Case Studies
+17% Sessions Increase in First 3 Months of Core Update Recovery Campaign
Cheeky Punter came to Blueclaw at the end of August 2021 needing strategic guidance on recovering from the Google Core update in May 2020. Since this point, rankings and sessions had seen little improvement, despite attempts to satisfy Google EAT with various different levels of activity.
Find out how we’ve started the campaign, our approach and how we’ve already begun to see some positive results.
Campaign Objectives
Our aim was to start the recovery process with a strategic plan to do the following:
- Recover from Google Core Update in May 2020
- Ensure the site meets Google EAT Guidelines
Our Strategy
After initially assessing the Cheeky Punter website, the following two areas of activity were prioritised based on recovering key rankings and driving high conversion intent sessions.
- Primary Activity: Produce in depth page briefs across each of the key page templates to ensure they were consistent with the Google Core Update guidelines
What did we do?
- Assessed the current keyword performance of each individual page and what was driving success in the organic market for competitors
- Reviewed the pages from a technical perspective (core web vitals, URL structure, on-page, internal linking and rich snippets)
- Produced keyword research and assessed competitor search results for intent
- Reviewed the page vs Google EAT guidelines
- Reviewed the page content vs competitors for clear keyword gaps
- Opportunity spotting for search result features – featured snippets and people also ask
- Produced in depth action plan based on our analysis
- Secondary Activity: Analyse the current crawl budget of the Cheeky Punter site to improve the efficiency of Googlebot performance
What did we do?
- Undertook log file analysis to assess where crawl budget issues lie
- Improved crawl budget significantly by updating/removing legacy internal link references for 301 redirects, 404 errors and 500 server errors
The Results So Far
- +74% increase in organic average ranking position from 75 to 19 across target keywords
- 7.5% increase in organic ranking visibility across target keywords
- +28 % increase in organic sessions in first 3 months of the campaign
- Reduced YoY deficit in organic sessions from 40% to 12% In first 3 months
What’s Next?
The next phase of the strategy will focus on the following areas
- Continuing with in depth page reviews
- Build out expert-led content based on key questions. Target featured snippets & related question results which will further help meeting Google EAT guidelines
- Develop a Digital PR strategy to support following:
- Grow the authority and brand presence of the domain
- Build up online trust within the industry to help with meeting EAT guidelines across external reputation
What the Client says
The on-boarding process with BlueClaw was seamless and the first 3 months of our campaign have been productive.
Early signs are good and we’ve seen some small ranking improvements already which is a trend we hope to continue. Graham and Sim have both been great to work with and have consistently delivered as the project has progressed.
