When a customer is a gift for a SEO specialist: agrocase

Seed material shop website Case Study

If we could show the customer's website and step-by-step work on it, that this case would be much more informative. But even without accurate illustrations, it is clear that the work to promote the site was carried out on a grandiose scale. And above all, because the customer appreciated the power of the word and approached the preparation of expert content with all seriousness.

SEO-specialists of the company "Sprava", copywriters and agronomist experts took part in the preparation of the content with detailed terms of reference for each page.

Therefore, search engines rated the information on the site pages very highly: optimization + excellent content = high positions.

Search engines very highly rated the information on the site pages: optimization + excellent content = high positions.

But let's start in order.

Our customer is engaged in the production and sale of seeds and field crops of Ukrainian and foreign selection, potassium humate, microfertilizers, plant protection products. He sells his products in Ukraine.

In December 2017, the customer approached us with the following task:

• Raise positions to TOP-1, TOP-3, and, accordingly, the growth of organic traffic and sales from the site.

The site was inconvenient from the point of view of the user, and in parallel with the optimization, it was necessary to seriously work on this side of the project - to tighten up the usability.

Particular attention had to be paid to sunflower seeds, as today this direction is the most competitive in the agricultural sector.

Project specifics:

• Ambitious goals: need to grow organics and significantly increase sales from the site. Before the work began, the site played more of an informational role.
• It was necessary to take high positions in non-commercial queries, in other words, to break into the top five in search results and compete with well-known information resources such as Wikipedia, price aggregators, and agricultural information sites.

Therefore, we decided to focus on expanding the structure of the site, creating unique informative thematic longreads, placing graphic content and video materials.

The strengths of the project were:

1. high expertise of the content, the most disclosed topics;
2. high loading speed of website.

We started traditionally - with an action plan

1. Internal optimization of the site for the specified search queries.
2. Elimination of technical errors affecting the operation of the site.
3. Gradual link building.
4. Website usability improvements.
5. Filling pages with the most relevant, high-quality content.

The plan looks quite realistic, but to work out each item, a strong team from the SPRAVA company and the customer's willingness to provide expert content were needed. This case is more about content. So let's start with it.

Work on site content

First of all, it was necessary to redo the content on the main and landing pages of the site. And here there is a very important nuance that we want to tell current and future customers about.

Real expertise matters! Yours. Do not rewrite articles that are on the Internet. Not a couple of dry compressed paragraphs. If you are doing what you love and you have a well-coordinated, long-established team, then the source of this expertise is none other than yourself and your people.

It is very important to fully disclose the topic. No copywriter will do this for you! Outsourcing the work and laying down your hands in anticipation, maybe calmer. But if you participate in creating content for your own site, the result will be stunning.

What did the specialists of the company SPRAVA?

We analyzed the niche and made a content plan for writing articles on the desired topic. The main emphasis was placed on the fact that each material should be accessible and understandable for both experienced farmers and beginners in this field, and even just casual site visitors. And to such an extent that it can serve as a universal instruction for planting, growing, fertilizing a crop, and up to information about what nutritional and medical value the seeds carry. It is these texts that are the first in the issuance of Google and Yandex.

In the terms of reference for the texts, there was a task - to indicate the advantages and disadvantages of a particular variety of seeds, the characteristics of ripening, growing technology, to tell which fertilizers are more suitable for a particular variety. Explain about disease resistance, talk about pest control, the features of growing different varieties depending on the region of sowing.

When compiling the content plan, LSI words were taken into account - for maximum audience coverage and due to low-frequency queries.

LSI is an abbreviation for "latent semantic indexing".

Using this method, copywriters write texts that help search engines determine how fully the given text matches (relevant) to the query. If the search engine is convinced of the relevance, usefulness and reliability of your article, then it will offer it upon request. In other words, such articles often end up in the top search results of Yandex and Google.

LF – low frequency. Such requests have a narrow focus according to the subject.

What did the client of the project?

He made friends with copywriters and agronomists. Some, according to the plan, asked the others in detail all the points for each article of each page of the site. And then they wrote and edited the texts taking into account the keywords, the correct headings and subheadings.

Looking ahead, we can say with confidence that the result of this work is a sharp decrease in the percentage of failures from the site.

In except to informational articles, we worked together on all product pages:

• We made a detailed description of the characteristics of seed varieties. 
• Posted photo and video materials provided by the customer. 
• Next to each seed variety, related products (fertilizers, SRH, which are applicable to this variety), products with similar characteristics, and previously viewed products were displayed. This led to an increase in the average order receipt by about 1.5 times.

For new key queries and texts on them, the structure of the site was significantly expanded.

Timeline of the team's work

Main works:

• Conducted a thorough analysis of the audience and its information needs and analysis of the current effectiveness of the site.
• Made up the semantic core.
• Worked on internal and external website optimization.
• We analyzed and then corrected the site usability errors for the PC and mobile versions of the site.
• Set up an analytics system.

Additional work on the project:

To increase the CTR, we worked out the attractiveness and clickability of the snippet. Here's what they look like now for products:

Для сторінок категорій:

On the category pages, blocks were placed with reviews, the benefits of working with this company, information about payment and delivery, and the current partners of the company were listed. This was done to increase the information content of the pages so that a person does not have to specify what is there for delivery by moving to another page. And the elements of trust play a really big role. People read reviews and see that the company can be trusted.

As a result, a sharp jump in positions and site traffic in January-February 2019.

Store promotion results

Here statistics and screenshots are the most eloquent proof that the optimization strategy was chosen correctly. Compare, for example, December 2017 and December 2018.

In numbers:

In December 2017 organic traffic was 9,181, in December 2018 organic traffic was 19,451, i.e. an increase in traffic by 111%.

The overall result is an increase in traffic from December 2017 to May 2019.

Dynamics of changes in the number of users per month for 18 months of cooperation from December 2017 to May 2019, showing part of the organic content

Dynamics in the number of users per day in December 2017 (at the start of cooperation) and now (May 2019)

Bounce rate decreased.

When working with a project, it is important that both the customer and the contractor clearly understand the goals and how achievable they are. And an equally important component is the involvement of the customer in the process of working on the site, because no matter how “cool” the SEO specialist working with the site is, no one knows and will know the customer’s business better than himself. Therefore, the ideal option is when the customer independently prepares content for the site (not without the help of a specialist, of course). The task of a specialist is to analyze, think over the structure and give a clear task for building and filling the landing page of the site.

To work together - this is the motto of the company "SPRAVA". Do you agree?

We perfectly understand  that the days when it was enough just to optimize texts for keywords are gone. After all, the articles on the site serve not only for this, but are also one of the ways:

• be useful to the user - tell about the company, its advantages, about the products offered;
• show your expertise in a particular issue - why you should buy this product, and not another, what are its advantages, whether it is right for you, what problems / difficulties you may encounter when using it and how to avoid them;
• show that the company can be trusted;
• and provide answers to many other questions.

Speaking of questions. There are some that buyers often ask offline, because they do not find answers on the site. And someone, not finding the answer, will pass by at all. Here is a hint and an answer to the question “What do customers want?” - write them down, give a detailed answer and post them on the site. And the result will not keep you waiting. You will see that the number of calls and requests from the site will increase significantly.

Work on the site, work on the content, use the maximum of your capabilities!!!