How we Achieved a 3616% Increase in Organic Traffic? Case study medme.pl

About our cooperation

Our partnership started in May 2016, and since then, we have been consistently supporting medme.pl in its SEO activities. We focus on the partnership model of cooperation. Our activities are guided by a precise strategy, and we take care of the transfer of knowledge between the customer and us. Thanks to our assumptions, we have achieved an increase in organic traffic by 3616%.

About the customer

Medme.pl is a portal about health and healthy lifestyle, established by Pharma Partner in 2011. It includes articles written by specialists on diseases and prophylaxis, drug encyclopedia, BMI calculators, and blood alcohol levels. The website is developing very dynamically. In July 2019, it reached almost 3.5 million unique users per month and is still growing.

Initial situation

In this particular case, due to the competitive market, it was imperative for us to prepare a strategy that would provide long-term results. Since the very beginning, we knew that we would have to wait longer than a few months for satisfactory results.

In May 2016, medme.pl generated 127,359 organic sessions per month and visibility at 5,123 keywords in the top 10, which when compared to the competition, gave a signal that there was a lot to do to catch up with the top 10. Competitors at that time had visibility greater than 200,000 keywords in the TOP 10.

Objectives and assumptions

Optimization of the entire service by enacting good SEO practices

We saw the potential in this website, and we knew that by improving such aspects as eliminating duplicate content, redesigning the structure of the service and providing appropriately selected content, we could significantly increase its visibility and organic traffic.

Increase in traffic on existing content

The existing content base, thanks to the removal of duplication and optimization, allowed us to achieve better positions for valuable keywords. However, using the potential of the content required detailed analysis and a lot of work in implementing improvements.

Extension of the website with new, valuable content

Based on the analysis of its potential, together with the Medme editorial team, we also wanted to increase the amount of content on the site. To maximize the likelihood of excellent visibility, before each article was created, we constructed the so-called CONTENT GRAPH – a set of keywords that should be included in it, as well as an optimized TITLE metatag and headers. Having quality content was extremely important – the content was created by professional journalists and consulted with people having medical education: doctors, nutritionists, nurses. Good quality content, optimized for specific keywords, is one of the most crucial success factors.

What actions have we conducted?

Technical and semantic audit

Our first stage of cooperation in June 2016 was a detailed audit, which determined what aspects should be addressed first in the workload to be done on the website.

We started with the successive removal of duplications, thin content, and unnecessary segments. Thanks to this, the total number of subpages on the website decreased by over 500,000! For comparison, currently, after calling the site command, Google indicates about 60,200 results.

However, cleaning the site’s link profile caused the loss of most links, because they came from websites with a dubious reputation, not thematically related. It was risky, but the risk was worth it.

Also, we analyzed the content of the site and created a site map that allowed us to sort almost 6,000 articles and allocate them to specific topics – categories, subcategories, and topics.

Editorial SEO training

The editors of the website have been thoroughly trained on the basics of SEO and the rules of writing content by utilizing the potential of keywords to increase the likelihood of achieving higher SERPs.

Implementing technical improvements

In the following stages, together with the MedMe team, we were looking for new solutions. Thanks to the flexibility and trust of the MedMe team members, the improvements were implemented successively and quickly. Each of them was a small brick on the way to improving the results. Together, we consistently implemented each of the improvements:

• Optimization of the whole section under Disease because of its dormant potential
• Autoloading of the next article
• New functions for the CMS
• Structured data insertion through schema.org
• Page speed optimization.

Optimization and creation of the website content

In the area of content, we took care to adapt both the individual articles, their structure, and navigation.

• Internal linking (from the text, tiled) has been implemented.
• Thematic mini services were created:
  •  INTERNET CHILDBIRTH SCHOOL
  • COGNINET
  • THERAPEUTIC DIETS
• The alcohol calculator was optimized (before the action, it generated 10,000 sessions/per month, but now it’s currently over 100,000 sessions).
• Together with the MedMe editorial team, we conduct a consistent editorial policy.
• We constantly take care of the content on the website – analyzing the position and visibility, improving and reusing the content, and performing content gaps analysis (competition analysis).

What results have we achieved?

Visibility

Organic Traffic

During our three years of cooperation, we have achieved an increase in organic traffic from 127,000 sessions to almost 5 million sessions per month.

05.2016: 127,359 organic sessions
07.2019: 4,733,152 organic sessions

What determined our success?

Joanna Barczykowska-Tchorzewska, editor-in-chief of Medme.pl, vice-president of Pharma Partner:

“The success factors are the partnership model of cooperation with Whites Agency as well as comprehensive and long-term activities. The development of Medme.pl is largely based on a consistent editorial policy, as well as monitoring effectiveness and regular implementation of further improvements. Each article on the website is based on SEO principles. It is a long-term process based on a mutual search for solutions.

Whites Agency is valued not only for its professionalism but also for its intuition in recognizing our needs, great commitment, and friendly atmosphere. The result of our cooperation is the continuous increase in invisibility.”

The key to success was the partnership cooperation with medme.pl. We managed to work out a process based on the mutual search for solutions, knowledge transfer, and trust (e.g., we run monthly statuses lasting 4-5 hours). Additionally, the aspects below were and still are of great importance:

• Customer’s willingness to develop in the area of SEO
• The tempo of the implementation of changes and flexibility
• High-quality editorial content – all articles are written by specialized editors
• Consistency in action, responding to changes in both Google algorithm and industry news
• Creation of a strategy in a monthly, semi-annual and an annual perspective
• Monitoring of achieved results: positions, organic movement, rejection rate, TF.