Career Coaching Doubles Down On SEO & Grows Revenue 45%
Our client, YES Career Coaching & Resume Writing, grew revenue by 45% in 2020 after working with The HOTH.
VP of YES, Michael Akbar, first reached out to The HOTH in 2019 for help growing their web traffic and conversions. At the time, all their marketing efforts were centered around Yelp, in both organic and paid form.
Eventually, Michael completely cut his Yelp budget, dumped it all into our Managed SEO program, HOTH X, and the rest is history!
Let’s dive in and talk about how we were able to help YES grow their revenue by 45%.
Background
YES Career Coaching & Resume Writing offers all of the career services clients need to get their dream job. They offer career and business coaching, resume and cover letter writing, LinkedIn page optimization, and interview assistance.
When they reached out to us in 2019, the company was growing at a rate of 8%. Website traffic was a vital metric because a majority of clients signed up for their career services online. They pushed clients to schedule a free consultation or upload an existing resume to get started.
In addition to their Yelp marketing, they had also tried some link building on their own but to their surprise, it was as enjoyable as “chewing glass,” Michael explained.
The SEO Audit
The first thing we do with every HOTH X client is an extensive SEO audit. We needed to know what wasn’t working for YES and what needed to be changed to ramp up their traffic.
We found their organic traffic was only about 150 visitors per month so we knew there was an opportunity there.
Important metrics that affect rankings are keywords and backlinks. YES was ranking for about 475 keywords when they first started working with us, and they had 75 backlinks.
It was clear that in order to get more traffic—and more clients—we needed to get them ranking for more high-performing keywords and grow their backlinks.
Easy Win Keywords
Ranking for all of the keywords you want takes time. In fact, most SEO strategies take three or more months of work before you start seeing any results.
But luckily we can speed up that process by finding “easy win” keywords.
What are these exactly? They’re relevant keywords ranking in positions No. 4-30.
These “easy win” keywords are ones that Google already likes, just doesn’t love yet. By showing these keywords some immediate TLC, we can get Google to love them and get them onto page 1 of the SERPs.
We found that YES had some high intent keywords sitting right there like “best resume writing services 2021,” “coach for interview,” and “interview prep service,” so that’s where we started!
Competitive Gap Analysis
This step is important because you should always know what the competition is doing.
What keywords are they ranking for? How do they structure their website? Do they have any high-traffic blog posts? What backlinks are they getting?
By looking at your competition, you can see what you’re missing, and also what you could be doing better than them.
YES had 41 competitor domains. We tried to analyze competitors that were as similar to YES as possible, which was only a fraction of the 41 domains we mentioned.
Then we looked at what keywords they ranked for. One similar competitor, for example, ranked for 1,251 keywords that YES didn’t rank for! These keywords immediately got added to the list of target keywords.
The SEO Execution
Once the research and competitive analysis were done, our team started executing.
As we mentioned in the beginning, YES enrolled in our HOTH X program. It’s our best-selling managed SEO service where clients have access to all of our products.
HOTH X gives you a campaign manager that puts together a custom SEO strategy that’s tailor-made for each client.
For YES’s campaign, we first focused on cleaning up local directories for the first six months.
Once a strong, consistent foundation was built, we pivitoted to focusing more on content creation and link building.
HOTH Blogger was used for posting new content on the Michael’s site that incorporated high-performing keywords. Our team identified that “resume writing services,” “professional writing services,” and “career coaching” we’re some of the key phrases to go after.
Our product, HOTH Link Outreach, was key in landing YES more backlinks. Our team of writers created high-quality guest posts and we leveraged our relationships with publishers to get them posted with a backlink.
Our team wrote guest posts like “5 Must-Know Virtual Job Interview Tips” on Happy Tech News, “Top 3 Resume Tips to Get You Your Dream Job” on WikiFeedz, and “5 Ways to Make Your Job Hunt a Little Easier” on Buzztum.
The topics are educational and informative but also relate directly to YES’s industry, allowing for a very natural backlink to their website. Most of these guest posts were a mix of domain authority 20-50 so we went with some of their high-value keywords.
We also double-dipped on their high-performing blog posts through HOTH Syndication, a product that distributes existing content to 300+ high authority domains.
A syndicated blog about “How To Get Help Repaying Student Loans From The Federal Government” earned new backlinks from local FOX and CBS news affiliates across the country, the International Business Times, SFGate, and it was even published by radio stations.
By getting backlinks from sites with a higher domain authority through guest posts and syndications, we were able to rapidly grow their organic traffic.
YES also worked with us to produce spokesperson videos for their site. Video is the most popular form of content and helps visitors engage with your company.
Results
Throughout 2020, YES was on a HOTH X 500 plan, investing a total of $6,000 to grow its SEO. By the end of the year, after cutting all other marketing investments and dumping them into SEO, they reported a revenue growth of over 45%!
The main driver to that was organic traffic. Here’s what we were able to to with their traffic:
YES went from 150 visits per month in 2019 to over 2,000 today! At the peak of working with us, their traffic jumped to over 3,000 per month.
We also saw huge jumps in their keywords, going from 500 to 2,500:
Referring domains to yeswriting.com also grew – tripled to be exact! – which helped push their rankings through the roof.
The company indicated that through 2021 its revenue continued to grow by 26%, still a huge jump from the original 8% growth from before working with The HOTH.
They were so pleased with the SEO results they’re now considering running paid advertising with HOTH PPC. Specifically, they plan on exploring retargeting and lead generation to help drive more leads and conversions.
Stay tuned for that case study!
In the end, VP Michael Akbar said he’d always been searching for a company like The HOTH whose SEO services were “hands off but still allowed him to be in control” and he couldn’t be happier with the results he got.
Takeaway
Are you a website looking to boost your SEO and grow your business? The start of a new year is the perfect time to implement a new SEO or PPC strategy.
The HOTH provides a suite of products to help you with everything from blogging to managing local SEO.
Clients also have the option of enrolling in our managed SEO service. This is like putting your digital marketing on autopilot while getting regular performance reports from your dedicated campaign manager.
You can be as hands-on or hands-off as you wish, but we can still get you results. Simply book a call with us if you’re interested in learning more about HOTH X or the SEO products we offer.
