Case study: How to increase organic traffic by 1000%

13. 06. 2017 Autor Helena Škývarová

CLIENT: FINCENTRUM REALITY

Fincentrum Reality is a real estate company focusing on selling and renting real estate. In addition, it provides its clients with comprehensive services in implementing real estate transactions and their financing.

COOPERATION WITH FINCENTRUM REALITY

The cooperation with the real estate company started in mid-February 2015, and its main goal was to increase traffic from natural search. At this time, paid campaigns were the main traffic channel. Organic traffic has been constant and has not increased over the past year.

The number of indexed pages was around 16,800 in Google and 719 in Seznam.

The overall SEO and keyword analysis showed that the first task would be to get the client’s website in order, especially from a technical point of view.

The most significant complication of the site that made it difficult for robots to navigate was the form-based design of the site. Although robots’ abilities continue to improve (especially in the case of Google), the form structure can prevent robots from traversing the entire site. So the solution was to place links for users to each checkbox and selection in the search form.

After these technical modifications were resolved, it was necessary to eliminate the content deficiencies. First, we suggested unifying and adjusting the correct generation of headlines and titles for each page. This was because there were no headings on the site until this point, apart from the property details.

For example, this page: https://www.fincentrumreality.com/prodej/domy/liberecky-kraj,ceska-lipa was advetised under the following headline: Sale, Liberec Region, Česká Lípa | Fincentrum Reality | Fincentrum Reality

We have now adapted the subtitles to this format: Houses for sale in Česká Lípa | Fincentrum Reality

RESULTS AFTER HALF A YEAR

However, as with most proposals submitted to clients, they take time to implement. In the case of Fincentrum Reality, the implementation of the above recommendations took place only during June-August 2015. Therefore, the graph below does not show any change so far.

CONTENT IMPROVEMENT

The next step in optimising the site was to create descriptions for the individual pages, as the site only contained text for the offers. Due to many pages, we first created texts for the priority pages and gradually added texts to the rest of the site. All texts were extended with links to selected relevant pages of the site.

EXPANSION, EXPANSION AND MORE EXPANSION

As every SEO specialist/consultant knows, solving the technical shortcomings is just the foundation of optimisation itself. Even though you allow robots and users to crawl the entire website without any problem and individual pages are understandable, it is not enough to increase traffic from natural search results. This is doubly true in a competitive environment like real estate.

To move the project forward and meet our goals, we needed to take a closer look at the content of the site – especially the landing pages, which didn’t exist yet. Keyword analysis served us well for this, revealing that the site lacked many landing pages with high conversion potential.

Thus, we have expanded the landing pages to phrases:

• Real estate + location (we used sorting by cities as locations)
• Real estate + site (we used the sorting by regions and by district towns as sites)

However, the expansion of landing pages alone was not enough in the context of competition, as the lower positions meant that the pages did not bring in as much traffic as they could. However, improving functions in such a competitive environment with so many strong players in the market is very challenging and expensive, so it was necessary to focus on what the competition was not doing. The first step was to create landing pages on cities and towns and all cities and towns in the Czech Republic with over 2,000 inhabitants. We thus created over 2,500 landing pages (this number does not include pages created using filters). This expansion brought us up to 20% of the total organic traffic by the end of 2016.

The next step was then to expand the landing pages to include streets. First, we developed the site to include streets in Prague and Brno.

SUMMARY

Proper resolution of the technical condition of the site, utilisation of the potential of internal linking and adequate implementation of the conclusion from the keyword analysis led us to a significant improvement in traffic from natural search results. By the end of 2016, we achieved a year-on-year increase in natural traffic of up to 218%. At the same time, the number of conversions also increased, up to 120%, whichonly indicates relevant visitors. In conclusion, with the proper optimisation, one can achieve very decent results and stand well in the competitive real estate environment.