Read my case study to learn how I managed to get high rankings, sales, and conversions on my mental health blog with on-page SEO only.
My goals:
Me, as the owner of the Upbeat Impulse blog, wanted to start a mini shop section on the website and use SEO as the only marketing channel. Also, I wanted to rank on the first page for some of the blog posts and grow my subscriber base with a lead magnet. Therefore, I had two goals to fulfill:
- create sales and rank the shop section
- rank blog posts and increased the number of subscribers with the lead magnet.
The problem:
Upbeat Impulse blog was started only as a side project, and with the goal to help me learn SEO and land a full-time SEO position. That’s why I never invested some decent amount of time to it, and never created a real authority website with regularly published content. However, I managed to rank for some keywords with my well researched content, and applying best on-page SEO practices. Basically, what I was trying to do is to prove I’m able to rank for some keywords I wanted to, and to tie those rank pages to my shop page and to my lead magnet.
Note: the project has been inactive for a while as I stopped writing new blog entries and optimizing the existing ones. However, I managed to keep my rankings on the first page for over 2 years of inactivity. I still get some sales from Google.
The Strategy
Based on the limited time I had, I decided to focus on optimization of the existing blog posts, which could be topically connected with the shop I planned to create, and sporadically add new blog posts based on the keyword research. For example, I created a product Self-Esteem Workbook, and interlinked this product to my blog post related to self-esteem (Self-Esteem Worksheets PDF) which ranked on the 1st page for numerous keywords back then (in 2018). Also, I created Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program PDF and interlinked this product with my other blog post related to the narcissists (How to Say Goodbye to Narcissist). Later I developed a third product, Positive Affirmation Cards, which I interlinked to the post related to affirmations (Positive Self Love Affirmations).
The Process
After I picked my desired blog posts for ranking and optimization, I analyzed their ranking in that moment, and what I could do differently. The strategy I applied dates back from 2018 and 2019. Here’s the data about the progress, organic ranking and traffic from back then:
First blog post
The first blog post that was interlinked with the product was Self-Esteem Worksheets PDF. Before the publishing, I did an extensive competitor research, and an extensive topic and intent research. Also, I included many semantically related terms to my main topic, and soon after publishing, the blog post started ranking for +100 keywords, and for some of them on the first page of Google. Still, even 4 years after publishing, and with very infrequent and scarce optimizations, the blog still ranks for more than 200 keywords according to GSC:
This blog post was interlinked with Self-Esteem Workbook product. I managed to make some sales soon after embedding the product widget via Woocommerce code on the blog page. Still to this day I get some sales and I don’t advertize my products anywhere else. Basically, it is success since the query “self esteem worksheets pdf” implied that people were searching for free resources, and yet some of the people who landed on my website purchased my digital product.
Second Blog Post
The second blog post that was interlinked with the product was How to Tell a Narcissist Goodbye. Initially after the publishing, the article didn’t have traffic that much. However, I did research in GCS to see for which keywords I have impressions and what could be the best main keyword to use on the page. Threfore, I rewrote and optimize the article and the traffic increased drastically. 3 years after the article update, I still rank for more than 150 keywords, according to GSC:
This blog post was interlinked with Narcissistic Abuse Recovery PDF. I managed to get some sales from the embedded Woocommerce widget right from the beginning, until the product page started ranking for itself for many keywords. Still, I also think it’s success since the query for the blog post itself had an informative intent, but people there also became familiar to my product, and some of them concluded it might benefit them.
The product Page Ranking
Also, Narcissistic Abuse Recovery PDF started ranking from the beginning, since this time, I picked the main keyword intentionally, and optimized the product page with all relevant information for users (and after that Google picked up the page for other semantically related keywords). Rankings and traffic is still stable at this point, even though I optimized the page a while ago. Here are the screenshots:
Third blog post
The third blog post that was interlinked with the product page was Positive Self Love Affirmations. It took a while to rank, but after content gaps research, the traffic and rankings began to rise. Still, after 2 years since publishing, the rankings and traffic are more or less stable:
Conclusion
Although I kinda put this project on hold when a year after starting, I decided to make the most of my time and at least push the product pages I created, and blog posts that are topically related to them. The screenshots show that those URLs managed to rank for numerous keywords, directing decent organic traffic to my blog.
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