Service provider websites’ SEO are those typical case studies, where the focus is on content writing. Due to the nature and size of the project, organic growth is achieved primarily through content creation – and our case study is no exception.
Evergy is a company specializing in electric car charging, targeting both B2B and B2C segments of the Hungarian market. I was contacted in summer 2023, with the task of boosting their organic traffic of their newly launched website.
Spoiler: it was a success. In fact, a quite nice one, if I may deserve a self-pat on the back. *patting my own back*. The question is: how did we succeed?
The results: from 0 to monthly 3000 organic clicks, and a two-digit average conversion rate.
What makes this project particularly dear to my heart is that it perfectly demonstrated how SEO and CRO can work together beautifully. A well-prepared conversion-friendly website is like a machine that can efficiently harvest the fruits of organic traffic. Even with good SEO, a website’s business performance can still be sluggish if its layout is rubbish, and if its content created for conversion purposes are of poor quality.
As we’ll see in this case study, success was also due to a fantastic client. I could say that I’m a great SEO expert and that’s why we achieved good results, but that would be a lie.
SEO recommendations are only as valuable as much get implementated from them.
And Evergy was a real partner in everything: they followed all advice, implemented them quickly, and corrected it if needed. There is one particular person who deserves to be given the credit, so a big round of applause to Greta Szakacs, business developer of Evergy! Without her, we certainly wouldn’t have achieved these results.
The results and keywords you’ll see in this case study are all from the Hungarian market.
Let’s see the project in details!
Preliminary Analyses, Keyword Research From Unconventional Sources. Plus a Little CRO.
In early September, we began our analyses, based on which first we optimized the content of the service pages, primarily with a CRO focus. We did this to ensure that the expected large organic traffic will be converted efficiently later.
Evergy has 3 main target groups: 1) condominium managers; 2) company executives (for workplace EV charging installation); and 3) private EV owners, who’d like to have electric car charger at home.
We not only used the usual SEO tools, but also leveraged the experience of Evergy’s sales team. They collected all the important questions frequently asked by the target audience about the service and its implementation.
There is no better keyword research than collecting user input obtained directly by the sales team. Read that again.
This is a market where there’s relatively much data on general topics, but for more specific – especially B2B – keywords like “electric car charging in condominium” we had to get creative with our sources.
“It was great to see how well the content of the service pages and their structure came together with the help of keyword research and the internal information we gathered within the company.
We also received a lot of positive feedback from members of our target audience after optimizing the pages”
This provided excellent input later for the content production and also for building CRO-friendly page structures as well.
We also set up proper GTM measurements to see more clearly how well things work or not.
As you can see, results didn’t come in the first 6 months, as we were still focusing on the analyses and CRO-based optimization. No new content was published yet, and the service pages were optimized for conversions, not ranking purposes.
However, if you take a look at the chart above, there’s a clear sign that something started to change between September 2023 and January 2024. More content was published, plus content became better, and more structured on the site.
Consequently, Google began to better understand the relevance and context of the site. Based on the increasing number of impressions, it became clear that Google started displaying the content more frequently for various search terms. Or in other words: it started to build up historical data.
Historical data refers to information that shows Google how content has performed “live” over time in actual searches. They show how users interacted with the web document (how many clicked, how they behaved on the site, whether they completed their search process after viewing the content, etc.).
Essentially, it’s Google’s way of testing. It displays the content for various keywords, observes how it performs, and then refines rankings based on user feedback.
(In other words, Google re-ranks the content based on the historical data. Sounds familiar? Remember the Mustang re-ranking system from the Google leak! ;))
Google’s improved understanding of the site’s relevance was also evident in the decreased volatility of the rankings. If we look at the average position curve, we can see that before optimization, ranking was quite hectic within a short period of time. After optimization – roughly from early January to the end of February 2024 – the organic rankings’ average deviation decreased greatly.
Meanwhile, articles were being written in the background, and we soon started publishing them. The goal was to build an Electric Car Charging Knowledge Base, featuring detailed and long articles, with proper internal linking. Initially, we published a larger batch, followed by continuous monthly content publishes at random intervals.
“When I first discussed the creation of the Knowledge Base with Csaba, I was really impressed by the idea of proceeding with a well-structured and well-thought-out logic in our content creation activites.
This deliberate structure not only made my job easier but also proved to be effective afterwards.”
This was the first time I used Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR’s Topical Authority framework.
Content Creation Based on Topical Authority
Koray is a brilliant Turkish SEO expert who read through tons of Google patents and research papers, created SEO hypotheses, and then tested them. This led him to understand Google’s algorithm from an engineering perspective. With this knowledge, he excels at creating content that helps websites rank highly, turning them into an authority in their core topic on Google.
The Topical Authority framework is therefore about brand building. This is why we followed its principles.
In short, these principles are about creating a well-organized semantic content network with relevant internal linking based on contextual connections. At the end we create system where everything is connected to each other. If an SEO structures this system well, it makes Google easier (and thus cheaper) to retrieve information from it. Google in exchange rewards it with better rankings.
In our case, the main topic was electric car charging, but we also wrote articles on other relevant topics, such as AC & DC charging, electric car batteries, and parking with green license plates in Hungary.
As of 2nd October 2024, 17 articles had been published, yielding the following results.
- Over 3000 organic clicks per month.
- Top 1-3 positions for relevant Hungarian keywords like “elektromos autó töltés” (electric car charging), “elektromos autó töltés társasházakban” (electric car charging in residential buildings), “elektromos autó költségek” (electric car costs), and “zöld rendszám parkolás” (green license plate parking)
- We won several SERP features like featured snippets and People Also Ask positions for keywords like “ac jelentése” (AC meaning), “hatótáv növelt elektromos autó” (range extended electric vehicle), and “zöld rendszám előnyök” (green license plate advantages).
… …from which we unfortunately have lost some since then (update 14th October 2024), so now I’m a bit angry. So I’m getting back to my SEO-workbench right away.
Regardless, I am proud of these rankings, because achieving these positions required careful configuration of these content sections (e.g., paragraphs, lists) that could serve as the “best answer” to the implicit main question behind a search. The length of these texts should be minimized, while the knowledge they convey should be maximized.
We continuously monitored the performance of the articles and optimized them as needed. And we had to do this more than once…
The Articles Were Not Always Perfect at First Try
It would be foolish to say that every article we wrote was perfect on the first try. Of course, there were 1-2 articles that were spot-on (and are still ranking at the top), but many pieces of content were “overwritten”. These had too much information, poor logical structure, and didn’t answer the users’ main implicit question quickly enough… In short, there was too much redundant information.
We could tell this not only from poor performance data, but also from the fact that Google had not crawled the article page since publication. This is a strong sign that the content is of low quality in the eyes of the search engine. These are clear signs that it’s time to optimize (or, in some cases, delete).
Therefore, we continuously monitored the content (and still do), re-analyzed the articles every 1-2 months, and re-optimized it when necessary. During re-optimization, we usually did the following tactical changes.
- We removed specific parts from the articles
- We placed some paragraphs higher in the article (closer to the headings)
- We re-wrote some specific paragraphs to provide better answers
We did all this to make it as easy as possible for users to find the core information in the copy or in other words, we enhanced the article’s query responsiveness.
Query responsiveness refers to how quickly a piece of content answers the implicit main question behind the search. The higher up these key pieces of information are found, the more useful users will find the content.
This is logical because it helps users quickly locate the main answers, thus reducing the time they spend searching for information (or in economic terms: reducing their cost of information retrieval).
As for Google, we did all of this to make it easier for the search engine to understand and retrieve core information (descreasing the cost of information retrieval).
Key Lessons We Learnt
This project taught me that less is more. I was frequently worried about whether the articles address all important points. Yet, most of the time, the issue was that they contained too much information. Almost 10 out of 10 times we improved the ranking of many articles by removing redundant sections.
It’s always easier to expand an article. However, it can be particularly demotivating when you invest hours into an article brief, then writing the article itself, but in the end it doesn’t rank well. It’s hard to get back to square one and figure out where was a hiccup in our thought process.
“Although it was sometimes disappointing when an article didn’t perform well, we learned a lot from these experiences.
First, it helped us understand what types of articles are useful to users, which was a great help in building future content.
Second, it highlighted how essential optimization is in the SEO process.”
There’s always room for re-optimization. Don’t be discouraged if a well-constructed piece of content doesn’t perform well on the first try!
An Awesome Client is Also Needed for Awesome Results
It would be a mistake to say that the project’s success was solely due to the content. The success was also due to working with a fantastic client who was always open to every SEO recommendation, implemented changes rapidly, and was patient. They understood that SEO is a long game, and were willing to invest not just resources into the project, but also their patience. This is – in my humble opinion – the hardest thing on the client’s side.
“At the beginning, it wasn’t easy. But once the first results started to appear, it became clear that investing time and energy was worthwhile in the long run.”
And their enthusiasm didn’t wane even when we made mistakes. Fast implementation allows us to learn much more quickly: it gives us insight into what DOESN’T work. We correct these, check the results again, and then optimize the content again. And again, and again, until the article ranks well enough.
I can say without exaggeration that Evergy is one of the best clients I’ve ever had. Not only did they bring out the best from the project, but they also bring out the best in me. I learned a lot during the project, not just about SEO, but also as an entrepreneur. I learnt to give as thoughtful recommendations as possible, but at the same time, not to waste time with analysis paralysis.
Because as we saw, that doesn’t necessarily lead to a surge in organic traffic.
“From the beginning of our collaboration, we udnerstood each other easily, so I knew we would work well together.
When I start working in a new area, I always like to understand its core mechanics. Csaba was a great help in this: he always explained new concepts clearly and helped me understand SEO in a greater depth. No matter what questions I had, he was always ready to answer.
I really enjoyed working on SEO tasks and still do to this day, whether it’s writing articles, optimizing service pages, or brainstorming together about the structure of new articles.
Looking back, I can say that the time and energy invested was well worth it, as we achieved excellent results. It’s especially rewarding when you see your own article in the top search results, which is the result of involving an expert and carefully structured work.”
