duplication of content ОК medium software engineer
7. Checking for technical pages,pages with duplicate content,or with no content in the index correct high контент-менеджер
8. Checking for correctness of the server’s responses to the page request ОК
9. Checking the page code for HTML and CSS errors correct high software engineer
10. Checking the existence of an SSL certificate or errors in its settings correct low software engineer
11. Checking for hidden or spam links to external resources correct medium software engineer
12. Checking for the correctness of robots.txt file set up correct high software engineer
13. Connect GWT correct low клиент/оптимизатор
14. Connect GA ОК
15. Check Sitemap.xml correct medium software engineer
16. Checking for CSS and JS availability correct medium software engineer
17. Checking microformats correct low software engineer
18. Checking social media buttons correct medium software engineer
19. Checking website loading speed correct medium software engineer
20. Checking for the availability and optimization of multilingualism correct low software engineer
21. Checking the availability of mobile version of the site and the responsiveness of the site on different types of devices ОК
22. Checking for the elements (commercial factors) on the pages required for ranking in this topic ОК
23. Checking for the partial content duplication correct high software engineer
24. Is the content visible with the JavaScript turned off ОК

 

Content Inspection result Priority Contractor
25. Checking for affiliates ОК
26. Checking the location settings in GWT correct high client/optimizer
27. Checking for the correctness of forming meta tags correct high content manager
28. Checking for availability of landing pages for semantic core correct high content manager
29. Checking the availability/uniqueness of the content on the site ОК
30. Checking for the text content optimization correct high content manager
31. Checking for availability of content formatting ОК

 

Structure and re-linking Inspection result Priority Contractor
32. Checking for availability of “bread crumbs” menu correct medium software engineer
33. Checking for re-linking on the website correct high software engineer
34. Checking for the broken links on the website correct high software engineer

 

Usability Inspection result Priority Contractor
35. Scroll on the home page correct medium software engineer
36. Add links to the menu correct low software engineer
37. Finalize the job pages correct low software engineer

 

Since the site runs on WordPress, there was no difficulty in fixing bugs, and the software engineer of the client was able to fix some of them by installing add-on plugins.

External optimization

As we mentioned above, in such a frontier niche it is extremely hard to find quality donors at affordable prices. In addition to the standard methods of linkbuilding (purchasing through link exchangers, registration in trust directories, placing links on trust UGC-sites, crowd-marketing), our team used even more labor-intensive methods, namely outreach, which can be divided into 2 types:

  • standard outreach — We selected sites according to the necessary metrics and established relationships with the site owners. We published unique articles with the links on these sites.
  • outreach based on “Link insertion” scheme — actually the same outreach, yet in this scheme we inserted the link into existing articles on donor sites that are already ranked in the top for the keywords we are interested in and have their own links. From our experience, these types of links work way better than writing and posting new articles, and they can also bring additional referral traffic to the site. However, it is worth noting that this link building method is more expensive and has very little effect on a limited budget without a synergy with other methods.

Results on the project

We displayed the current results on positions in the screenshots for clarity. Until then all queries had been ranked for the project outside the top 100+, as such pages were missing on the site.

Swingers app

Swinger community

Threesome app

Swinger party

Threesome websites

San Francisco swingers

Swinger clubs in San Diego

Swingers club NYC

Swinger clubs in Los Angeles

Conclusion

While promoting the site, our team encountered difficulties in finding topics that would convert into leads for the application, as well as difficulties in link building. However, due to the high level of competence of the optimizers and experience in similar niches, we managed to achieve great results with a limited budget for the links.

Project participants

Project Manager: Kateryna Tymoshenko

Optimizer: Yurii Oshchapovskyi

Linker: Yevhen Fedchenko

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