There are those products and services that get bought on a weekly or daily basis. Food, groceries, and transportation. Routine, common, driven by immediate need. Then some are often not purchased until something terrible happens. Home security systems are an example of that. Another might be an all-encompassing repository for your passwords, subscription services, essential documents, mortgage information, and credit cards. Anything anybody would need to tie up loose ends with your "estate," should you expire.
That's where Everplans.com helps you.
The end of life -- passing away. It's not a fun topic to think through. It's easy to put off perpetually. So when you make a subscription service like Everplans, how do you connect with consumers and compel them to 1) sign up for a trial and 2) ultimately maximize the value of your product?
Through research, I found that there are instances when a prospect is more prone to examining how well they're covered should the worst happen to them. Attending a funeral is one of these times. Everplan's website content strategy is already attracting traffic from one tranche of this sector. They should go deeper into this topic to unlock their next tranche of 100,000 organic site visitors.
Watch this episode of the Weekly Website Review, and let me know if you agree.
Episode transcription:
Bill Colbert 0:00
Hi, everyone, Bill Colbert here from Treetop Growth Strategy. Today, I want to take you through Everplans.com And talk a little bit about what they're doing with their SEO; it's a pretty cool site, one that I personally probably need to sign up for. But their SEO strategy is exciting; there are some really crucial or good learnings that you can take away from here. They're doing a lot of traffic. And, you know, taking a look at the very top-level numbers.
Bill Colbert 0:32
I see, in February, about five years ago, they were doing about 266,000 visitors a month, and then in the present day, they're doing, you know, a little under half that. So I'm going to challenge myself today to see if we can find
Bill Colbert 0:50
some opportunities to get back to where they previously were now; not all this traffic may have been valuable, may have may meet some of it may have been to the top of the funnel or not on brand or not on topics that were converting. So it's not always about traffic, as we know; it's about getting the correct type of traffic. So
Bill Colbert 1:10
let's get into it. And see what we find. I've already done a little bit of pre-research, but I'm excited to share what they are doing. Because I think it can be precious to you, as an entrepreneur, as a marketer, and as someone who is building a business. So let's get into it. What I like to do is structure these in four parts; I'll first take a look at what the site thinks of the site qualitatively, then we'll take a look at a PageSpeed Insights report, then we'll get into some on-page SEO opportunities. And then you know, especially with this one, because the site is doing, you know, over 100,000 Organic visitors a month, there's a lot of nuances, and we've only scratched the surface in terms of research here. But we'll get into some of the specifics and how they can start to gain more traffic and, you know, build on the content that they already have. A lot of times, when you.
Bill Colbert 2:09
are getting a lot of traffic, and you've identified a page that ranks really high; it's not that you need to go and do new topics. You can build on the nuances within an overarching issue. And we'll get into this in a few minutes, but for this site, it's really about flowers and around funerals, which is, you know, a bit of a severe and morbid topic. But there's undoubtedly some exciting opportunity to capture people at a time of need. And you know, be top of mind from a brand perspective, when people are thinking about, you know, organizing their life and, you know, getting ready for ultimately when they would need to share or handoff all of their very valuable information to a family member or someone who is helping them in their later years. So, overall, I think what's great about this site is it feels clean, simple, and helpful. And I think that's probably the.
Bill Colbert 3:10
three words that would describe, you know, best case and out out and review someone who's using the site, you know, they want a clean, helpful and organized means of keeping track of all this different information. And, you know, there's nothing too flashy on this site; it seems very simple and straightforward. And to the point, I immediately found the value. And I immediately felt like I should have signed up for this, you know, years ago. And that's probably our, you know, probably the goal. Hopefully, the goal, and it's hopefully driving a lot of signups. I mean, the scrolling press coverage here is second to none. These are all top-flight coverage and news coverage publications to get covered. So
Bill Colbert 3:54
the only thing that's missing is a testimonial. But, you know, these media coverage outlets provide that in a similar way. So let's take a quick look at
Bill Colbert 4:08
the PageSpeed Insights report. So
Bill Colbert 4:12
this site does have some room for improvement. From a mobile perspective, there are some things that can be cleaned up from performance, time to interactive is a little bit slow, largest Contentful. The paint is a little bit slow. There are a number of other elements here that can be corrected. And I would recommend being repaired because it's going to give your overall site a boost. In your overall SEO boost. So good opportunity there to gain some traffic simply by providing a user experience that loads a little bit quicker, or a lot faster in this case.
Bill Colbert 4:46
Let's take a look at this page specifically.
Bill Colbert 4:50
I would throw a published and modified date on here to give some extra context to web crawlers. I would throw a canonical URL in here as well. And then
Bill Colbert 5:00
And
Bill Colbert 5:01
this is something I've noticed throughout but on this page as well. Getting these alt texts and titles in here will certainly give you a little bit of a boost. You don't need to be ranking for CNBC and USA Today. That's not necessarily the goal. But is it the crossing of the T's and dotting the eyes on websites that can have minor incremental improvements for you?
Bill Colbert 5:27
With that said, let's get into some more specifics. So this is just a general overview.
Bill Colbert 5:35
We see a lot of backlinks in a pretty healthy site, organic keywords and traffic, and all these all this organic traffic, you'd have to spend about $110,000 a month to get the same amount of traffic to your site. So I always like to start, yes, there's the homepage. But in many cases, there is a different page that is
Bill Colbert 5:59
driving your traffic or getting a lot of traffic. And it's also can also be a good jumping-off point for understanding.
Bill Colbert 6:07
where a page can rank higher. So I'm going to take a look and take you through this page; the meaning behind eight different types of popular funeral flowers is generating 11,000 visitors to the site. And I think what's really important about this particular topic, and I'll elaborate on this more, is,
Bill Colbert 6:30
you know, going to someone's funeral is a very somber event, but it also sparks the thought of is my house in order with respect to all my life details, my bank accounts, etc., logins, all the SAS tools, you might use my Hulu account, my Netflix account, all these little logins, you know, yes, you may keep them in your brain and may have,
Bill Colbert 6:54
you know,
Bill Colbert 6:56
iteration of the same password that helps you makes it easy for you to log in. But, you know, unfortunately, eventually he's gonna, someone's gonna have to cancel all those accounts for you. So
Bill Colbert 7:07
but these are all things that you may or may not think about when you've been to a funeral, or if you've, you know, had the life event of having to help a family member or prepare a funeral for a family member, you've probably thought through
Bill Colbert 7:23
all the different loose ends that need to be tied up in that event. So
Bill Colbert 7:30
taking a quick look at the on-site here
Bill Colbert 7:34
a little bit longer with the title. Again, it would be great to throw a canonical URL in here and designate this as a site that you want to
Bill Colbert 7:45
be your, you know, tentpole page for this topic. But then, again, there's a lot of opportunity to clean up your alt text here with a lot of different images. But
Bill Colbert 8:00
let's dig into where this site traffic is coming from. And then how you could build upon this page and turn this into more of a pillar page. Let's see.
Bill Colbert 8:13
We've got 821 words here. So that's pretty short for a pillar page, which means you could add another 30 504,000, maybe even 7500 comments to this page, if you wanted to, and elaborate on all the different types of flowers, potentially. But
Bill Colbert 8:33
why would you do that? What would be the value in investing in getting more traffic for different types of flowers?
Bill Colbert 8:42
I like to look at what those keywords rank for their relative difficulty. And then what are the people? What are the websites in the top five and end up getting with respect to that so
Bill Colbert 8:54
because it's not always every brand that needs to rank, you can write about flowers and capture traffic as every plan is doing.
Bill Colbert 9:02
But, you know, it's not necessarily realistic to try and outrank one 800 flowers or pro flowers or edible arrangements. These are sites that deal in the flower industry specifically, and people go there to buy flowers. So
Bill Colbert 9:15
yes, you can look at the traffic here and see, wow, what 100 Flowers 33,000 visitors a month? It's roughly $57,000 in PPC value. But you know, you don't have to expect, or it's not necessarily the best strategy to work to outrank because you're probably not because, ultimately, people searching for different types of flowers are likely looking to buy flowers. You know, indeed, Dean by indeed, Google thinks so based on how they're providing this, but, you know, down here, this site is ranking 67 for that term, different types of flowers. And then roughly for that term, it's generating about 4040 600 visitors a month from that traffic.
Bill Colbert 10:00
So, I think there is room to improve; it's just a question of, as you evaluate further content development and SEO, you know, how much more traffic can I realistically get? So, I'm not going to be able to come to that determination in this video, but, you know, perhaps country living might be your benchmark here.
Bill Colbert 10:23
Sixty best flowers to have in your garden 14,000 visitors roughly $16,000 in value, that would be, you know, almost over a 2x increase in value from where you are now. So
Bill Colbert 10:36
stuff, you know, to be considered more to be considered here for sure, you know, when you evaluate different terms to get more traffic from keyword difficulty is another factor to keep in mind, right? Yes, it's great if there are a lot of volumes, but if it's difficult to rank for, it may be an uphill climb that you simply don't have the resources to achieve. So what I like to do is, Look at, look further down for keywords that have good value but also are easier to rank for flower of death. A bit of a morbid topic, but you know, 3700 searches a month, but it has a Keyword Difficulty of 18 already for this brand has already 14
Bill Colbert 11:18
in 14 positions. So, you know, taking a look at what others rank for, if you were to do a tangential page for this topic, specifically, it may not be worth the squeeze here to gain 1600 1330. It's a number of different terms you could potentially rank for.
Bill Colbert 11:49
But I think, overall, there's a lot of difference.
Bill Colbert 11:55
what I am noticing with this brand is this one page is working very hard to rank for a wide variety of terms. And you know, piece Lily, meaning here 2700 searches, a difficulty of seven, this could be in your rank 41st For here. So, you know, this could be because this is such a valuable page. I think this is an extremely valuable page and a great place to capture traffic from people who are having to think about a solution to the problem that you know this brand solves specifically,
Bill Colbert 12:31
I would go much deeper on a number of these topics and write individual blog articles covering these different topics. Because I think
Bill Colbert 12:40
strategically it will add not only traffic, and there's traffic to get certainly for the category of flowers, but I think you'll find that you're getting people in the right state of mind and who are more closely going to be able to find value in what you're offering.
Bill Colbert 13:01
I want to hit on another part of their strategy, which I think is excellent, you know, set the rank in total for 7500 keywords. Now some of these other terms are at the top here. They're getting 2000 visitors from Direct Cremation, which makes a lot of sense.
Bill Colbert 13:19
And that's, and they rank first for that. That I noticed they rank for Richard Weber. I'm not a Grey's Anatomy fan; please don't hold that against me. But I was like, oh, what's Richard Weber at 500 searches? It's not that difficult to rank for getting all their terms; there are about one or two, it's like the fourth or fifth term they're getting the most traffic from, and they ranked fourth.
Bill Colbert 13:42
So let's go to this page and just take a quick look at Grey's Anatomy shocker Richard, whoever chose Meredith Grey as his healthcare proxy seriously.
Bill Colbert 13:52
I really liked this strategy because not only do you.
Bill Colbert 13:58
not only can you show or connect with your audience, the potential audience, on a pop culture topic, but
Bill Colbert 14:07
you're able to get traffic for this term.
Bill Colbert 14:11
Even though you know, it's not necessarily.
Bill Colbert 14:15
a term that is super valuable. It's not a bottom-funnel term. But this is also, you know, in this may not the create the most value for you from an SEO perspective, but for nurturing an audience of email subscribers, this may be something that gets a good open rate depending on your audience, and it shows a different side of you and your brand. I really like these.
Bill Colbert 14:40
quiz lead generation tools on here. This is especially you know, how well do you get along with your family? I noticed another page that was called what type of funeral Do you want to have? I think these are great. I love how they follow you down the page on the desktop.
Bill Colbert 14:59
and
Bill Colbert 15:00
They're super, you know, taking a quiz helps me get value quicker, it helps me solve a, you know, find an answer quicker. I'm a big proponent of quizzes and checklists over ebooks and white papers. Those, to me, just imply that there's a lot to read, and then I'm gonna have to sit down, and you know, take an afternoon to digest a white paper or an ebook when, when really what I'm looking for or hoping to find is a quick answer. The only thing I might suggest is to take the, you know, x-minute quiz; if it's a three-minute quiz, say three minutes set those expectations so that people have more of a sense for how much time they need to put forth to get a simple answer out. I think that's really valuable information.
Bill Colbert 15:55
Just to close the loop on this point about pop culture ranking, I think it's a really cool strategy, especially to keep your email fresh. There's not a ton to gain. However, from an SEO perspective, you're already fourth. But the vast majority of traffic for these characters is going to either go to Wikipedia or a fan-specific wiki; we can see that.
Bill Colbert 16:19
In another instance, I'm a pretty big Mad Men fan. And I saw Betty Draper here; here, we see a similar type of breakdown. It's either Wikipedia or the Mad Men wiki, specifically, that's garnering most of the traffic for Betty Draper. So
Bill Colbert 16:36
I noticed this in a review of all the new; this is filtered for all the new topics that this brand has recently published. So they're getting ranked for these new topics, they're new, really in the last month, and their keyword difficulty is under 20. So all very gettable. But it's all very short tail traffic and has to do with if it does not have to do with a specific show or pop culture show, there's a lot of stuff about how to delete accounts, which let's take a look at a specific one, I was just curious.
Bill Colbert 17:11
You know how How to close a Map My Run account when someone dies; relatively easy to rank for, you know, very few searches specifically. So this will probably come up very high because it's a very long-tail search term. But the volume is not there. So from a volume or traffic growth perspective, it's not necessarily going to
Bill Colbert 17:34
get you the newest traffic and new leads, though. Your lead opt-in from that type of page may be extraordinarily high. It's, you know, as a marketer or entrepreneur, you need to balance the time necessary to create those pages relative to the leads that they can create. And, you know, I tend to opt or look for volume keywords that have a much higher volume; you just need it; it's just ultimately more valuable to swim in a bigger pond where you can get more traffic. But ultimately, I do like this strategy. And I can see why it's particularly valuable because there are 1000s of subscription products that ultimately need to be canceled when someone, unfortunately, passes away. So it's good to provide an answer for all of those.
Bill Colbert 18:27
So I want to round this out by looking at some of their keywords that are new, without any sort of Keyword Difficulty filter, and just show how, yes, rocket 10, Eventbrite, red bubble, you rank for these terms, you know, in the pages 678. Page two, that's fine. But I want to highlight this term, which gets 55,000 searches,
Bill Colbert 18:54
and just started ranking for this in the 31st position, which is not impossible to rank for. But what I think is really interesting is when you drill into the different sources of traffic, so sorry for your losses, a TV series, which could be a source of the traffic but
Bill Colbert 19:12
ever plans has an article on how to express sympathy, what to say, and what not to say, very valuable information.
Bill Colbert 19:20
This is a really unique circumstance because, you know,
Bill Colbert 19:26
well, first, I'll say they're getting about 2700 visitors, and it's about $2,600 a month in PPC traffic value. But look here at row 30, 100 thoughtful condolence messages; it's getting 122,000 visitors. This is the type of keyword that, if you were to come up with your own, could really help grow your traffic in a big-time way. And you know, I think why this is getting, you know, to think through the mindset of someone who needs to express sympathy. It's a very.
Bill Colbert 20:00
the delicate situation, it needs to be done just right. And it needs to be done in a time-bound way; you can't wait six months and then send a condolence card to a friend or family member, and you're gonna come across as not empathetic, and you know, not, you know, like you're too self-absorbed to stop and, and recognize someone's pain and suffering at the moment. You know, it's so it's, it's something where
Bill Colbert 20:28
One hundred thoughtful condolence messages on this site. To me, I am getting what I'm getting from seeing this is that I'm going to be able to come here, find a message that works for me, and put it into a card, and then I can get the card out in the mail in a timely fashion or
Bill Colbert 20:43
take the card with me to the services, and in I'm going to be able to delicately and appropriately express my condolences. So
Bill Colbert 20:53
this type of pre-packaged messaging at a time when people really want to be delicate with it, really need to say the right thing, and are very much not time bound situation is what's driving this immense traffic. So incredibly valuable here. And there are probably other instances within this overall topic. Either flowers or within this overall category, flowers condolence message, what have you that
Bill Colbert 21:21
you can pre-package a message. Or you can essentially give someone something that they can then take and use in their day-to-day life that's going to be way more valuable to them than some of these other topics. So this, to me, is an opt-in one of the biggest opportunities that this brand has to capture more traffic. And I would suggest to you, the entrepreneur or the marketer, to consider similar situations in your own business where you can provide a templated message or a templated item essentially that your end users can find value in and repurpose for their own needs.
Bill Colbert 22:07
Thanks for watching this week's episode; I'll have another episode out next week. If you watch this on YouTube, please hit the subscribe button below. If you want to forward this email to someone who you think needs to improve their SEO or improve the content, please feel free to do so. Thank you.
Bill Colbert 22:27
I just want to quickly take you through some of the results that we've achieved for other clients. So let's take a look at TC Gen, which is a management consulting practice based out of Palo Alto, they work with Fortune 500 companies like 3M, Amazon, Apple, Cisco, IBM, Roche, and a number of others. And we've been very successful with not only improving their SEO but with converting that traffic into paid consulting gigs in 2022. Alone, the business more than doubled its revenue thanks to the inbound leads that it started to generate. So if you look back at when we started working with them,
Bill Colbert 23:08
in early 2020, they were only getting about just under just around 300 visitors a month.
Bill Colbert 23:17
Now, in October of last year, which peaked at 25,000 visitors a month, it's dipped a little bit. But the overall gain has been tremendous. And I just want to point out how we do that. So we add
Bill Colbert 23:32
a lot of written content that helps a brand get ranked, we really go in-depth on the nuances of the business's expertise. So, in this case, we're talking about agile consulting, product management, consulting, product development, consulting, and then program management consulting; there are nuances and all these different subfields.
Bill Colbert 23:54
And then what we've done is add a ton of insights to
Bill Colbert 24:01
the website. So all these different pages are able to get ranked, and they all end up adding in the ability for the site to generate more traffic. So
Bill Colbert 24:14
here are some additional clients that they work for. But only enterprise deals are coming in for a business of this nature, but they're really doing it through their organic traffic, which you can see here. Consistent content marketing has increased by a very large multiple compared to where they were at, let's say, the start of, you know, in 2019 or 20. Even going back as far as 20 2016. It's just a few 100 visitors a month, and it has really exploded simply by
Bill Colbert 24:49
bringing out expertise in the form of written content, including a few content offers within various points on the website. And then
Bill Colbert 25:00
Really elaborating on different services that they offer and going more in-depth on what those differences are and why they're valuable. And you know, getting into a little bit of the nuances of those services, all of which is written, all of which is very highly ranking, we can do the same for you. Please feel free to reach out, and let's get in touch and talk about how we can grow your website traffic in a similar way.
