Challenge: Drive relevant traffic to "how to" articles

Through a combination of cluster strategy and keyword research, the Wix Marketing Blog team were able to identify the potential value of ‘how to’ blog articles for their readers, potential Wix users and Google.The intent behind ‘how to’ articles on search tends always to be purely informational but with often high intent behind it in terms of then creating a website, or blog. 

Combining this research with Wix’s SEO capabilities, which allows Wix users to add customized schema to the blogs or websites from their Editor, the Blog Team were able to launch a test. The idea being to add ‘how to’ schema to all their blog articles targeting that intent, without any other on-page optimizations. 

It’s impossible to isolate the impact of an SEO on-page optimization, because well, as we know, ‘it depends’. Rankings and traffic are the result, often of several factors, happening between search engines and searchers, all at once. But the plan was to keep the test as clean as possible by adding the schema and nothing else for four weeks.  

Throughout May 2022, Wix added the “how to” schema to 108 articles on their blog and saw:

• +7,000 clicks to “how to” URLs and +2,700 clicks to “how to” queries just one month later (May 2022 to June 2022) 
• Wix’s Start a blog article gained the featured snippet for its primary keyword - “how to start a blog” (23,000 monthly searches) on August 17th, and they have held that position ever since. Organic clicks to this article are currently increasing at over 5,000 a month. 

How they did it

Wix used Semrush tools to:

• better understand search intent
• confirm their content rankings
• do competitive research
• get a deeper understanding of each page’s traffic potential
• uncover keywords and search terms that helped them generate the new “how to” content

Let’s take a look at their workflow. 

Step 1: Focus on search intent

Wix knew that customers were looking for information about how to start a blog. But they needed more analytics on what kinds of search queries customers were making.

They went to the Semrush Keyword Overview tool to gather a list of potential beginner-blogging keywords to target.The first thing Wix learned is the demand for content around blog creation is high (22,000 monthly searches in the US):

The search intent indicated that this kind of beginner content needs to serve as the top-of-funnel  blog article, while another highly relevant keyword “blog maker” served as the product page that helped customers take the next step in blog creation:

The keyword intent data helped Wix determine when to push a blog post, when to push a product gate, and when they needed to have both ready to be optimized/de-optimized to meet changing searcher intent. 

Keyword Overview also helped Wix understand the true intent behind “how to” queries, whether they could optimize “what is and how to articles” or just “how to articles,” and if some of Wix’s “what if articles” should have been optimized for “how to.”

The blog team’s strategy is dynamic, in part because it has a large amount of non-optimized legacy content to align with its clustering and organic strategy. 

For example: What is Brand Identity and How to Create Your Own, was initially optimized for both “what is” and “how to” inquiries, However, it wasn’t ranking for either, and Google was choosing to rank instead, Brand Identity Examples. This was partly due to the intent behind the “what is” inquiry, users obviously wanted examples. 

But by re-optimizing What is Brand Identity and How to Create Your Own for “how to create a brand identity”, they were able to get it ranking for that intent within a week of our optimizations. 

Step 2: Confirm search intent rankings

Once Wix started their user intent-focused campaign, the team began tracking how Wix articles performed in the SERPs. They wanted to ensure they were ranking for the right search intent.

Once again, Semrush tools provided the data Wix needed. The team used the Position Tracking tool to track their article rankings in the SERPs (along with their competitors’ article rankings).  

Step 3: Understand competitor gaps

The Wix SEO experts still needed to know what topics the team should cover based on what their competitors were doing and what their team could contribute to the SERP/article based on Wix’s authority in the blogging space. 

A key takeaway from their competitor analysis via keyword research was that Wix could offer what many other competitors in the blogging-based SERPs could not—an actual product designed specifically for starting blogs and the authority and trust that this service brings to the Wix brand. 

Wix’s authority over its competitors allowed them to offer the start-to-finish buying experience for its customers in one smooth content workflow. 

4. Optimize articles according to traffic potential

Wix used Semrush's Domain Overview to evaluate whether or not gaining a featured snippet would mean more traffic coming to their article. This involved looking at everything that sat above the featured snippet, the ads and other SERP features, where relevant. It also meant understanding how consistently the SERP shows a featured snippet result for a specific keyword. There is no fast or hard call to make here, as the goal is always to gain the featured snippet, and whether to go for it depends on an overview of the SERP but also how strategic an article is to the strategy and KPIs. 

The data Semrush provided helped Wix organize which articles would get a “how to” schema update based on that article’s real and potential traffic volume. 

With hundreds of “how to” articles on the site, Wix needed a way to prioritize schema implementation. They used the Semrush keyword volume data to order the articles by potential traffic. For example, “how to write a blog post” was optimized much sooner than “how to start a travel blog”:

5. Find new ideas for “how to” articles

With the success of their first “how to” article under their collective belts, the team at Wix moved on to other “how to” search queries in expertise areas like website creation and web design. 

To better understand where there were opportunities to gain visibility over competitors, Wix used tools like the Semrush Keyword Gap to identify terms that Wix competitors weren’t considering. Wix began filtering the data down to “how to” search terms to get a granular view of what competitors were targeting and what Wix needed to be targeting in return. 

Keyword Gap analysis with Wix’s closest competitors. The advanced filter is set to “how to” terms.

The team can further filter the results by their weak, missing, and untapped keywords:

Whenever the team stumbles on a great competitor post, they analyze the “how to” search queries using Semrush Organic Research. The tool gives the full list of keywords and SERP positions a particular page is ranking for:

Key Takeaways

• Understand the search intent before creating content around a keyword and when re-optimizing legacy content, this can be just as important
• Identifying content gaps via competitor analysis can help you gain new visibility and refocus your priorities for new and re-optimized content 
• Researching ranking and traffic potential can help improve prioritization and workflow 
• Choosing content topics should be done strategically through evolving topic, cluster, and  keyword research