How We Are Using SEO To Scale Up 4X And Bring New Users
As a local discovery led commerce platform, one thing that we have stressed upon to internal teams is that when it comes to SEO, it’s all about following a correct strategy. Why? Because while social media might give you that huge one-time spike, but it’s SEO that will bring new users steadily and consistently. It’s that cost-effective, evergreen tactic that will help you scale up and rank high up on Google. Because let’s face it, no one searches for ‘Where To Go Surfing In Goa’ on Facebook. Everything’s Googled. Having said that, here’s how LBB is using SEO to rank high.
Writing Awesome Content
As a local discovery led commerce platform, one thing that we have consistently done is to push out some brilliant recommendations on where to shop in Bangalore, finding the best suicide helpline numbers, and places to donate clothes in Mumbai. We have written on the best night clubs of Pune to eating the biggest thali in Chennai and these recommendations have consistently ranked high on Google, with some recommendations such as that cool trampoline park in Mumbai taking the top spot.
It’s All About The Meta
Writing awesome content was one thing, but then we realised for Google’s nefarious little bots to crawl our content, we needed to lure them with juicy tidbits of information. Enter clean, to the point and keyword-rich URLs, meta title and meta description. None of that click bait “OMG, YOU NEED TO TRY THIS AMAZING THING ON YOUR VACATION” meta titles but simple ones like ‘Chill Out At These Spas In Kolkata Under INR 1,000’ and ‘Deccan Trails Hyderabad: Camping And Hiking’.
PS: We also backlink as much as possible. You might have noticed that here. Our SEO team is very insistent that we do. It’s a neat little trick that makes Google love you (and us) more.
That Keyword Research
Of course, with writing awesome content, comes kickass research. Our SEO team is constantly tracking those relevant keywords that mean so much to what LBB is all about — shopping, food, travel, lifestyle, culture, events, and even services. We identify these high ranking focused short tail and long tail keywords and infuse them into our recommendations so that the next time you search for the Sarojini Market in Delhi, our nifty little guide will be the first thing you see. And click of course
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In The Greater Schema Of Things
While the content team does what it does best, our tech team is ensuring that our website has a solid schema and structure so that it’s easy to crawl and SEO-friendly. Our engineers are regularly updating sitemap indexes, laying out easy-to-crawl breadcrumbs, and cleaning up duplicate H1 tags, meta descriptions, and meta tags. Furthermore, involving our tech team in understanding SEO and how small changes to HTML can make major changes to our SEO rankings has been a key part of our strategy to improve our rankings. You can learn more about implementing schemas & structured data here.
The Need For Speed
The one thing Google hates is a slow website. Improving our load time is a high priority for the team, and we work towards zippier performance on the web in every sprint. We started by moving from Angular to React, to make pages load server-side, and since then have been making steady improvements to improve our Page Speed score.
A Bit On Tech
While we are on the topic of tech and how it’s crucial to any online platform, let’s us tell you about tech humility. It’s important to adapt your site and design choices to WIN at SEO, and sometimes you might not be happy to do that. But both can be accommodated, and you can also do interesting things like surfacing a different page for the first hit/ first visit by users, and a different version for users that are browsing your site naturally and need a different UX.
While the strategy is in place, we also see how impactful they have been. Using tools like Google Webmaster, we see on a monthly basis on what scale we are growing. Out total impressions alone in the have been increasing steadily by 20% every quarter and we rank over 1000s of keywords in Google with 90% of them between the first and 10th position. We also work with Growisto, a digital marketing agency, in helping us streamline and prioritise our strategies through their in-depth analysis and feedback. Keeping these parameters in mind, our goal is to 4x the impressions and rankings by the end of the year. It sounds ambitious, but then again we are all about setting audacious goals!
