Driving 674K Monthly Organic Web Visits with Informative Articles

Key Takeaways

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Savvy New Canadian (SNC) generates an average of 674K monthly web visits to Canadians looking for information about money, investing, retirement planning, freedom from debt, entrepreneurship and more. This traffic is predominately driven by organic search. Here's how: 

Keywords: Non-branded keywords make up 96% of SNC's search traffic. SNC focuses on long-tail keyword phrases that are more specific and less competitive. Nearly half of SNC's keywords are informational such as "how to make money from home".  

Content Buckets: SNC has published the most articles regarding investing and banking but generates the most traffic with those featuring topics about crypto, making money, saving money, retirement and personal finance. 

SEO:

1. ‍Content Structure & Readability: SNC's articles are structured in a way that makes it easy for the reader to find what they are looking for by breaking down ideas into easily digestible chunks.‍
2. Titles: SNC optimizes their meta descriptions, URLs, and H1 titles to generate clicks and keep people on their pages longer. They also feature guides and "Best Of" to drive more traffic to their website.‍
3. E-A-T: SNC's articles feature an author section that gives the reader information about the author.
4. Internal Links: SNC has a "You May Also Like…" section that recommends related articles.‍
5. Freshness: SNC consistently updates its content to improve the page's "freshness score". 

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Savvy New Canadians (SNC) is one of Canada's top personal finance websites, sharing information relating to money, investing, retirement planning, freedom from debt, entrepreneurship, and more.

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Over the past 24 months (Jun. ‘20 to May ‘22), SNC has generated an average of 674K monthly web visits and has experienced a +45% YoY increase in total visits from Jun. ‘21 to May ‘22. 

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Of SNC’s web visitors, 85% are based in Canada, and 30% are aged 25-34. Mobile drives the most traffic (62%), and the audience skews male (62%).   

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Search drives 78% of SNC's web traffic, with 100% of this traffic being organic*.*Paid vs organic search data only available for desktop traffic.

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Non-branded keywords make up for 96% of SNC’s search traffic. Top keywords can be broken down into the following six main groups: taxes, banking, government programs, investing, crypto and making money.

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SNC focuses on long-tail keyword phrases that are more specific and less competitive. Nearly half of SNC’s keywords are informational such as “how to make money from home”.  

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SNC breaks up its content into the following 11 buckets. When looking at the number of articles, as of May 2022, SNC has published the most articles regarding investing and banking. 

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In May 2022, articles featuring topics about crypto, making money, saving money, retirement and personal finance generated the highest amount of traffic on average.    

1. 7 Best Canadian ETFs
2. CIBC Void Cheque
3. GST Payment Dates
4. 15 Best Paid Survey Sites
5. 6 Best Virtual Credit Cards
6. Cheapest Places to Live in Canada
7. The Next Bitcoin
8. Best REIT ETF Investment
9. How Much Money Do I Need To Retire
10. Best Car Loan Canada
11. Best Pet Insurance Canada

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SNC’s top articles that drove traffic in May 2022 included:

1. Content Structure & Readability

‍SNC’s articles are structured in a way that makes it easy for the reader to find what they are looking for by breaking down ideas into easily digestible chunks.

Best Practices:

• Long reads of 3000+ words get 3x more traffic, 4x more shares, and 3.5x more backlinks than articles of average length (901-1200 words). Source 

• Add a Table of Contents to help the reader find the information they are looking for quickly.

• One paragraph = one idea.

• Bold important information, and break up content with bullet points and numbered lists.

• Use H2 & H3 subheadings to make your content scannable and easier to read.

2. Titles, Titles, Titles!

SNC optimizes their meta descriptions, URLs, and H1 titles to generate clicks and keep people on its pages longer. They also feature guides and “Best Of” to drive more traffic to their website.

Best Practices:

• Meta Descriptions: 1-2 sentences long (140-160 characters) and include the relevant key terms.

• URLs should be easily readable, descriptive, feature keywords and use hyphens (not underscores) between words.

• List headings such as “17 Real Ways…”, guides and how-tos generate 2x more traffic than other types. 

• Use words like ‘how,’ ‘why,’ ‘what,’ and ‘where.’ (Source)

E-A-T & Internal Links

‍SNC’s articles feature an author section that gives the reader information about the author. Additionally, SNC has a “You May Also Like…” section that recommends related articles.

Best Practices:

• Author Pages: On Moz’s 22 Smart Google SEO Tips for 2022, the second tip was to create author pages to improve the sites E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness).

• Internal Linking: Internal linking plays a significant role in site crawling and indexing pages on your site. Additionally, internal links such as SNC’s “You May Also Like..” can help readers find additional, helpful content and improve their user experience. For more info on internal-link strategies, click here.

• Content Call-Out: SNC’s “Sample Cheque” articles accounted for ~23K web visits in May 2022. The articles explain how to read a cheque, how to get one and how to write one.

“Freshness”

According to Moz, for some keyterms, Google considers the “freshness” of the content. SNC consistently updates its top-performing content. The reason it does this is to increase the “freshness score” of its pages.

Best Practices:

• Search engines give higher freshness scores to content that changes frequently compared to content that doesn’t change often. 

• More considerable changes will have a more significant impact than smaller ones — for example: when updating links, also update the surrounding text. 

• Update articles with up-to-date stats, links, dates and information to improve the article’s relevancy and freshness. 

• The rate at which a site publishes new content can positively impact the freshness score of the site. (Source)