SEO Case Study: 6-Step Process That Generated 150,732 Visits

Do you want to learn to rank #1 for high-traffic keywords in any niche?

In this SEO case study, you're going to learn the repeatable 6-step process one of my readers used to get his client to #1 in Google, outrank big name brands like Mashable, and increase organic traffic 11,065% in just 6 months!

He was able to do it in a niche industry without spending any money on paid advertising or link building.

Note: This a monster 8,000 word SEO case study, so I've included a table of contents below for you to easily navigate between sections. 

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. I only promote tools I personally use to run my business. If you decide to purchase through one of my links I will receive a commission at no additional cost to you. This helps me continue to publish valuable content - thanks for the support!

Take it away Michael.

Today’s SEO case study features UAV Coach — a fast growing business in the commercial drone space:

A little background.

Alan Perlman started UAV Coach to help people break into the industry, and build a business around something he’s passionate about.

To do this, he needed to find a way to generate recurring traffic and leads.

I was contracted to help with this assignment.

I knew we needed to build an SEO strategy centered on evergreen content that would help generate long-term exposure, position the brand as an authority in the industry, capture leads, and ultimately convert them into paying customers.

The first post I created (and the focus of this SEO case study) for UAV Coach was called "How to Fly a Quadcopter — The Ultimate Guide":

It's an in-depth 4,400-word guide to safely piloting a remote control quadcopter.

The article ranks in position #1 for its target keyword “how to fly a quadcopter”, as well as over 1,300 other secondary keyword variations:

Organic Search Positions report for the quadcopter guide via the SEMrush SEO Toolkit (affiliate)

Keyword: how to fly a quadcopter

Monthly search volume: 260

Keyword: how to fly a drone

Monthly search volume: 3,600

Keyword: how to fly a quadcopter in a circle

Monthly search volume: 50

Keyword: quadcopter

Monthly search volume: 18,100

The article has also landed 29 featured snippets:

Featured snippet results for quadcopter guide via Ahrefs Site Explorer (affiliate)

These rankings bring hundreds of visitors to the site every day:

In the first 6 months, the post brought in 21.4% of UAV Coach's total traffic...

Boasting an insane average time on page of 05:22:

Not only is the post bringing in loads of new traffic to the website each month...

The traffic CONVERTS.

The post captured 2,335 emails, making it a top lead generation asset for the business.

It took 3 months to hit the first page and 5 months to reach the #1 spot.

And, 6 months after publishing the guide it had generated 20,314 organic pageviews:

Needless to say, Alan (owner) was pretty happy with the results:

You're about to learn the EXACT process I use to create killer content, outrank global brands like Mashable and deliver thousands of targeted visitors to my client's websites.

The process works in ANY niche.

And is designed to maximize your effort-to-reward ratio by targeting keywords that are comparatively easier to rank for.

(i.e untapped keywords.)

Here's a snapshot of the steps we'll be walking through in this case study:

1. Keyword research and competitive analysis
2. Content creation
3. On-page SEO
4. List building
5. Content promotion
6. Link building

You’re probably thinking: "But Michael, that’s so simple.”

And you’re right: it’s not complicated, and that’s the beauty of it!

Let's jump in...

While the drone space is a relatively new niche, competition is fierce. The SERPs are filled with big brand publications:

As well as hundreds of competing blogs:

We needed to be very strategic about which topics we targeted, especially as a smaller blog with relatively low domain authority (more on this later).

Our first step was to perform keyword research and uncover evergreen topics targeted to beginner pilots (our core persona at the time).

Build a list of keyword opportunities

Head over to the SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool and type in some seed keywords related to your core product, service or content topic:

The Keyword Magic Tool makes it easy to filter the data using a number of different data points:

For speed, I’ll just sort the Volume from largest to smallest and export all the keyword data:

Next, review each keyword and tag the most relevant evergreen topic:

I decided to focus on the term “how to fly a quadcopter.”

Why did I start with this keyword? 

1. The primary keyword had solid monthly search volume (720)
2. It's a topic our core persona (beginner pilots) would be searching for
3. It was a topic I could easily research 
4. It had a large potential organic footprint (i.e. could rank for loads of secondary keywords)

Note: The final point in the list is often overlooked.

Many people make the mistake of only looking at the search volume associated with their core target keyword.

And, they miss out on a LOT of potential traffic.

While "how to fly a quadcopter" only receives 720 monthly searches, the article ranks for 1,331 different keywords:

SEMrush Top Pages report shows the number of secondary keywords the guide ranks for.

Click the Keywords link and you’ll many of the secondary keywords carry decent search volume as well:

In fact, the primary keyword drives a small percentage of the total organic traffic going to the article each month. 

Plug your target keyword into SEMrush and scroll down to the Related Keywords report:

You’ll see SEMrush kicked back 962 related search terms!

Scan down the list and place a checkmark next to any term closely related to the primary topic of your content:

Related Keywords report in the SEMrush keyword report. 

Once you’re done selecting related keywords, click the green “Add to Export Manager” button at the top of the report.

Click the numbered box and export the keyword list:

In a matter of minutes you’ve compiled dozens, maybe hundreds of secondary keyword ideas.

Cool, right?

You're just getting started 🙂


Google “Searches related to…”

Install the free Keywords Everywhere chrome extension:

Next, perform a quick search for your target keyword and scroll down to the "Searches related to..." section.

You’ll see all the long tail keywords along with search volume, CPC and keyword competition data pulled from AdWords:

Tip: Take one of the keywords from the “Searches related to…” area, pop that into Google, and check out the “Searches related to…” results for that keyword. Rinse and repeat until you have a list of relevant long tail keywords to target.

Google autosuggest

Enter your keyword into Google and look at the other terms Google suggests:

Answer The Public

Manually entering keywords into Google can be very tedious and time-consuming.

Answer The Public provides an easy way to quickly scale this keyword research strategy.

The tool grabs information from Google Suggest, but what makes it unique is that it provides a mountain of keyword suggestions from entering a single term.

How?

It takes your seed keyword and appends every letter of the alphabet after it to produce hundreds of keyword suggestions.

For example, when you type the keyword "quadcopter" into Google you get a list of suggestions, like this:

But then when you enter your keyword plus another letter, Google Suggest will spit out a different list of suggestions:

Answer The Public will scrape this data and do all the heavy lifting so you don't have to spend hours manually entering keyword combinations like "quadcopter a", "quadcopter b", etc..

To use it, head over to Answer The Public and enter your seed keyword:

Click the “Alphabeticals” link:

This will return hundreds of potential new keyword ideas:

Turn on the Keywords Everywhere chrome extension to pull in search volume and CPC data:

Scan the results and add any relevant terms to your keyword set.


People Also Ask…

Enter your target keyword and scroll down to the “People Also Ask” box:

These are the exact questions your target audience is looking for answers to online.

These topics can provide ideas for new sections to add into informational blog content, or even use as FAQs on more conversion-based content such as product and category pages.

You’ll notice the People Also Ask box only shows a small handful of questions. But, if you click one of the questions the list will begin to expand:

Keep clicking until you have 20+ questions in the list. 

You’ll notice a lot of the related and long tail keywords collected in the previous steps were targeted with dedicated sections in the guide:

After a few months the post started to rank for a lot of these different secondary keywords:

A couple interesting things to note here:

1. UAV Coach was able to rank for hundreds of different subtopics with a single article. (eg: they didn’t have to write a separate post for “how to rotate a quadcopter” and another for “quadcopter controls”)
   
   
2. UAV Coach was able to land loads of featured snippets by using dedicated sections in the article to provide direct answers to very specific search queries. Learn more about getting featured snippets.

Ok:

Now that you have a solid list of primary and secondary keyword ideas, the next step is to qualify the terms you can realistically rank in the top 5 positions within the next 3-6 months.

There are two primary elements you need to pay attention to:

1. Domain and page-level authority
2. SERP and content types
3. On-page/ quality signals

By doing competitive analysis, you can save a lot of time and effort that would’ve been wasted trying to rank for impossible keywords.

Let’s start by looking at the authority of competing pages in the SERPs. 

First, install the free Ahrefs SEO Toolbar and do a quick search for your primary keyword.

Launch the extension by clicking the icon in your browser bar (make sure it’s light blue):

Click the gear icon to configure which Ahrefs metrics get pulled into the SERPs.

Head back over to the search results and you should see all the domain and page-level metrics showing below each search result:

The Ahrefs Toolbar shows:

• Ahrefs URL rating
• Ahrefs Domain Rating
• Ahrefs Rank
• Number of Backlinks
• Number of Referring Domains
• Estimated Organic Search Traffic
• Number of Ranking Keywords

Each of these metrics is helpful for getting a top-level view of the organic traffic potential and difficulty to rank for a given search term.

Click a link in the toolbar and you’ll be taken to a report for that URL inside the Ahrefs application:

This is one of the most overlooked steps in the keyword qualification process.

Before you decide to target any keyword or topic, determine which specific content types are ranking in the search results.

Are they blog posts? Videos? Category pages? Product pages? Government resource pages?

Typically, there will be a single content type displaying in the top 10 results. Basically, this is Google telling you what users expect from a given search query.

Our quadcopter is a simple example:

The “how to” modifier in the search string indicates that this an informational search, so it’s no surprise all the results are blog posts.

But, not all cases are this clear cut:

Studies have shown that on-page SEO has a relatively small impact on rankings these days:

While backlinks seem to have a much higher correlation, on-page SEO should not be ignored.

Think about it:

Backlinks can take months/years (and a lot of resources) to build. Meanwhile, key on-page elements can be analyzed and optimized in a matter of minutes. 

I always like to look at the on-page SEO for each competing search result. Specifically, I like to see how they are using exact match keywords in the:

• Title tag
• URL
• Heading tags
• Meta descriptions (to help improve CTR)

Fortunately, the Domain Rating, URL Rating and link metrics were on our side. The competition in this area was pretty weak.

However:

Almost every article on the first page was well-optimized for the target keyword:

You’ll also notice that some of the articles are using jump links to sections in the post optimized for secondary keyword variations.

(i.e. all the competitors were doing a solid job optimizing the on-page SEO)

If these pages had solid backlink profiles and high page/domain authority too, I would have wasted a lot of time creating, promoting, and building links to this article with very little return.

It might seem small, but don't skip this step!

Check how well optimized the top 10 pages are for your target keyword.

This is the final step in the keyword qualification phase.

I typically assess content quality by looking at the following:

• Content length
• Multi media (images, video, infographics, gifs)
• Secondary keywords
• UX (readability)
• Format (list post, expert roundup, interview, case study, how-to etc..)
• How up-to-date is it
• Social media optimization

For example:

After examining a few of the top ranking pages, I knew there was an opportunity to crush them in a number of areas.

The top ranking article at the time had very thin content:

The entire article was only 303 words (compared to the 4,000+ I wrote for UAV Coach).

Most of the others posts ranking on the first page were also short and offered surface-level information. Very few posts used any type of multi media - images or videos - to supplement the writing.

So, what did I learn about my target keyword?

• High traffic potential
• Relatively weak competition
• Opportunity to create a dominant piece of evergreen content
• Perfect keyword for our target audience

I had a great list of keywords and a solid foundation for the rest of the SEO campaign.

Note: Add the terms into a keyword rank tracking tool to monitor position and visibility over time.

Time to create EPIC content! 

Top

The content playing field has become a red ocean. Articles are longer, better researched, and formatted for user experience:

Today, Google’s first page search results average close to 2,000 words in length.

When creating content, there’s one mentality everyone should adopt:

“I want to create the best piece of content on this topic — period.”

Take the time to write something that will blow your competition out of the water.

It took me 3 days to research and write the quadcopter guide. I covered every inch of the topic and the article now tips the scales at 4,774 words:

It includes in-text links for easy navigation:

Note: This is a smart move for any long-form content, because Google will often take display jump links in the SERP:

This can help your post stand out in the SERPS and increase click-through rates (now a behavioral ranking signal within Google's algorithm).

I also included definitions for readers, such as how to fly safely, a pre-flight checklist, novice skills, beginner skills, advanced skills, and much more.

I looked at everything the top articles were doing and did it better.

Then I looked at everything they weren’t doing, and did that too. This is the stuff that will ultimately make your content stand out from the competition.

The result was a 4,774 word guide that was clearly better than anything else out there.

As a general rule, make sure your content is:

• More in-depth
• More up-to-date
• Provides a better user experience
• Actionable

Important: Try to beat your competition on every level - length, current information, design.

This is exactly what Robbie did to increase his traffic 272% in 30 days.

Ok:

You now have a great piece of content. The next step is to optimize on-page SEO.

Top

On-page factors are the elements of a webpage that influence search engine ranking.

But, here’s the thing:

As we saw earlier, on-page factors often get overshadowed by off-site factors such as domain and page-level authority:

While on-page elements have a relatively small impact compared to link metrics, they still influence rankings and have a big impact on user experience.

It tells Google:

1. What your page is about (relevance)
2. What keywords you want to rank for (targeting)
3. How valuable your content is (quality)

On-page SEO is quick to implement and within your direct control. Compared to off-page efforts such as link building which take months or years to execute and come with a lot of moving variables (eg: who will respond to your outreach email?).

So, what are the most important on-page SEO ranking factors?

Here’s what the same Ahrefs study found:

You have very little control over the first two factors:

1. Keyword in domain name;
2. Age of the page

So, you’ll want to focus most of your attention on the other elements listed in the graph. 

Ok:

Let’s start with the quickest optimizations: strategic placement of primary and secondary keywords.
​

Title Tag: Your title tag is the most important on-page SEO factors when it comes to keyword placement. Try to get an exact or semantic keyword variant close to the front of the title tag.

If you’re using WordPress, it’s easy to place your keyword in the SEO title, URL, and meta description.

First, install the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin.

Open the page editor and scroll down to the “Yoast SEO” box.

Adjust the SEO title/meta description and get a preview of what your SERP will look like.

URL: Make sure you have a short, descriptive URL.

Google has stated the first 3-5 words in the URL is weighted as a search ranking factor. If possible, include exact match keyword at the beginning of the URL.

In addition to helping search engines understand your content, descriptive URLs will also increase the likelihood users click on your search result.

Check out this URL:

​https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/67291.php

At face value, you have no idea if the content has anything to do with what you’re looking for.

Now look at this one:

It’s a descriptive URL that tells you exactly what to expect on the page - a guide about how to fly quadcopters. 

First 100 words: Include your target keyword (or a close variant) somewhere in the first paragraph of your body copy:

Heading tags: Make sure your blog post title is wrapped in an H1 tag. Google views the H1 tag as your post headline, and helps bots quickly understand the topic of your post.

Try to include sematnic and secondary keyword variations in H2 and H3 tags within the post.

Also - sprinkle them throughout in-text navigation links:

Google cannot read images, so include target keywords in image alt text so Google can understand what they are about.

Note: Do NOT stuff keywords in alt text. Instead, write the alt text in a way that accurately describes what the image is about. Keep it natural.

And finally, place keyword variations a few times throughout the body content.

LSI keywords are synonyms Google uses to determine page relevancy (and sometimes quality).

Including LSI can not only help boost relevancy, it can also help expand your keyword footprint and organic traffic potential.

For example:

"How to fly a quadcopter in a circle” versus “how to fly a quadcopter.”

Note: this section of the post also includes variants such as clockwise, counter clockwise and rotate.

Even if keyword research tools don’t show any search volume for the variations, you should still place them in the content for relevancy and to make sure you’re not over-optimizing exact match keywords.

If you write long form content, chances are you'll naturally include LSI keywords in your content.

Next, make sure to include the related keywords you want to rank for.

Place each of them once or twice in the body content:

Subheadings:

And in-text navigation links:

Text can only do so much.

Engaging images, videos, screenshots and other multi media can increase time on site, scroll depth and decrease bounce rate: three behavioral metrics Google uses to measure content quality.

Multi media will also increase the perceived value of your content: which means more people sharing or linking to your content.

Make sure your are including helpful images:

And videos:

Not linking out to (quality) external resources is a common on-page mistake. Many people fear doing this to avoid “leaking authority”, when in fact linking out to related content is a relevancy signal Google.

It can signal to Google that your content is a hub of quality information related to a given topic.

Note: adding links to quality external resources of specific topics in your article is also a great way to improve the user experience.

When optimizing the quadcopter guide, I noticed many of the top ranking competitors weren’t linking out to any other resources.

I did the opposite 🙂

Go through your content and find a few places to link out to the most relevant articles ranking for your keyword.

Note: Reach out to each of the sites referenced in your article. Since you gave them a link, they will likely reciprocate by at least sharing your article with their audience.

Adding internal links is one of the easiest ways to funnel traffic and authority to new content: 

Ever clicked on a search result and the page takes an eternity to load?

It’s one of the fastest ways to get potential readers to hit the back button and return to the SERP to read a different result.

In fact, Google found that 53% of users will abandon a page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

Google monitors this behavior and has been using it as a ranking factor since 2010.

And, in July this year Google announced it would finally start using mobile page speed as a ranking factor in mobile search results:

SEMrush conducted a study and found three of the top four ranking factors are directly related to a user’s experience on your site:

User experience and rankings aside, slow page speed is a HUGE conversion killer.

SOASTA found that a one second delay in page response can reduce your conversions by up to 27%:

To improve page speed, use the free Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to analyze your page and identify areas for optimization:

Here are a few simple things you should do to improve page load speed:

1. Compress images: use an SEO plugin such as WPSmush or Shortpixel to automatically compress images and reduce file size without losing quality.

2. Use a CDN: use a free tool like Cloudflare to host your content on geographically dispersed servers so people anywhere in the world can quickly access your content:

(Source)

3. Enable caching: use a free plugin like W3 Total Cache to create a static version of your content that the web browser can load fast. Check out this guide for setup instructions.

Which piece of content would you rather read?

No brainer, right?

The first example breaks up the text with formatting best practices such as shorter sentences, lists, and different font sizes to create a more “scannable” piece of content.

Every chapter in our quadcopter guide uses similar best practices to increase the readability:

 
Ok:

Once the on-page SEO is fully optimized, it’s time to shift your attention towards converting all the new organic traffic into email subscribers (leads). 

Building an email list should be your #1 priority.

Why?

Because 98% of visitors will leave your site without converting.

And the average consumer will have 7 touch points with your brand or product before buying.

Building an email list is critical if you want to be able to continually re-engage your audience, establish a relationship and eventually convert them into paying customers.

Here’s the simple 3-step formula UAV Coach used to collect thousands of email subscribers:

1. Create a lead magnet
2. Configure list building tools
3. Set up automatic delivery

A lead magnet is when you offer something of value to a reader in exchange for their email address.

Some common examples:

• Free ebooks
• Free trials
• Checklists
• Mindmaps
• Infographics
• Short videos

In this video, Robbie shows how to turn old content into a high-converting lead magnet in 13 seconds:

Here is the PDF version of the article we used as a lead magnet:

Nothing fancy, but as you’ll see below, it worked VERY well!

This step involves strategically placing opt-in forms at high-visibility touchpoints across your site.

There are many different form types to use for this:

• Popups
• Scroll mats
• In-content
• Two-step lightboxes
• Header bars
• Lead boxes

And more…

For the quadcopter article we chose two tactics:

1. Popup
2. Lead box

First, we used the Sumo List Builder app to create this pop-up form:

As you can see, our value proposition is joining the community and receiving a free PDF of the guide.

It pops up 12 seconds after a visitor arrives, and doesn’t show to the same visitor more than once every 24 hours:

And it converts at 5.12%:

We then used the Sumo Leads app to create a leadbox that delivers the PDF inside the content.

When readers click on the button:

An opt-in box pops up:

It converts 20-50% of the people clicking on the button:

I've got good news and bad news.

The good news:

Someone entered their email address to access your lead magnet.

The bad news:

They aren't on your email list yet.

You still have two things to do after a reader hits the "Sign Up" button:

1. Get them to confirm their email address (double opt-in)
2. Deliver the lead magnet

Luckily, you can automate this entire process.

Here how it works:

Subscriber enters email and is redirected to a custom confirmation page like this one:

The goal of this page is to make sure people are clicking the link in the confirmation email you send them:

Confirmation email sent via ConvertKit after someone joins The SEO Playbook waitlist. 

This will ensure they are double opted in.

Once the reader clicks the confirmation link they are redirected to a page where they can view or download the lead magnet:

Landing page built with the Thrive Content Builder WordPress plugin. 

Depending on the level of competition, it can take months to hit the first page.

In the early stages, it’s important to spend time promoting your content in order to generate some initial traffic, engagement and (potentially) links.

Here are four actionable tactics UAV used to promote the quadcopter guide:

1. Quora
2. Forum marketing
3. Social media automation
4. Scoop.it

Let's drive some traffic…

Quora is a massive Q&A website, and one of the most visited on the planet.

It’s also one of our top sources of referral traffic:

Quora threads can stay active for months or even years, driving a passive stream of organic traffic to your content.

Here’s how to drive traffic from Quora:

First, head over to Quora and create an account. Fill out the profile - headshot, description, interests, etc:

Do a search in the top bar for a topic related to your niche. This will bring up a list of threads that contain your keyword:

Click through to any threads where your content could help answer a question.

Write up an in-depth answer with a link to your content at the end. Frame it as a resource that can fully answer their question.

Here is one of Alan’s Quora answers that received over 4,800 views and sent a lot of targeted referral traffic to the quadcopter guide:

In-depth answers are trusted more and typically work better than only posting your link.

Keep joining discussions and answering questions for different search terms, and you’ll drive consistent traffic to your article!

The first week after publishing, we spent 1-2 hours a day promoting the guide in relevant Quora threads. And, we continue to look for new threads to promote it each week.

Just like Quora, forums are packed with people discussing different topics.

They’re perfect places to promote your content.

Use these search strings to find forums in your niche:

“Keyword” + “forum”
“Keyword” + “powered by vBulletin”

This should bring up a list of forums to choose from

Go to a relevant forum and use the following stats to gauge activity (and traffic potential):

• Discussions
• Messages
• Views
• Replies

Higher engagement = great traffic potential.

Create an account and edit your signature:

Write a compelling description about your page that entices the click.

Next, go through the forum threads and answer related questions (similar to Quora).

Except this time, you don’t have to link directly to your article because it’s in your signature:

As you become an active member, you’ll start to position yourself as an authority. 

We configured Buffer to share the guide twice in the first week on each of our main social media channels - facebook and Twitter - and once a week for a month afterwards.

Here’s how to do it:

First, sign up for Buffer and enter your account:

Click inside the “What do you want to share?” box. Write a tweet (or another type of social post) and include a link to your article at the end:

Click the arrow next to “Add to Queue” and “Schedule Post”:

Create another post, change up the text, and schedule it again for some time that week.

Rinse and repeat once a week for a month afterwards.

This should help you get a steady stream of traffic and social signals to the page.

Note: if you have a long form guide with multiple sections, chapters or tips, promote each one as a standalone social media post to get more mileage out of your content.

For example:

Ahrefs does this a lot with their articles:

Each tip is shared as a separate post, but still directs users to the same post. This helps avoid message fatigue.

We used this same strategy with the quadcopter guide by promoting each of the 17 chapters as a separate social post. 

Scoop.it is a content curation platform. People create their own pages to gather the best content they find on a given topic/industry.

Most pages have a “Suggest” feature:

You can suggest a piece of content to the owner, and if they like it they’ll share it on their page.

These pages are visited regularly by hundreds of industry enthusiasts wanting to stay up-to-date with the latest information (and share it with the platform's built-in social media integration).

Here’s how we promoted the guide on Scoop.it:

Create an account and do a search in the top bar for a term related to your content:

The default result is a list of “Scoops” or specific posts, but you want “Topics”:

This will bring up a list of pages related to your primary topic/keyword. Hover over the results to see the number of views.

Click through to any that seem relevant and look for the suggestion box:

If it’s not there, the host has decided not to accept suggestions. Move on to another page.

If it is there, copy-paste your URL into the box and hit “Suggest.”

Adjust the image to the size you want (I like to go full size):

That’s it! The page owner will review your post and decide whether or not to feature it.

Rinse ad repeat until you reach the daily suggestion limit (7).

Scoop.it is a quick and easy way to build links and get initial exposure for your content.

Speaking of links...

The final part of this case study is going to break down how we built backlinks to the quadcopter guide, which helped push it to the top spot in Google.

A study of 1 million SERP results found the number of domains linking to a page correlated with high rankings more than any other factor:

Google has also confirmed this.

We knew that if we wanted to reach the #1 position we had to build quality backlinks to the guide.

So, we focused heavily on this for 90 days after the guide went live:

Ahrefs SERP overview report showing link metrics for the top 10 ranking articles. 

We’ve built almost links from almost 100 unique referring domains and established a 34 URL rating.

Both of these metrics are higher than any other result in the SERP, and is the main reason why the guide ranks in the top spot.

Here are four strategies we used to quickly build links:

1. Reverse engineered competitor link profiles
2. Identified competitor link gaps
3. Pitched weekly roundups
4. Pitched resources/links pages

Let’s take a closer look at each one…

We set out to find all the sites linking to competing (inferior) content and pitch our content to them.

The idea here was that if a site had linked to a related piece of content in the past, they would be more likely to our content as well.

Note: We followed many of the steps listed in Robbie’s extensive competitor backlink analysis guide. Instead of repeating all of it here, I recommend you check it out for more in-depth instructions.

First - enter your primary keyword into the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer and scroll down to the SERP overview report:

Look for results with a minimum of 20 referring domains.

Click on the Backlinks number and it’ll take you through to this report:

Set the following filters:

• One link per domain
• Dofollow
• Language (English in our case)

This will give you a solid list of outreach targets.

Repeat the process for all the results with a minimum of 20 referring domains and add all the backlinks to a master list. 

We used the Ahrefs Link Intersect tool to find all these websites linking to one or more of our competitors.

The idea:

If a website linked to multiple competitors, there’s a good chance they would consider linking to us too.

Here’s how it works:

Grab up to 10 competing domains/URLs from the Prospects tab in the Tracking Template (shown above) and paste them into the Link Intersect tool.

Add your domain/URL under the “But doesn’t link to (optional)” section:

Find competitor backlink gaps with the Ahrefs Link Intersect tool.

Note: Select the “Any of the below targets” from the “Show me who is linking to…” drop-down at the top of the table.

Click “show link opportunities”.

The report will show you all the websites linking to one or more of your competitors, but not your domain/page.

By default, the domains are ordered by # of link intersects (from highest to lowest), but you can sort the results by Domain Rating to quickly surface the most authoritative domains linking to multiple competing domains/ URLs:

Click the link under each of the URLs to view the URLs and anchor text:

Scan the list and add any relevant, high-quality link prospects to the appropriate tab in the competitor link tracking template:

Model the scripts in your outreach campaign. 

Weekly roundups are articles that curate the best content of that week into a single post.

The publisher spends the week reading and looking for awesome articles to link to in the post.

It's a win-win. You provide a great resource for their audience and get a quality link in return:

All you have to do is find blogs that publish weekly (or monthly) roundups and pitch your content to them.

Here’s how to do it:

First, use these search strings to find roundups in your niche:

“Keyword” + “weekly roundup”
“Keyword” + “link roundup”
“Keyword” + “weekly link roundup”
“Keyword” + “best articles of the week”

Click “Search Tools” → “Any Time” → “Past Month”:

This will return actively updated roundups:

Once you’ve found some roundups, head over to the site and find the publisher’s contact information.

Send them an email like this:

If the publisher likes your content, it will get featured in the next roundup:

This got us some great contextual links on high authority sites.

This is the strategy where we got most of our initial links.

(And it’s also how I built one of the best links I think I’ll ever build.)

Resources and links pages are similar to roundups, in that they link out to lots of useful content.

Many sites publish them to expose their audience to related content they don’t offer on their own website.

Once again, these publishers are all looking for one thing:

Valuable content.

Alll you need to do is reach out and pitch it your content.

Here’s how to do it:

First, do a search in Google for these strings:

“Keyword” + “resources”
“Keyword” + “links”
“Keyword” + “intitle:resources”
“Keyword” + “intitle:links”
“Keyword” + “inurl:resources”
“Keyword” + “inurl:links”
“Keyword” + “intitle:resources page”
“Keyword” + “intitle:links page”

Unlike weekly roundups, you don’t need to filter the results based on date. Since these pages are evergreen, it doesn’t matter when they were published.

Next, head into each website and find their contact information. Then send each website owner an email like this:

This strategy landed us a lot of excellent links on highly relevant sites in our niche.

And on some high authority sites, including a DA 96 link from MIT!

(Couldn’t believe that one.)

With our strong on-page signals and these links coming straight to the page, Google propelled us to the first page for our target keyword.

We stayed in positions 4-10 for a few months, but I’m sure you’re wondering how that we hit position #1.

Let’s break it down:

The quadcopter guide eventually leapfrogged massive sites like Mashable and landed in the #1 position.

The initial content promotion and link building campaigns pushed the article onto the first page for its primary keyword, along with hundreds of additional long tail keywords.

This got the guide some great natural mentions and links:

The strong on-page signals crushed all the other competing assets too.

This article deserved to rank #1.

It was the most in-depth and up-to-date, had the best multi media mix (screenshots, images and videos), and it was highly optimized for the target keyword.

As time went on and the backlinks were crawled by Google, the page began to increase in authority and gradually climbed up the SERPs.

It now ranks in the #1 position for 205 different keywords:

Organic Keywords report in Ahrefs. 

Along with 29 featured snippet placements:

This shows just how much Google trusts the page, sees it as a top resource, and wants people to read it.

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This is a scalable SEO strategy you can use to rank in ANY niche.

We have repeated this process for many other important keywords with similar results:

And the site now ranks in the top 3 positions for over 3,000 keywords!

Now:

You probably won’t rank #1 for every article you publish.

But, by following the steps outlined in this SEO case study you’ll be able to quickly find (and rank) more target keywords on the first page of Google.

Got questions? Looking for advice? Let me answer them in the comments below 🙂

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