Sports Website – Over 400% Traffic Growth In 4 Months

This website has been around for about 6 years, but little to no attention was paid to its SEO, resulting in minimal traffic from search engines.

We worked on the website for about 6 weeks and then waited another 3 to 4 weeks to start seeing significant results.

Here is what the traffic looks like on Semrush.com as of today:

Without further ado, let’s take a look at the steps we took to achieve these results.

Technical SEO:

The website had several technical SEO issues, including:

• Broken links
• 404 pages
• Oversized images
• Incorrect permalink usage
• Orphan pages
• Numerous low-quality pages

Broken Links

Many of the website’s internal and external links were broken due to the deletion of old pages. We fixed each broken link by either restoring the relevant pages or redirecting them to new, relevant pages.

This approach helped preserve link equity and ensured that we didn’t waste the crawl budget.

404 Pages

The website had numerous 404 error pages with links pointing to them, and some of these were being indexed by Google.

We redirected some of these pages to relevant pages and sent the rest to the home page to prevent visitors from encountering broken pages.

Oversized Images

Almost all the images on the website were oversized, negatively impacting SEO by slowing down page load times.

We removed irrelevant images and resized the important ones to improve load speed, which contributed to better performance.

Incorrect Permalink Usage

Many URLs had incorrect permalink structures. We updated URLs that had no internal or external links pointing to them and redirected URLs with existing links to new pages to prevent loss of link equity.

Example of Bad & Good URL Structures:

Orphan Pages

We didn’t make extensive changes to the orphan pages due to the nature of the blog.

However, we reduced the number of orphan pages as much as possible by interlinking blog posts and ensuring that all articles were properly categorized.

Low-Quality Pages

The website had numerous low-quality pages, including blog posts that either added little value or were poorly written.

We enhanced the content of pages that were valuable but needed improvement for user experience while removing pages that were unnecessary or unhelpful.

Removing such pages helps prevent the waste of the crawl budget.

On-Page SEO

The website’s design and structure at the start of the campaign were not ideal, so we redesigned it for optimal user experience. We added new categories and ensured all blog posts were well-organized, making it easier for users to navigate the site.

Link Building

We haven’t focused heavily on link-building yet. So far, we’ve built only two guest post links, which have significantly contributed to our results.

Building more high-quality guest post links will be the next phase of this SEO campaign, and we anticipate that it will lead to a substantial increase in website traffic.

Conclusion

This case study illustrates how our “SEO Quick Wins” playbook provides rapid SEO improvements.

By implementing strategies such as addressing technical SEO issues, optimizing on-page elements, and acquiring high-quality backlinks, you can expect to see significant enhancements in your search rankings.