Case Study: Zero to 1.4M Google Impressions & Ranking for 3.7k+ Keywords

EcomBalance launched in 2022 as a brand new website.

In 12 months, it’s grown into a top bookkeeping brand in the eCommerce space.

How? SEO.

Hey! My name is Connor Gillivan. I’m an Owner of TrioSEO and am also a Founder of EcomBalance.

You may have also seen me teaching SEO on LinkedIn.

In this case study, I’ll break down how we grew our SEO traffic and results so quickly with EcomBalance.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me personally at [email protected].

Where did we start?

Luckily, EcomBalance wasn’t the first website we started SEO from scratch with.

(Check out our FreeUp Case Study where I explain how we grew FreeUp to 8 figures in 4 years with SEO.)

Here’s how we got started in the first 3 months:

• Built the core pages of the website (Home, Pricing, Services, Blog, etc.)
• Created Blog templates we could easily replicate with new content.
• Started a Partner and Affiliate Program to gain backlinks.
• Performed keyword research to find content opportunities.
• Research competitors and top keywords they were ranking for.
• Created a content calendar for the first 50+ blogs we’d write.
• Started writing and publishing 10+ blogs per month.

At the very start, we kept the majority of the work on our own plates without hiring writers to keep costs down.

Those first 3 months put us in a place where Google was starting to see what we were all about.

And we had a foundation we could build upon.

What was the SEO strategy?

High level: 

1. Create the highest quality content targeted at long tail keywords
2. Develop a content creation system that could create at quantity.
3. Acquire relevant and authoritative backlinks from partners.

If we could achieve those 3, we could see if SEO would work for EcomBalance.

Keyword Research

As I said above, keyword research and competitor research was our first step.

With SEO, you need to know the keywords to target to create content that has the possibility of ranking, and that has monthly traffic already searching for it.

Without proper keyword research and planning, your SEO can go unseen by Google and your potential customers.

The list shows an example of some keywords we came up with in our keyword research.

The best part about our keyword research was that we saw 100s of opportunities to rank.

We just needed to get going and create the highest quality of content.

On-Page SEO

Another key part of our SEO strategy was On-Page SEO for our Home page and other core pages.

We knew that we wanted to rank for terms such as:

• e-commerce bookkeeping
• e-commerce bookkeeping services
• shopify bookkeeping
• shopify bookkeeping services
• e-commerce bookkeeper
• amazon bookkeeping

We created a list of the highest intent keywords, created pages optimized for SEO, and then tracked their rankings month over month.

Each month, we’d make small page improvements based on competition.

We repeated that until we saw EcomBalance ranking #1 to #5 for these high-intent keywords.

Within 6 months, we were ranking top 5 for most of the terms, and we saw leads coming in.

Blog

Blogging was also an important part of our SEO strategy with EcomBalance.

There were 100s of keywords we could target, and putting together Hub and Spoke content pieces was the best way to tackle them.

Think of medium and low-intent keywords where business owners want to learn more about their bookkeeping, accounting, and finances.

If we could rank on most of those, it would create brand awareness, bring in leads, and eventually convert to paying customers for EcomBalance.

As you can see in the screenshot, we’ve published 100s of blog articles targeting keyword clusters since 2022.

Today, we’re regularly publishing 20+ articles on the EcomBalance Blog and it’s become a top bookkeeping resource online for eCommerce companies.

Off Page SEO

High-quality content goes a LONG way, but you also want to show Google that it’s not on an island.

You want to show Google that others on the Internet vote for your content and what you’re creating.

How do you do that? Backlinks.

Here’s how we grew our backlinks:

• Partnerships
• Affiliates
• Content collaborations
• HARO inquiries
• PR placements
• Podcast interviews
• Guest articles

Backlinks weren’t the major focus of our SEO strategy, but we made sure to pick up backlinks where we could as we networked and built brand awareness in the market.

How long did it take?

6 months in: We started ranking for top search terms with EcomBalance (even while our Domain Rating was low)

12 months in: We were ranking #1 for top search terms like “ecommerce bookkeeping” and we were regularly getting qualified leads signing up on the website.

18 months in: We’re ranking for 3,000+ keywords, bringing in 1,000+ unique visitors to the website each month, and consistently converting new customers from SEO.

We understand that SEO doesn’t create overnight results.

But when you invest with a long term mindset, it can become a KILLER marketing strategy that continues to bring new leads and customers for years and years.

What were the results?

Here’s where EcomBalance is at today: (as of September 2023)

• 1.4M unique impressions on Google
• 13,000+ website clicks from Google
• Ranking #1-3 for top terms like “ecommerce bookkeeping”
• 1,000+ unique website traffic per month
• A domain rating of 38
• 100+ keyword focused pages
• 300+ keyword focused blog articles
• 1,800 backlinks from 250+ domains
• Ranking for 3,700+ keywords

And here’s some screenshots to explain further:

Conclusion

There are endless opportunities with SEO.

EcomBalance went from unknown on Google to reaching 1.4M unique people in only 18 months.

It boils down to:

(1) Intelligent keyword research
(2) High quality content
(3) Consistent content optimization
(4) Authoritative backlinks

Your company can achieve similar results as well when you invest in SEO.

About TrioSEO

TrioSEO is a monthly SEO strategy and content creation service. We drive traffic with SEO by taking keyword research, content planning, blog writing, and optimization off your plate so you can focus on other areas of your business. Get qualified traffic and customers from SEO every month.

TrioSEO was founded in 2023 and stems from our experiences scaling multiple companies to 6, 7, and 8 figures with SEO and organic marketing. For more real-life examples, visit our Case Studies page.

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