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

      Author
      Author: Yurii Oshchapovskyi
      Optimizer
      Reviewer
      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

      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:

      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:

      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:

      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.


      SEO for a U.S.-based application site in a frontier niche 1

      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 and Yandex Webmaster 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:

      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


      SEO for a U.S.-based application site in a frontier niche 2

      Swinger community


      SEO for a U.S.-based application site in a frontier niche 3

      Threesome app


      SEO for a U.S.-based application site in a frontier niche 4

      Swinger party


      SEO for a U.S.-based application site in a frontier niche 5

      Threesome websites


      SEO for a U.S.-based application site in a frontier niche 6

      San Francisco swingers


      SEO for a U.S.-based application site in a frontier niche 7

      Swinger clubs in San Diego


      SEO for a U.S.-based application site in a frontier niche 8

      Swingers club NYC


      SEO for a U.S.-based application site in a frontier niche 9

      Swinger clubs in Los Angeles


      SEO for a U.S.-based application site in a frontier niche 10

      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