The content is king in SEO but the technical improvements are just as important. A perfect example of that is our client, who had a 30% increase in organic traffic, mostly thanks to the technical SEO efforts we did.
To reach our SEO goal, we had to follow a specific strategy. It included writing specification documents on site architecture, URLs, and the status of existing content. But the goal was achieved, and our client was thrilled with the results. This is how we did it.
What is the website about?
The website belongs to our longtime client, one of the most reliable and experienced real estate agencies in the country. The agency is focused on selling properties to foreign citizens, and the website was created back in 2011. Important to note is that the first version of the website was built using the old-fashioned HTML.
SEO goal – increase organic traffic by improving technical aspects of the website
Our main SEO goal was to bring more organic traffic to the website. To achieve that, we had to focus on improving technical SEO, so the plan was to do the following:
- Migrate the website to HTTPS
- Create new pages targeting commercial keywords
- Expand into a new market
Migration had to be done because the website wouldn’t rank as good if it used the old HTTP protocol. And we wanted to create new pages because of the poor site architecture, starting from the ugly and long URLs. Our client also wanted to expand into the German market, but we decided to do that after fixing everything on the main (English) version of the website.
SEO strategy – update the content and generate new pages
The migration to HTTPS was done all at once. What we did is the URL mapping – in the backend we created HTTPS versions of each page, and then added 301 redirect from the old versions to them. We also removed useless pages, i.e. the ones not bringing any traffic. Pages we considered valuable, but not part of the new static pages, were just redirected to appropriate locations.
The most important part was redesigning the website and creating new static pages. The old pages had long, ugly URLs, and were generally not optimized. The new URL structure was similar, but much cleaner than the existing one. We also updated the content and optimized On-Page factors like H1 headings and metadata.
A lot of new pages in other languages were also created. We took property types, locations, and additional features, and generated new URLs with their own unique metadata and headings. More precisely, over 1300 new pages were created. They now rank for long-tail commercial-intent keywords like buy [property type] in [location] with [feature]. Structured data like Breadcrumbs, FAQs, and Residence were added to the website too.
The expansion to the German market was done by translating English content and then publishing German pages. The link-building practices for Germany included link insertion and guest posting on the relevant websites. These efforts significantly boosted organic traffic to the German page.
Results
The results could be seen after only a few months. Clicks, impressions, and the average position all increased. Below is the GSC performance for the old and new HTTPS versions of the website:
And these are the results for the last three months:
An increase in traffic is also seen in the German market. This is why we plan to expand into three new markets and follow the same approach we had for Germany:
