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

Author: Yurii Oshchapovskyi

Optimizer

Reviewer: Oleg Gavryliuk

Head of SEO

2023-05-17

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

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.

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