From 10K to 40K: How We Increased Marketplace Traffic in Just 1 Year with Killer Content & Smart Backlinks
Like any other website, marketplaces also need a solid SEO strategy to grow. For the past year, we’ve been working with a marketplace connecting D2C/B2C brands and marketing agencies with influencers and content creators to help businesses cement their presence on social media platforms and purchase their products.
From around 10,000 organic visits a month in May 2022 to June 2023, the client is now enjoying a healthy flow of 40,000 visits monthly, representing a 4x increase in organic traffic. And those numbers are only going up!
This case study is a walkthrough of how we at Embarque, managed to triple the traffic of our client in a marketplace niche mostly through:
- Developing a content strategy tailored to maximize conversion and engagement by understanding customer pain points.
- Robust backlink structure to improve Domain Authority (DA).
We thoroughly reviewed our client's metrics and data to diagnose the flaws in their SEO strategy. As always, we were able to pinpoint the exact issue that needed correction.
The Problem – Unfocused, Unoptimised Content Strategy & A Weak Backlink Structure
It was clear from the get-go what we had to do to get the client to the front page when we partnered up with them in mid-2022.
Firstly, the client didn’t have a cohesive content strategy. While they had several blog articles up and running, they weren’t targeting the right topics or keywords to help them rank well and bring in new readers and clients.
Secondly, the backlink structure of the site was weak, and the site’s Domain Rating (DR) was low. If we wanted later rounds of content to rank higher and draw in more traffic, it was crucial that we got to work on building a strong backlink profile and improving the client’s Domain Authority (DA).
As of May 2022, when Embarque took over, the client’s website was averaging around 8,300 visits per month.
The amount of referring domains (backlinks) was also low at only 564.
The Solution — Developing a Cohesive Content Strategy and Building Strong Backlinks
The client performed the keyword research, while our team started working on creating a comprehensive content package.
The content package included a batch of content for their blog per month, all using tried-and-tested formats for marketplace SEO, such as:
- How-tos
- Insights
- Product listicles
- “What are ‘X’”- Informative articles
- Reviews
Our content ops team also developed a cheat sheet that included the language, tone, and style for all the articles, ensuring that our writers have everything they need to create engaging content.
The client’s in-house team provided briefs on topics and keywords they wanted to target. These briefs served as the cores around which we created the content.
In addition to content creation, we then helped our client build a robust internal linking structure for their website. We organized their web-pages into different tiers based on their monthly traffic:
- Tier 1: Pages with over 1,000 monthly traffic.
- Tier 2: Pages with 101-1,000 monthly traffic.
- Tier 3: Pages with 1-100 monthly traffic.
- Tier 4: Pages with no traffic.
Then we strategically linked new pages with Tier 1 and Tier 2 pages to maximize their visibility and authority. We also connected category listing pages to relevant blog posts, like linking a page listing "Gen X influencers for hire" to a blog post about hiring Gen X influencers.
Lastly, external link-building was also on the task list for this client. To that end, we supplied them with backlinks from our link-building partners with DAs of 30 or over, that had organic traffic exceeding 1,000 monthly US and UK visitors.
The Results — x4 Organic Traffic in a Year and x2 Clicks
One year after we officially started working with our client, their site shot through many milestones in regard to organic traffic and referring domains. From around 10,000 visits per month in May 2022, the site enjoyed over 40,000 monthly visits in June 2023.
The effort we put into building their linking structure also paid off.
They had just 581 referring domains in May 2022, a drastic difference from the 2,628 referrals they were receiving as of July 2023.
According to Google Search Console, between May 2022 to July 2023, clicks were doubled, and impressions were tripled as well..
Key Takeaways
- A cohesive content strategy is critical: The client’s growth was hampered by not having a content strategy in place. While they did have a blog, they weren’t targeting topics or keywords that were going to get them ranked on SERPs.
- Have a content cheat sheet to maximize your conversion potential: To ensure our writers would create content to drive conversions for the client, we provided cheat sheets and outlines to ensure they were hitting all the right notes, outlining the desired formats, topics, language, and style for each individual piece of content.
- A solid linking profile still underpins a good SEO strategy: Every article we delivered came loaded with internal links to improve the client’s website structure. Our linking specialists also sought backlinks from reputable sites within their niche to organically boost the site’s linking profile.
Hot Wire Your SEO Strategy with Embarque!
Besides this client, our team has also worked with dozens of clients to help them build their content strategy and SEO campaign from the ground up. Whether it was helping Flick reach 9.5 yearly visitors or helping Valheim gain $35,000 in revenue, our results speak for themselves!
Interested? Send us an email (julian@embarque.io), and we’ll get back to you immediately!