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      92% of queries in TOP 10 for the restaurant network

      Author
      Author: Yurii Oshchapovskyi
      Optimizer
      Reviewer
      Head of SEO
      2023-04-12

      Client

      Eurasia is the chain of Japanese and European restaurants in Kyiv and neighboring cities. The chain has more than 20 restaurants.

      Our goal

      Increase non-brand traffic in the priority direction.

      The priority direction is sushi. This direction can be divided into 3 parts:

      The assessment criterion of our work by the client is the growth of ranking as an intermediate metric in the short term, followed by the growth of traffic.

      Source data:

      Region: Kyiv and neighboring cities

      Start of work: June 14, 2022

      Project features: Traffic on the project varies significantly depending on the situation in the country. For instance, traffic drops significantly during the large-scale shelling of Ukraine.

      Language: Ukrainian, Russian (focus on the Russian version)

      Search Engine: Google

      Challenges

      From the very start of working on the project, we regularly encountered critical issues that slowed down the promotion process, and sometimes almost completely disrupted it. The issues we encountered were as follows:

      Software engineers on the project are not ours, but client's. According to them, CMS is hard to refine and it takes much more time. This may slow down the process of placing MT, texts, and creating new pages, which should be created a lot, in order to cover all key queries we are interested in.

      The priority of tasks is on the side of software engineers. Software engineers were often busy with other tasks not related to SEO, which also slowed down the process of creating new pages and technical revisions.

      Chain letter. In February 2023, when some pages had already been developed and the website had a good ranking, our team received a "chain letter" from the CL:

      Hello, sorry for writing on my day off, we had a trouble yesterday, disk was damaged on the hosting and the site data is now for July 2022 🙁

      We will have to collect information in the next business day on what and where to post and restore.

      So, as you understand, we're rolling back to the very beginning.

      All edits, texts, and MTs are gone.

      I will ask CL to post the MTs and texts shortly.

      ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING WE DID ON THE WEBSITE FOR HALF A YEAR HAS DISAPPEARED!

      The most difficult thing in this situation - the lack of backup from hosting (hosting was not the best and we immediately asked to change it).The team promptly determined the works that should be restored as soon as possible, before Google saw the problem. The priority was given to:

      1. МТ
      2. Texts
      3. Technical edits

      Within a week or so, software engineers managed to restore almost all of the critical edits, and we sent the website for reindexing. We managed to avoid a significant drawdown of positions, but for some queries, we were not able to return the previous positions.

      However, despite global, critical issues and long delays in making edits and creating pages, we managed to perform well.

      Competitor and niche analysis

      Large chains of self-service and sushi delivery restaurants are ranked in the top 10 in this niche for the majority of queries. Most of the restaurants operate not only in Kyiv, but have also expanded their chain to other Ukrainian cities. All projects are engaged in SEO promotion, expanding the structure of the website, and elaborating on filtering.

      Our experts conducted a comparative analysis of the basic metrics of the promoted website with its competitors. Data was taken from Ahrefs.com.

      Target Domain Rating Domains Total Backlinks Total Keywords Total Traffic
      evrasia.in.ua/

      28

      536

      23883

      4114

      119631

      sushiya.ua/

      53

      491

      4707

      6162

      70343

      mafia.ua/

      42

      918

      34694

      9272

      182169

      sushiwok.ua/

      22

      231

      7413

      6606

      182154

      sushi-point.com.ua/

      34

      358

      1455

      4401

      42995

      bagatolososia.kiev.ua/

      19

      141

      506

      597

      4135

      www.tarantino-family.com/

      43

      404

      4663

      8067

      73708

      ninjasushi.com.ua/

      39

      303

      4924

      4250

      71035

      kyiv.sushi-master.ua/

      44

      640

      2778

      5467

      103929

      966.ua/

      30

      1270

      116086

      3204

      115534

      As you can see, the number of donors is at a fairly optimal level compared to competitors, yet the quality of the (DR) is lower.

      As you can see, evrasia.in.ua has a lot of organic traffic, however, most of the traffic is brand traffic. Looking at the frequency of branded queries, we can see this.


      92% of queries in TOP 10 for the restaurant network 1

      This is the reason why the task in the promotion sounded like "Increase of non-brand traffic in the priority direction".

      Based on the analysis, we have planned the work in two areas:

      1. Gradually build up quality links, so that the website had only a high-quality link mass.
      2. Expand the structure of the website as much as possible in the priority direction.

      Searching for the points of growth of the website

      To find the points of growth and expand the structure of the website we:

      All these methods help to maximize the quality of the website structure, practically in any niche. We have identified the following key points of growth for evrasia.in.ua:

      Work process

      Technical optimization

      From a technical point of view, the website was very poorly implemented. There have been issues with duplications, as well as elementary linking between the pages promoted.

      Technical audit of the website included 41 points. Errors were found in 20 of them. All errors were assigned a technical specification for correction.


      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 medium software engineer
      3 Domain history analysis ОК
      4 Checking for the elements that may negatively impact the user's interaction with the website ОК
      5. Checking whether SEO-Friendly URLs (CNC) are available and correctly formed ОК
      6. Checking for the gluing of mirrors and complete duplications correct high software engineer
      7. Checking for complete duplication of the content correct high software engineer
      8. Checking for the pages with or without duplicated content in the index correct high software engineer
      9. Ensuring the 404 page is working correctly ОК
      10 Checking the page code for HTML and CSS errors ОК medium software engineer
      11. Checking an SSL certificate or errors in its settings correct high software engineer
      12. Checking for hidden or spam links to external resources ОК
      13. Ensure the robots.txt file is set up correctly correct high software engineer
      14. Connect GWT ОК
      15. Connect GA ОК
      16. Checking Sitemap.xml correct high software engineer
      17. Checking CSS and JS availability ОК
      18. Checking microformats correct high software engineer
      19. Checking social media buttons ОК
      20. Checking website loading speed correct high software engineer
      21. Checking for the availability and optimization of the multilingualism correct high software engineer
      22. Checking for the availability of the mobile version of the website ОК
      23. Checking for the adaptivity of the website on different devices ОК
      24. Checking for the correct output of the text content ОК
      25. Checking for the availability of elements (commercial factors) on the pages required for ranking in this subject correct high software engineer
      26. Checking for the partial duplication of the content correct high software engineer
      27. Eliminate the removal of irrelevant and out-of-stock items ОК
      28. Checking for the content in the code of pages that is not displayed on the pages of the site correct high software engineer
      29. Checking the visibility of content and site elements with JavaScript disabled ОК
      30. Checking the website for compliance with the guidelines for assessors correct high software engineer

      Content Inspection result Priority Contractor
      31. Checking for affiliates ОК high software engineer
      32. Checking location settings in GWT ОК
      33. Checking the correctness of meta tags formation correct high content manager
      34. Checking the availability/uniqueness of the website content correct high content manager
      35. Checking the optimization of text content correct high content manager
      36. Checking the availability of content formatting ОК

      Structure and linking Inspection result Priority Contractor
      37. Checking the availability of "bread crumbs" menu ОК
      38. Checking for re-linking on the site correct medium software engineer
      39. Checking for indexable, optimized filter pages ОК
      40. Broken links on the website correct medium software engineer
      41. Image optimization ОК

      Semantic core

      Having determined the points of growth, we started to collect the semantic core in Ukrainian and Russian languages. For the most part, semantics consists of more than 1000 search queries in 120 semantic groups (1 page = 1 semantic group in most cases)


      92% of queries in TOP 10 for the restaurant network 2

      Working with the content

      Once our specialists collected the semantic core, they checked the position of the site across all SC to have a better understanding of which pages we need to write the texts on, and on which to rewrite the existing ones. Technical assignments on writing texts for the website pages have been compiled. In total, around 100 texts were written for the Ukrainian and Russian versions of the site.

      Part of the pages we plan to create are still in the works on the side of KL software engineers. The implementation of our tasks on creating pages with the new design proved to be quite labor-intensive on this CMS.

      Building up an external link mass

      The first step when working on the link mass of any project is to analyze the current link mass. We carried out an audit and created the list of low-quality donors that could negatively impact the site. The entire list was rejected by Google Search Console.

      The second stage of working on the link mass is building up quality links to the website. We used several methods to achieve this:

      Results of the project

      Despite the fact that some of the pages we have not yet created, the project has already shown very good results. As the frequency of queries in Russian version of the website is much higher than in Ukrainian, it was decided to place more emphasis on the Russian version. According to the positions below, it is clear that Ukrainian version of the site is slightly lagging behind the Russian version.

      Sushi self-delivery


      92% of queries in TOP 10 for the restaurant network 3

      Sushi delivery


      92% of queries in TOP 10 for the restaurant network 4

      Sushi


      92% of queries in TOP 10 for the restaurant network 5

      Sushi bar


      92% of queries in TOP 10 for the restaurant network 6

      Rolls


      92% of queries in TOP 10 for the restaurant network 7

      Sushi Promo

      We got very fast results for this page simply by correctly optimizing Title and H1.


      92% of queries in TOP 10 for the restaurant network 8

      Sushi


      92% of queries in TOP 10 for the restaurant network 9

      Sushi delivery


      92% of queries in TOP 10 for the restaurant network 10

      Rolls (Ukr)


      92% of queries in TOP 10 for the restaurant network 11

      Conclusion

      Despite high competition, a relatively weak link profile and the difficulties described above, our team managed to show good, and on some pages, very fast results.

      For example, it took only one week to raise the "Sushi Promo" group from the top 10 to the top 2 (see the screen above). The page "Rolls" from the top 50+ hit the top 1-3 only a month and a half after the start of work.

      We achieved such results due to high-quality content, proper optimization and good selection of donors for link building.

      Participants of the project

      Project Manager: Kateryna Tymoshenko

      Optimizer: Yurii Oshchapovskyi

      Linker: Yevhen Fedchenko