Ted helped us rank no.1 in Google for numerous keywords that we are targeting and drove an
extra 50,000 visits & counting to Singaporebrides in only a few months.
Ng Chin Leng, Founder, Singaporebrides.com
BACKGROUND
Started in 2000, Singaporebrides.com is the largest wedding portal in Singapore, on basis of traffic derivation by Similarweb. Despite it being a leader in the space, we saw the potential for further growth and going beyond the plateau. It has some of the best content on wedding as well as strong brand recognition. Better Search engine optimization and social media orientation can really propel the business ahead.
PROBLEM
Its long history is a double edged sword. While it is regarded as a trusted website, there exists legacy issues. Technology evolves rapidly and new platform & standards pop out every so often. When Singaporebrides started, Google was still in its infancy and Facebook was probably just an idea. The internet scene now and then is poles apart. Keeping up with trends in digital marketing is a challenge.
Moreover, there are many greyhat and blackhat SEO practices in the market that can threaten to raze the entire foundation of a website. This is especially important for Singaporebrides with links and goodwill that has been built up over a decade. Having experience in content marketing and white hat SEO puts us in good position bring them forward.
RESULTS
Within a few months, I was able to drive an extra 50,000 visitors to Singaporebrides through organic search alone. When compared to the PPC ad spend necessary to bring in the number of new visitors, its estimated that it would have cost them $100, 000.
Traffic from social media to the blog went up by at least 30%
Traffic from search engine to the blog went up by at least 20%
50, 000 more organic search traffic.
OUR STRATEGY
Search and social are the internet’s biggest buzzwords and our strategy centers on both.
TECHNICAL
Lets not forget that internet is run by robots and we have to speak the language of Google spiders.
Sitemap
For a huge website such as Singaporebrides with thousands of pages, it is not easy for Google spiders to get to every page. Furthermore, different parts of the website are built on different infrastructure to in order to carry out their complex functions. To ensure that each piece of useful content gets indexed and found on search engine results page, one of our priorities is to create and submit a sitemap comprising of all its pages to Google. We used a software that cuts across various infrastructure. Instead of using a standard wordpress plugin, we ended up with external software than can handle different infrastructure.
Duplicate pages
Some SEO 101. Google doesn’t rank duplicate content. One of the common causes of duplicate content in a website is brought about by website development & coding. We found that most of its webpages have 2 versions; one with “index.php” at the end of the url and one without it, giving rise to 100 over duplicate content issues which are all red flags for Google penalty. We used 301 redirect to solve the issue and at the same time salvage the link juice.
On page SEO
Using a more mature platform for the website meant that much of the default settings doesn’t help in SEO. We found the title for the comments and even sidebar section was using H1 tag, a place where Google look at to find keyword. That means unimportant words were being emphasized to Google unnecessarily. Redundant h1 tags as well as excessive internal links which detract from a positive user experience, were removed.
TRAINING
Sustainability and scalability are crucial. Therefore , instead of giving them all the fishes, we taught them to fish as well.
SEO-friendly content
Singaporebrides is a dynamic website which continuously produces fresh & relevant content. We need to ensure that their website’s SEO is sustainable and future articles can continue to be found in Google.. Training was conducted for writers and editors on proper SEO practices in content writing from naming the article to doing keywords research. Subsequently, new articles were found in 1st page. The number 1 traffic generating article is a new article.
Social media
Writers were also trained on the area of social media, specifically on writing articles that can perform well in social media through an indepth walkthrough of top viral articles. Emphasis was put on the headlines and the formula in crafting articles that can gain attention.
ANALYTICS
We do not have all the answers. Luckily, we have many years of data to look at.
Tracking
What gets monitored gets improved. The challenge is that for such a massive website, there are pages dating back 10 years ago. We had to go dig really deep to uncover all the keywords and pages on Google results page. Over 100 keywords were being tracked monthly both on webmasters tool and using keywords software. This keeps our finger on the pulse and allow us to be proactive instead of reactive in the event of a Google algorithmn change. Unusual movements were detected quickly and action could be taken early.
Clickthrough rate
The analytics showed that there is good number of pages that are getting low traffic inspite of its decent rankings. it is important to bear in mind that rankings doesnt always translate to traffic. Well-crafted meta description and titles are paramount in pushing up clickthrough rates and boosting traffic from search engine. Meta description following certain persuasive format helps in that purpose.
Content analytics
Diving deep into analytics, we found that certain types of articles perform better than others, in line with 80/20 principle. Through a process of pattern recognition, audience profiling and environment scanning, we came out with a series of new topics for content creation. The content was reviewed to ensure that it meets user intent and went on to thrive in both search engine and social media.
LEARNING POINT
Content marketing is nothing with the “marketing” piece. Singaporebrides’ team of talented writers and editors produce content that provided great value for its audience. It was just not getting the visibility it deserves. Google and Facebook are 2 of the biggest platform in Singapore. By optimizing content for both channels, you can ensure that the reach is maximized.
