If you are a person that has ever had a penalty, you probably understand the struggle. After you are penalized, you have to go a long way to recover from it.

The following post will show you how one client’s organic search was recovered.

It’s time to jump in.

Brief Background

As much detail as possible will be provided without exposing the client’s website or niche.

Here are some quick facts relating to the client:

– To improve SEO performance, the client hired Vertigo Studio in 2017
– The client offers a piece of gear that makes travel for outdoor lovers more effective
– The client’s business is between 5 and 20 employees
– The client already had an active blog and was promoting content on social media
– The client had done some Search Engine Optimization previously

Our SEO Approach

Our agency uses 2 different approaches with clients, which are as follows:

1. Content Driven Approach

It is the preferred strategy but requires considerable investment in effort, time, and resources. This is typically beyond the reach of most clients.

Having said that, the content-driven strategy is simple:

– The creation of SEO content to attract backlinks
– The promotion of that content so that it can get backlinks

The strategy aims to boost the authority of the client’s website.

The higher the website authority, the easier the ranking of keywords becomes.

2. Non-Content Driven Strategy

The non-content driven strategy is just as it sounds: no content is created or promoted.

Instead, pages are optimized for the target keywords.

The non-content driven approach is ideal for small businesses or local businesses working with smaller budgets.

For this particular client, a combination of both approaches was used.

Here are the tactics involved with the strategy:

– Verify the keywords and analyze the competition
– Perform an SEO audit and identify all the off-site backlink issues and on-site technical issues
– Fix all issues found during the SEO audit
– Create content to support the target keywords and grow website authority
– Prospect for link building opportunities
– Start securing “easy” backlinks
– Start the blogger outreach campaign
– Continue with the acquisition of relevant backlinks until the client has ranked

Here is a brief breakdown of how the process actually works in practice:

Keyword Research: The client had already done their keyword research and supplied great keywords they wished to rank for.

The information was taken and put into the Google Keyword Planner to verify that there was sufficient search volume. Quick research yielded the keywords with the highest search volume.

Competitor Analysis: It reveals that the client website does not meet the 10 standards and that a redesign of the site is necessary.

The next steps were as follows: Page-Level Optimization, SEO Audit, and Link Building.

The Results

When we began, the client was hemorrhaging his ranking quickly.

After 10 months of work, we recovered and helped increase the client’s organic search traffic.

You can draw several conclusions from this growth pattern:

– It takes long to grow organic search traffic
– If you quit too early, you won’t enjoy the fruits of your labor

SEO agencies along with the businesses that hire them should both understand that SEO takes long.

Our agency has managed to achieve explosive growth for some clients within 3 to 4 months, but this is quite rare.

It takes 6, 8, 12, or even 15 months to see growth in most campaigns.

SEO is not a quick fix.

It is a supplemental marketing channel in our opinion.

Businesses that depend on SEO or SEO agencies for growth eventually find themselves heading down a path of destruction.