Fertility Clinic SEO Case Study

Zelst undertook an initial analysis and found a number of reasons that were causing this, and presented a strategy to Chris that would turn things around.

Our diagnosis was that the site was suffering from a combination of poor keyword targeting, poor demonstration of E-E-A-T factors (which was so essential in such a high value Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) sector, failure to redirect a large number of URLs with decent link equity, poor Technical SEO, a lack of good quality supporting content and a declining backlink profile, all of which needed to be rectified.

Firstly, Zelst set about completely immersing ourselves in our new client's business to fully understand all of the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, their key challenges and business objectives. We used data to understand their key target markets and customer targets. We analyzed all of the competition to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each, and where the opportunities were in the market. We then outlined a series of short, medium and long-term targets, agreed KPI’s and Timescales with our client, outlined what we expected from them and what they should expect from us.

Here are some of the key things we did: -

Using all of the data we had assembled during our immersion, research and strategy phase, we undertook extensive keyword research to identify the huge range of keywords involved in all stages of the fertility journey and “buying process”, and each touchpoint where our client needed to be present.

We undertook a content audit and content gap analysis to understand all of the content on the site, where the site was visible and where it wasn’t. We identified which of the pages needed to be retained, which needed to be improved or updated, which pages needed to be retargeted or repurposed, which needed to be removed and to outline all of the new pages needed.

We then presented all of this data to our client and used the feedback to agree upon a new site structure and content plan.

We undertook a full audit of the site and carried out extensive analysis to understand all of the factors that were preventing pages being indexed correctly or ranking as well as they could.

Once the new site structure was in place, we carried out extensive Technical SEO, including optimising images, improving page load speed and stability, fixing broken links, improving internal linking, optimising headings and metadata, and setting up redirects for high-value old 404 status (broken) URL’s.

We commenced the substantial process of rewriting and updating all of the content to demonstrate stronger E-E-A-T principles. We started to build the new pages identified in the Content Gap Analysis and the extensive range of supporting content.

Given the extent of the changes, we phased the publishing of the new and updated content over a period of time, to ensure a smooth introduction of content, rather than massive changes in one fell swoop.

As can be seen in the graph below, the keyword footprint had dropped by nearly 58% following the move to the new site, and organic traffic had fallen by over 62%, as a result. Turning around a declining site is always much harder, as SEO is all about momentum, so we knew this would be a challenging project.

Kicking off the project in July and starting to implement from August, the keyword footprint and traffic actually declined further, as we removed a number of pages, and fundamentally changed the targeting of the site, but as can be seen in the following graph, from September the number of indexed pages increased steadily, with an increase in organic traffic following that.

And, as the improved Content, E-E-A-T, and Technical SEO started to take effect, the number of top 3 and top 10 rankings improved steadily.

Within a year, the keyword profile had increase by 61%, the number of SERP features, such as Featured Snippets, had improved by 82%, top 3 positions by 22%, top 10 positions by 130%, resulting in a 73% increase in Search Visibility.

We also increased the number of backlinks by 23%, and the number of referring domains by 34.5%.

All of this resulted in a 95% increase in Organic Traffic, which continued to grow in the following months, as a result of the Search Visibility improvements, and the number of leads sharply improved.

Does your business need to be seen and get found by your target audience at each and every key touchpoint? Please start a conversation with us to talk about your SEO,  and content needs. Our team would be delighted to achieve success in the SERPs for your business. We can’t wait to hear from you!

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