Vitaliy Gershfeld

There are 5 sites I’ve been growing through SEO and despite the talks of how this business is dead, I will prove why it is not so by showing their stats.

Not only that but there are countless people who I personally know who are also growing their traffic organically via Google search and through the very same legit strategies I’ll be showing you in this post.

These people, myself and the countless others are seeing results and if you also include the 100’s of millions of personal blogs that are also ranking high for big keywords on Google, how can anyone say that this method is dead?

Well I have an answer for that:

People have become lazy and/or misinformed about it.

1) Let’s start with the lazy SEO people…

They either understand or don’t understand that building a website to rank high organically takes both time and a lot of content production effort on their part to reach (It’s how the SEO trends work every year). If they understand this, they usually quit because they don’t want to work to reach this point.

They also don’t know or understand how the Google sandbox or the Google dance works and how it should be expected for any new site to experience for about 6 months.

And if they don’t understand this, they will usually try to “skip” this process by trying to build up their site through none white hat methods of SEO (Black & grey hat) which I am 100% against. The very fact that so many people used these bad methods for so many years was one of the reasons why Google was forced to make ranking on their search harder for people to see success with it in the first place. 

2) And then there are the misinformed individuals.

People who are new or misinformed about SEO are usually not to blame for having this problem. To this day, I find a lot of misleading information on this very subject.

There are countless black hat and grey hat people going around and preaching about how success is easy on Google if people buy their “proven” guides or software programs. 

There are also countless people who themselves are misinformed about this, but don’t know it, and preach about the wrong ways to do it, while also parroting other people who don’t understand it either. 

One of the worst places I see this specific problem occur is in within the Quora forums. Sometimes I grab my head from reading the ranking advice people give out there and I know it’s going to lead people’s sites to ruin and I’ve tried a few times to provide the right information when I see the wrong kind given out, but I usually find that my advice is drowned out by people who are offering “easy” ways to do SEO and that is the advice that people asking the questions follow. 

If you are just getting into SEO, know this:

Any brand new website can reach ranking success organically on Google if it follows a specific plan that I will lay out. It is the same one I’ve used on the 5 websites I’ll be talking about in a moment.

All of these 5 sites started as brand new pages, that I build up and they all went through the same ranking obstacles (the sandbox, the Google dance, the waiting time to see rankings pick up, ect…) and now, most of them are seeing high rankings, good traffic and the others which haven’t reached that point are set to, as long as I keep doing what to those sites, what I did to the ones that are experiencing the good results.

In other words…

The process always plays out the same way if you know it and know what to expect.

Here is the process (I promise you, it 100% leads to SEO success):

These are the 5 things I’ve done on the 5 sites I’ll be showing you and they are ALL growing as a result. And it’s just something I know to expect, which is why I know with 100% certainty that SEO is not dead.

Let’s get to the 5 sites, their rankings and offer proof of this:

What I will be doing is providing a screenshot of the organic traffic stats each site is getting, based off Google Webmaster Tools reporting.

While each of these sites are also getting traffic from social media and some from paid advertising, these particular graphs are showcasing ONLY the organic rankings the sites get from Google search, which is meant to prove how and why this formula works:

Site 1:

Currently, site 1 is my most successful and it was the first official website where I properly applied the same formula above. I use this site as the perfect reference for teaching people how to build theirs and I also used it as reference for the other 4.

Site 2:

I want to make a note with this site that I began seeing the good ranking results in about 3 months. However, I don’t post often on this site and it’s because of this that traffic is small. Yet, it doesn’t change the fact that by following the same methods, it’s still very active. I have a method of keeping sites improving in rankings even if i don’t post frequently that I’ll show you below, that helps keep the sites growing anyway.

Site 3:

The story with this website is the same as with site 2.

Site 4:

This may be the most ironic example of SEO out of all the sites, because it actually showcases this very website. Yet if you look at these stats, you’d think that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Getting 1-4 clicks a day from Google and preaching about how to do SEO at the same time in this article seems hypocritical. But I can tell you that this site (HHS) is still a new page and that is why you are seeing these low traffic numbers.

The other sites above which are doing well, all started like this one and grew to the numbers you see in those screenshots, and the very same thing WILL happen to this site too. 

I started HHS in August-September of 2018, and in this niche’s case, I had to wait at LEAST 6 months to see some organic traffic numbers to kick in, but…I expected this and it was only in March of 2019, that it began to slowly grow. In a few months, I’ll update that screenshot and show you the changes to prove that this expectation of higher traffic numbers was and will be an accurate prediction.

Site 5:

The last site out of the 5 is a perfect example of a new website that has been in the sandbox for a very long time and is starting to come out of it. The red rectangle and the time period it shows is what EVERY new website will experience and like I’ve warned many times: Do not worry about it.

This very site is picking up impressions and clicks and I am actually planning on building it up such that it may become my biggest website out of the 5. But the good thing about this example is that it shows how the slow growth (and actual growth) always happens if you follow the formula.

More strategies to improve rankings:

I also need to note that even if you follow this formula, while you WILL see results, not every single page will rank high and in those instances, when I see this happening on any one of my websites, I do the following 15 things that help improve that.

In the process, the rankings, clicks and traffic ALL pick up, almost 100% of the time!

So stop moping about SEO being dead, I proved it’s not true. Now do this:

Also one more thing I’d like to add is that YouTube has also become another major opportunity:

If I write a blog post or add a new page to my website, the first thing I will be asked is to provide a headline for that. That is what the meta title is. 

Here is a simple example of a meta title:

But beyond that simplicity is potential, and it has to do with SEO:

• If you can have a GOOD meta title.
• If you can also use a keyword with it.
• If you can provide good content with all of this.

Then through the power of Google and SEO, you can drive a lot of visitors to your site. This is what I will show you how to do, correctly.

You see, it’s taken me many years, many corrections and many missed opportunities to truly appreciate how important meta titles are. If I had known what I am about to teach you, I would have gotten MILLIONS of more visitors to my websites and made a lot more money than I currently have.

But while I made the corrections and learned the lessons I am about to teach you, I don’t want you going through the same mistakes I did, so let me explain just how important it is that you GET this subject as well as I do now:

Why meta titles are so important for SEO:

There’s a very simple example I’m about to show you:

Suppose 100 bloggers create a blog, whose topic is exactly the same, but the content within each written blog post is unique.

99 of these bloggers decide to use the same boring headline while the 100th blogger decides to make his a bit more attractive. 

When all 100 of these bloggers publish their blog, and Google begins to crawl and see which of these blogs deserves to be ranked highest, there is a VERY high probability that the 100th person who decided to spice it up gets the highest position, and with that, the highest influx of traffic.

You see, the reason for this happening is because when people look for on Google for the content that those bloggers wrote about, they will be shown those blogs, but the person who has the best looking headline will be the ones which gets the most clicks and views, it will simply stand out above the other 99.

And as long as the 100th person who gets the most attention writes good content, the people who click on his blog to read it will provide positive feedback, that Google will then use to give that blog extra leverage in rankings. 

What does this mean? It means more traffic.

Most people who create sites and blogs don’t understand how important this concept is.

If you can be that 100th person and utilize meta titles correctly (as well as other metadata that’s also connected to titles), you have the chance to hook the majority of eyes which will see that content and as long as you keep giving the eyes that clicked on your blog more reason to read that blog, you will only see more rankings and traffic from Google as a result.

I really can’t go any deeper into how important this whole thing is. I suppose someone who lost millions in potential visitors to his site would truly relate and understand the potential of what I’m talking about here, but perhaps I’m just too focused on my past failures…

How to make sure you get meta titles and SEO right:

The simple idea is that you need to start with…

A highly searched keyword.

As long as your headline includes a keyword which MANY people type into Google, there’s a great chance that Google will give your site a chance to appear for that keyword and get as many eyes as possible viewing it. Now don’t neglect how important this is. 

I do not recommend that you ever write a new page or blog post on your site that doesn’t target a highly searched keyword. If you do, then odds are you will probably spend a lot of time writing content that never gets rankings for keywords which really matter for ranking, that being the ones which actually get searches.

But to really help this materialize…

You need to actually make the keyword better than it really is.

And it all happens in the meta title (a ranking factor). Take whatever keyword you found, but add more words to it to make that keyword sound and look better. Here are several examples that will speak for themselves:

I promise you that with strategies like these, you will really help improve the odds that Google gives your particular page/blog enough initial exposure for the keyword that enough audiences see it, click it and give you enough link juice to help it rank higher.

And as long as this rule is followed it with every new page/blog post you put out, you are going to really see more and faster traffic numbers coming into your site.

Again, go back to that example of the 100 bloggers. In connection with this tutorial, 99 bloggers are all targeting a highly searched keyword, but it’s that 1 other person who also targets it, but makes it look better in his headline that will succeed.

Note: Try to keep your headlines short. Long headlines generally do not get good SEO points.

And finally, beyond all of this, the content has to rock.

Meta titles are the hook to get people into the site, but then after that, the content you write is what will truly be the difference maker. 

You need to analyze all this info I gave you from a point of view of someone who is walking around a street and seeing a store/restaurant they want to go into.

Once they do, the store/restaurant better have good stuff in it to give the person who entered a good excuse to stay. 

That is exactly how you need to look at headlines and as a followup the content for it. If you can truly understand that, then you can truly experience the potential of high rankings in Google and the audiences it can bring in to your website.

Initially yes, but in the long run, no. These are the immediate answers to the question on whether or not WordPress tags help with SEO.

And in this article, I’ll give you my expert thoughts on this as it’s something I’ve thought about for years and have experience with, as well as cite other, even bigger experts who say the same thing.

So here you will get 3 expert opinions on this subject and they all basically say the same thing. But just so we’re all clear…

What are WordPress tags?

When you have a WP website, and create new pages or posts of content, you have the option to add tags to these things with every new article you create. Specifically these are “keyword tags”.

Here is an example:

Why is this even considered important for SEO?

The implication is that by filling these tags in with keywords for which you wish Google to rank you for, that it will actually do that and as a result you can just write up a plethora of keywords you wish to get rankings for, and it’ll be done.

There is this belief that once you publish a new page or post with content on WP, that when Google comes in, it not only looks at your content, your title and the keyword in it, but the keyword tags you included in the above image and based on what keywords you added there, it will rank you it.

This a nice thing to believe…

But is this really true? Let me explain why the answer is not really…

Allow me to be the 1st of the 3 SEO experts to explain why I personally don’t even use these things on my websites and yet I get high rankings with my targeted keywords most of the time. Now while you can USE them, do not overrate their importance, because in the end, they really aren’t that big of a deal to use.

Let me give you proof by showcasing one of my websites where the keywords it targets are listed in the title of the article and there is a lot of content for the said article, but there are NO tags associated with it, and yet it still does fine with the organic search results (SEO):

And if you think I’m lying about me not using any tags for the said keywords, let me show you screenshots of the actual area inside the WordPress site in question, the articles associated with the image above, and the fact that none of them use these:

If the rule about tags and SEO would apply, why are these articles I wrote getting such high rankings regardless? Clearly something is amiss…

Now one could argue that if I used tags with the said posts, that I’d get more traffic, but the truth is that in the end, you cannot tell Google, through THIS method at least, what to rank you for, it decides. All you can do is list the keyword in your title, try to write the best content possible and then hope for the best with them, that’s really the MAIN point here…

Now I know this doesn’t exactly sound like something an SEO expert would say and that there’s got to be a way to rank #1, all the time for any keyword you want, that’s the hope people have, but it’s not the right mindset. The SEO game does not work like this.

There’s one main reason for this:

Google’s ranking algorithm is far more advanced than you think.

It determines the BEST results (keyword searches) to rank your site for BASED on the title and CONTENT of the article (the most important metadata), and since the topic of this article is regarding tags, they really have very little to NOTHING to do in this whole ranking process.

If they did, people would just be writing the most competitive, highly searched keywords they could think about in the tags section and getting rankings for that, but you don’t determine that, Google does and it bases it on other parameters (content and keywords in the title mainly).

It’s like telling Google you “deserve” to get ranked for certain keywords, but then Google checks out your material (content) and determines you’re not worthy of that. If you are, you will need to show them that through your content and the keyword you’re targeting in the title.

Understand this and your SEO game will elevate…

Getting feedback from expert #2 on the subject:

There was a period when I used to think about this very same subject and be paranoid about it, so I reached out to an expert in this field, very recently actually, who happens to be one of the guys who taught me much of what I am sharing with you in this article today (and this website).

His name is Kyle and he has made millions from doing SEO.

Here was his response:

Now even though I consider myself an expert, I am very fortunate to have people like this, who know more than I do, steer me in the right path.

His answer pretty much solidified theory I had about this subject.

Now you may note that he said he still uses them on his site, but admits they mean very little so this goes back to the first answer I gave when I started this article, on how all this stuff has little to no effect on SEO, but you’re still welcome to use it.

Let’s see how the last expert (#3) sees this subject:

The last expert in this article who I am using to add credibility to my position is also VERY successful at the game of SEO. He does local marketing projects for clients.

In fact, I have used his techniques to help my clients as well. Here is a local case study I literally just wrote on a few days ago.

In addition he also works with Kyle (expert #2) in the same organization that ALL of us are a part of and in that organization, he provides lessons on SEO to the community. I have learned much from this guy too, his name is Jay Niell. 

But now that we got his resume out of the way, let me explain a few things about him and this subject:

Now I have to say that I’ve never actually seen Jay’s specific position and statement on tags being used in WordPress sites, BUT I have gone through several of his SEO tutorials and seen his site personally and the clues in those areas show me what his position on this subject is:

First of all, Jay runs a website which I look at sometimes and I have never seen him use those things in his articles. This is clue #1.

Clue #2 is that in the SEO tutorials Jay provides, especially the ones where he provides a list of things necessary to rank high in Google, tags are NEVER mentioned (here is a good list that both he and I use on our sites). 

It is because of these 2 things that I believe Jay’s position on this subject is at the very least like mine and/or like Kyle’s and being that we all come from the same SEO training background, this is also another reason to assume what we do. But if he comes to this site and comments on it himself, that will really solidify that 🙂

Conclusions:

I am absolutely certain that you are going to find SEO people who will claim that our positions are wrong and that we should be doing the opposite in this case.

But considering that all 3 of us make good money from SEO, we probably are doing something right and the last thing we’d want to do in this case is leave money on the table, so if there was a truly good reason to use tags on your WordPress site, believe me, we would be doing it.

• But I’ve personally shown you my results from NOT using them.
• I’ve explained Kyle’s position who earns millions from his SEO work.
• And I’ve also shown you the results and training tutorials of another SEO expert I talk to.

We all say the same thing basically. But even in spite of all of this, you are still paranoid about not using these things, just do it, they will not negatively impact your SEO results anyway, just don’t prioritize them, focus on the main SEO parameters I listed.

The truth about rankings on Google is that 99% of the time, they will be too low to get you good traffic. But I’ll show you my 15 proven ways to improve them.

Here’s just a small sample of some of the high positioned pages I have occupied thanks to these methods:

Now originally, this guide had 10 ways listed on how to improve your search engine rankings, especially on Google, but I did improve upon that and added 5 more important ones. I follow these 15 guidelines every single time for the following circumstances:

• Either I’ll have an existing page that isn’t ranking well enough and a considerable time has passed to know that it won’t go any higher.
• Or I’ll make sure that a new page of content I create has all of the things checked off on it to basically maximize the odds that it’ll hit the first page and even first spot on Google.

Yet, despite these insured ways of doing SEO (it’s pretty much the most important things you can do), I will still admit to you (any legitimate SEO expert will admit this too), that it’s still IMPOSSIBLE to rank on the first spot or page on Google for every single keyword you attempt to do it for.

And this is especially the case for the more higher volume/higher competition keywords you try to appear for. So moving forward, I need you to understand that while my approach WORKS, its not a complete guarantee.

However, any improvement to your existing, bad rankings is better than nothing right?

Well if you agree with this, and you want to get more traffic, then I promise you, my 10 ways WILL help you get closer to that at the very least, and at the very most, you’ll still get more traffic than you did before. I’m certainly practicing these methods, and I wouldn’t be doing it, if I knew they were a waste of time, so you already know I’m not aiming to waste yours…

Again, there’s actually 15 methods (There’s a video below showing them for extra help):

The first 10 methods are actually an insurance to make sure your page does as best as it can in the SERPS initially, and the next 5 methods will actually explain what to do if the first 10 aren’t enough to do it, which MAY happen.

So consider the extra 5 methods as extra insurance. More methods used = more chances of higher positions, and who would be against that?

Anyway here are the first 10:

Now if ANY of these 10 things I just listed are new to you are things you do not understand or need more clarity on, I’ve got great news:

Read this post where I literally detail each one and explain how they IMPROVE positioning on Google.

The fact of the matter is that each of these things I just listed are all ensuring that you’re producing high quality content on your page that is optimized for both Google to spot it and rank it easily, and when people read it, to have them have an enjoyable reading experience that is noted by Google, to also help push it further up in the SERPS.

These are current, past and future trends you WILL want to practice for great SEO results.

Now this is what I want you to do (good homework for you):

1) Go through every single article you have on your site, and optimize it according to those 10 things. Make absolutely sure you are NOT changing ANY permalink on ANY page (method 2 on the list), because if you do, you are going to create 404 errors.

So just don’t touch it, only change the title and content, but leave the link (permalink) intact.

2) As you create NEW content (and you need to if you wish to get higher rankings for the site and past pages), ALSO use these 10 tips whilst it’s being made, then publish it once you know the new article you created has all 10 tips included.

Next, only use the next 3 methods if…

Your site is OVER 6 months old.

If your site is NOT this old, and you updated your old and new articles with the methods above, do not touch them, just optimize it once and leave it alone while publishing new articles.

What happens to sites that are under 6 months old is that they are in the Google Sandbox, and until that period passes, it won’t matter how much you optimize your pages, they will not rank well. So while you should use these 10 tips I gave on existing and new pages, if your site is in the Google Sandbox, ONLY optimize it once, then leave it alone.

A lot of people do not know about the sandbox and expect a new site to rank high, early. This will NOT happen until 6 months pass, so let that period go by, then see if the rankings pick up. If they do, just don’t touch it and let it pick up organically.

You did the 10 things, your site is not in the sandbox, but you’re still not ranking high.

Let’s say I published content following the 10 guidelines and I did it after my site was no longer in the sandbox. Now I’ll wait at least a month and track the rankings.

How do you track keyword rankings? Here’s one free option.

If I see that it’s very stagnant (not rising at all), I will implement the next 5 following methods I’ll describe to you.

Here are the next 5 methods:

Do note that you don’t need to do all 5, but the more of them that you do, the better it’ll impact the positioning of your page.

1) Create a YouTube video and link it to the page that isn’t ranking well.

YouTube itself is an awesome place to create content and allows you to link those videos to any page you want. For SEO and ranking purposes, link the video/s you create to the page that needs a boost. Obviously, make sure your videos are actually high quality in how the content is presented. 

What happens here is that this method provides an extra, high quality backlink to your particular page that needs SEO help. I have a very good example to share with you where I did this very thing for a client and it helped his website climb to the first page.

You can also create multiple YouTube videos and link it to the same page if necessary.

For example:

Let’s suppose I write an article on 10 body language signs that show lies and the article follows through with the 10 tips laid out above.

The site it’s on is over 6 months, and after publishing this article, a month goes by and I find that the article isn’t doing well in Google, and that it hasn’t experienced any improvement. 

What I’ll do is, I’ll go to YouTube, create a video on the same subject and then link it to the very same article. That’s how this method works.

2) Publish new content and interlink it to the one/s which aren’t ranking well.

If there is one method I suggest you use to get higher rankings for your site overall, it’s to frequently publish new content. It creates new opportunities for your page to rank for other keywords and being that the more you do this, there’s more chances that more of this new content created will actually rank on the first page.

In fact, if I do everything I listed on this article and it still doesn’t raise it high enough to hit page 1 spots, I’ll keep publishing new content and finding other keywords to rank for. At least this way, I will continue to grow my site and it’s rankings.

But the purpose of this specific method, besides being good for SEO overall, is that the new content created itself should follow the 10 tips I outlined, particularly tip #5, which is internally linking and in this case, internally linking to the very same article/post that we want to get ranked higher.

3) Open up a comments section, add a share button, and encourage shares and comments within your article.

This method should itself be mandatory for every article you create, but you’d be surprised to know how people literally leave these things out of their websites and it literally can cause rankings to tank. Make sure whatever settings you use on your website (WordPress is my preferred option since it makes this easy) allow for people to actually comment on your content and share it.

Opening up the site itself for comments is literally something that takes a few clicks.

Adding the option to share the content you make is literally just adding a plugin that makes it pop up on your site. On my page, I am using the Social Pug plugin.

This very action improves rankings:

4) Improve the content (in it’s quality and in it’s quantity).

Many people who post content tend to overrate the value and quality of it and if you see that the content you post isn’t doing well, one reason why is because it needs to improve it’s quality. There’s nothing wrong with going back into a post/article that already doesn’t do well on Google and…

• Redoing it.
• Deleting sections of it and adding new, updated info.
• Just adding new content to it.

For example, suppose you reviewed a product that you rated well and news comes out that it’s bad. You would want to update your article in that case to reflect the updated information, because if people read your article and see the information is outdated (due to the news), they will negatively view your content and leave, which will affect Google rankings.

When you make these changes, you are taking steps to improve the content of the article and that already gives it better chances to get higher positions than it did before. I still do this day, look at old articles I’ve written and sometimes update them.

5) When all the changes are made, use Google fetch option.

If significant changes are made to an existing article/post you have that wasn’t doing well, make sure you let Google know about it by using the fetch tool. They will find it faster this way and while it will basically “reset” the process of the article/post ranking, it’ll set it up to have higher and better chances of hitting higher positions this time around.

These 15 methods will 100% raise your rankings, but…

Like I said before, they will NOT 100% guarantee that this rise will make the page/s hit page 1 or position 1 on Google. It is very important to know there is no such site that literally occupies position 1 on Google for every single keyword it attempts to chase.

Know that if you did not get the desired results, and that the page, despite these 15 methods did not hit the first page/spot, that you should not worry about it and continue to focus on method 12 (build up more content).

I find that many people dwell far too much on having one page with 1 targeted keyword rank high and if it doesn’t, they overspend too much time and energy trying to make it rise, when at the same time, that effort could be put to writing more content, publishing it for other keywords and getting the traffic from those efforts.

Remember, if it doesn’t rank high despite the effort you put in, let it go and continue to build the site through other keywords you’re targeting, and make sure all of them are also following the same 10 original methods.

You will find that this approach will build up your SEO, your rankings and grow your site beyond what you expected, trust me!

I’ve got another great tip for improving your Google Rankings: Updating dates.

One of the SEO experts I consult with has been suggesting that whenever you go back and make edits to previous articles or blogs on your site, that you should also update the date of that post, before you fetch it again, to show Google that you’ve made changes and updates to it. 

Now while Google will see itself (without the date change) that you’ve done this, from a visual perspective, it helps the reader see that the article they are reading isn’t that old. Plus, this same individual who I trust showed me a number of cases where this updated date method has helped his pages improve in ranking on Google.

Changing dates (updating them) should only be done if you indeed make true updates to the said content that you wish to get to rank higher. So for example, as I made edits and updates to this article (adding in the new tip), I am going to change the date this article was originally published which was on March 18th, 2019 to April 20th, 2019, aka when the edits were made. 

So just for reference, here’s ALL 15 methods listed out:

Update: I’ve created a video listing all 15 methods:

And just so you see that these methods DO work, here’s one of my websites which I’ve been applying this too (individually across each page and post):

And for this site, I have barely been putting up new content. The MAIN focus I had was optimizing my old posts and this is actually still considered a form of creating NEW, improved content, which counts just as equally for your rankings. 

Today I want to share an SEO case study in which I helped a client who runs a local small business (a self defense school) attain tons of new clients.

Basically what I did was, I optimized his website, his ads and gave him a few personal tips, which he used and as a result, many people within his business area were able to find him. 

As a result his business grew substantially and even today, there continues to be a substantial trickle of traffic and new clients coming in because his website’s SEO improved, and the business became more exposed to people looking for martial arts training in the area where the school is.

And thanks to him being happy, huge opportunities to work with other clients arose for me too, allowing me options to do SEO work for them.

In this case study, I will detail the exact things I did for this client, as well as offer personal tips you can use for your local business if you’re seeking to get online exposure, but in your specific area.

First, let me explain how it all came about…

I started training at this self defense school in 2009. After a few months of being a member there and enjoying the environment and what I was learning, I slowly began to get to know the head owner of it. We had several conversations for a reason I can’t remember, the topic of online marketing came up.

Being that I was already experienced and having success in SEO as well as using services like Adwords (Google Ads), I offered to give him a free consultation, which is one of the many great ways to get clients. He agreed, and I asked him for a day or two to take a look at his website (which he already had up for at least a year).

So I looked over his site…

And it didn’t take me long to analyze it and see that a number of huge mistakes were being made. In short, he could have been getting way more traffic than he already was.

Without going too in-depth into each problem…

Let me summarize the 3 main issues I saw on his website:

1) For starters, his school taught several different self defense arts, and there was only one page in which ALL of these arts were listed. Keep this in mind because I’ll explain how changing this part of the site resulted in his traffic stats increasing by well over 10 times! 

2) Then there was the part where he was advertising his website on Google Ads. Looking over his campaigns, his keywords, his targeting methods and how much he was spending, my hairs stood up, because in just about every single front, he was doing it wrong and overpaying substantially.

He could have been spending 90% less on ads and bringing in 10x more traffic from that as well (in addition to the free traffic from the first point).

3) Third, for one reason or another he had a YouTube video he made that was promoting his small business, which actually accumulated over 100,000 views!

I don’t recall how he did it, but the problem here was this video wasn’t linking anywhere and this was lost traffic, a lost, quality backlink that he could have been using to grow his website’s authority.

I’ll leave the other issues out of this case study, because frankly, they mean very little to these 3 and just by correcting the 3 I mentioned, the website grew in both organic and paid traffic by several times, ad costs were cut like crazy and as a result, the website started receiving a lot of traffic, which years later is still coming in at a healthy pace.

Here’s what I fixed:

1) For the first problem in which all the self defense arts were listed on one page, I told him to separate them all. In other words, dedicate one self defense art to one page and on it, write extensively on the art, and how his business, in his local area teaches it. The minimum word requirement I set was 400 words or more.

Within each page, I made it clear to provide bold headings of the art and the area it’s taught in. Why? Because for SEO, when someone in his area looks up the art, the results provided will be local and thus his page will show up.

This was repeated for every art. Now instead of having 1 page worth of content, he now had 5 or more, each with it’s own separate focus, and each ranking on Google for the specific art, in the specific area. Beautiful.

2) Second, I cleaned up his Google Ads by just pausing his entire existing campaign he set up. I didn’t erase it because I wanted to show him how my changes would compare to his and then to choose which one he wanted more.

Basically, I targeted VERY specific keywords pertaining to ONLY people looking for self defense training (in his area ONLY) and linked each ad I created to the appropriate page on his website. His costs went down substantially and his clicks rose significantly.

3) And finally, I told him to provide a simple link on YouTube video which got the 100,000 views back to his website. This also improved his SEO. And it was a good backlink.

Overall the results were huge, and it was all done through simple SEO methods that didn’t take look to update on his site. He still maintains his superiority over the competition today because of the things that were done YEARS ago.

Important SEO updates since this local case study happened:

Back when I fixed this site, there weren’t as many requirements for a local business to succeed in SEO as it is today.

So in this part of the case study, I want to include updates on what the business did (and what you should do as well if you run a local business) to keep growing the site’s traffic and success…

Just a quick note…the same changes I made on the site back then, I would still make today and they would still be JUST as important, it’s just that a few extra ingredients are needed in local SEO success today to further those results, and here they are:

Citations. 

If you run a local business, an absolute must today is setting up citations. These are networks and sites where your business is mentioned. The most important places I’d start with are: 

Once you do that, if possible, get existing customers to rate it high your business high (right on all of those sites if possible). Note, there is an update on Google+ you need to read.

This will help it rank better in Google when customers look up your business and/or the subject relating to your business in your area. I would suggest emailing them and asking them to just give your business a rating, then providing a link to the citation site where your business is listed.

The more good reviews you get, the better it looks overall for other customers who would see and consider your business.

If you would like to see/hear about more case studies I’ve done for clients/myself or have your personal questions on how to recreate this success with your local business, let me know 🙂