Stats
380K to 3.2M Monthly Visit
Industry
Web & Tech
Niche
Mobile App
Reporting Date
November 2024
SimplyCodes is a platform where users can share and discover promo codes for over 400K online stores.
Users can access these promos via the website, free browser extensions, and a mobile app.
Despite being around for the past few years, 2024 has marked a new era for SimplyCodes' online popularity.
Organic traffic increased from 380K to 3.2M monthly visits between November 2023 and November 2024.
This SEO case study will explore the strategies behind this remarkable growth, providing insights for website owners who are also looking to increase their organic traffic.
In This Article
The Catalyst: How SimplyCodes Achieved 734% YoY Growth
1. Content Creation: Pages Increase From 1.1K to 12.7K URLs
Over the last year, SimplyCodes has expanded its content portfolio by more than tenfold.
In November 2023, just over a thousand URLs were live on the website, most of which were landing pages featuring promos by store.
Now, in November 2024, there are 12.7K URLs on the site.
SimplyCodes has over 10K landing pages dedicated to online stores and their respective coupon codes.
Every store page offers unique ranking opportunities for that brand.
This strategy has allowed SimplyCodes to rank for thousands of branded keywords outside the SimplyCodes brand.
Conversely, they’ve added a new categories section to the website that users can access via Stores.
This area of the website allows users to explore promos by category instead of brand.
This approach complements the brand landing pages because it allows SimplyCodes to also rank for non-branded keywords.
Some examples include:
- catering promo codes
- black friday coupon codes
- pizza promotion code
Ultimately, this content optimization strategy has empowered SimplyCodes to rank for more keywords than ever.
By November 2024, SimplyCodes reached 843.2K keyword rankings.
To put this number into perspective, SimplyCodes had less than a quarter of these rankings the year prior.
Why this matters:
By dramatically increasing its content volume and diversifying its keyword strategy, SimplyCodes has unlocked significant organic traffic.
This move has amplified brand visibility and positioned the platform as a go-to resource for online shoppers seeking the best deals.
Ultimately, this content-first approach has enabled SimplyCodes to:
- Capture tong-tail keywords, which drive more qualified traffic and sales.
- Enhance the user experience via a more comprehensive and engaging shopping experience.
- Dominate search engine results pages (SERPs) with more keyword rankings.
How to optimize your content for higher rankings:
Content optimizations are the backbone of SEO.
This beginner’s guide shows you how to optimize content for search engines.
Here’s a brief recap of some of the most important steps:
- Understand your target audience and business goals.
- Perform keyword research and plan your content.
- Use on-page SEO to increase visibility.
- Focus on creating high-quality content.
- Optimize your internal linking strategy.
Tools for content optimizations:
There’s a lot that goes into optimizing your website for search engines, but content optimization tools have made it easier than ever.
Take All in One SEO (AIOSEO), for example.
This feature-rich SEO plugin has several tools to streamline the content optimization process.
Two of my favorites are the new Writing Assistant and TruSEO.
Writing Assistant informs your content creation by providing grade summaries that compare your post against top-ranking competitors.
These insights can inform your optimizations and help you outrank the competition.
You can also get additional suggestions for keyword optimizations.
The Optimization Wizard provides keyword insights and typical frequency for the highest-ranking pages.
Note: To access Writing Assistant’s content optimizations, you’ll need to link your SEOBoost account to AIOSEO.
As for TruSEO on-page analysis, you’ll get real-time feedback regarding your content optimizations.
You’ll see a helpful checklist that checks for your focus keyword in critical areas. This ensures maximum visibility for your post or page.
Like Writing Assistant, you’ll also get a content score from TruSEO.
Both scores can inform your on-page optimizations, empowering you to expand your content’s reach.
2. Schema Markup: Structured Data Generate Review Snippets
SimplyCodes didn’t rely on content creation and on-page SEO alone.
They also show a deep understanding of the importance of technical SEO.
Technical SEO focuses on optimizing your website's technical elements for improved performance. This can include site speed, mobile-friendliness, and search engine crawling and indexing.
Another key component of technical SEO is schema markup.
Schema markup is a type of structured data within your website’s HTML. It communicates important details about your web pages to search engines in a way that’s easy for them to understand.
Here’s what it looks like in HTML code:
Search engines can use schema markup to generate SERP features, which are enhanced search listings.
One of the most frequent SERP features for SimplyCodes is review snippets.
These search listings display customer reviews and an average star rating.
Review snippets are particularly useful for eCommerce websites because they build user trust.
SEO statistics also reveal that rich snippets have higher clickthrough rates (CTRs) than standard search results.
As for how SimplyCodes got them, they implemented schema markup generously throughout the website.
In particular, they include Product schema and AggregateRating schema on each store landing page.
This strategy has been wildly successful in 2024, generating 162.6K review snippets by November.
Why this matters:
By leveraging schema markup, SimplyCodes has enhanced its visibility in SERPs.
Schema markup has led to a substantial increase in review snippets, which boast the following benefits:
- Improved CTR
- Enhanced credibility
- More organic traffic
How to include review schema on your site:
This tutorial shows how to add product review schema using a WordPress plugin.
However, if you don’t have a plugin, you can also add schema markup manually.
This process requires basic coding knowledge and uses JSON-LD.
You can also visit Google’s structured data markup helper to help you generate the appropriate code.
Tools for product review schema:
The AIOSEO Schema Generator allows you to add schema with the click of a button. No coding required.
Just select your desired schema type from the list and click the plus (+) button.
The schema generator will provide user-friendly fields for entering your product information and review details.
Once you’ve finished adding your details, click Add Schema, and the plugin will format the structured data properly for search engines.
3. Image SEO: Optimized Images Land on Google
Rounding out an already holistic SEO strategy, we have SimplyCodes’ use of image SEO.
Image SEO is the process of optimizing your images to be search-engine-friendly.
This is a critical step in website optimizations because search engines can’t see images like you and me.
They rely on text elements to decipher their content and understand their purpose on a page.
SimplyCodes uses the following strategies to help search engines understand their images:
- Writing descriptive alt text
- Optimizing the image filename
- Including ImageObject schema markup
These optimizations have encouraged search engines to use SimplyCodes’ images in search results.
And it’s worked.
SimplyCodes is ranking in the Google Image Pack for the first time this year.
This area of the SERP showcases a collection of images related to the user’s query.
It also means the website is ranking in Google Images, where there are over 1 billion searches every day.
Overall, SimplyCodes ranked for 90.3K keywords in the Image Pack in November.
Why this matters:
By prioritizing image SEO, SimplyCodes has opened up a new avenue for brand awareness and organic traffic.
Images are powerful assets in SERPs, encouraging users to stop scrolling and click.
They also can help you rank in Google Images, which is a visual search engine with over 1 billion daily searches.
How to optimize images:
Like on-page SEO, strategic keyword placement is integral to your image optimizations.
You’ll want to include your focus keyword in the following areas:
- Image filename
- Alt text
- Title tag
You should also:
- Include ImageObject schema markup.
- Compress images for faster loading.
- Optimize the image’s dimensions.
- Include captions when helpful to users.
For a complete list of items, check out this image SEO tutorial.
Tools for image SEO:
Image SEO can be time-consuming without the right tools.
Fortunately, AIOSEO's Image SEO tool streamlines the process for faster optimizations.
You can automate tasks like writing image titles or alt tags, putting your image SEO on autopilot.
Standout SEO Wins
Before we conclude, I’d like to highlight a final SEO strategy at SimplyCodes:
Store Promo FAQs Align With Google People Also Ask
Each of SimplyCodes’ 10K+ store landing pages includes FAQs about the brand’s promo codes.
(They also include FAQ schema to match.)
This creates a unique opportunity for SimplyCodes to rank in the Google People Also Ask (PAA) section.
Google PAA provides users with additional questions related to their initial query.
Users can expand these accordion-like questions to reveal the answer and visit the linked source.
FAQs are ideal for ranking in PAA because they follow the same format.
SimplyCodes has been using this strategy for a while now, which is why I didn’t include it in the main growth factors earlier.
However, it’s remained a steady contributor to SimplyCodes’ organic traffic for the past few years, meaning it still deserves recognition.
Tool: AIOSEO makes it easy to add FAQ blocks to any WordPress post or page. Just drag and drop the AIOSEO FAQ block into your content, and AIOSEO will handle the technical details of FAQ schema implementation.
Takeaways
By dissecting SimplyCodes’ recent growth, we've uncovered several strategies any website owner could use to boost organic traffic.
Now, let's recap how you can replicate these strategies on your domain, and others to reconsider.
Top 3 Strategies to Emulate
- Use a writing assistant to improve on-page SEO. SimplyCodes has a robust online presence for promo code keywords largely due to its on-page SEO. It displays an understanding of the importance of keyword optimizations to increase a content's visibility and reach in search results. For your website, you can emulate this strategy by using a writing assistant plugin to streamline these optimizations. Writing assistants can also help you gain valuable insights into competitor content, allowing you to make your web page even better than the competition.
- Make technical SEO a priority. Technical SEO focuses on optimizing your website's technical elements for improved performance. One easy way to enhance your technical SEO is by implementing schema markup on your website. Schema markup helps search engines understand your web page and generate SERP features. This means you'll have greater visibility in search results and potentially more clicks. You can use a schema generator plugin to add it to your site without having to code.
- Take a holistic approach to your SEO strategy. SimplyCodes shows all the signs of an effective and comprehensive SEO strategy. They optimize their content and images and use technical elements to support a positive page experience. This approach ensures easy crawling and indexing for search engines, resulting in more keyword rankings than ever before. For your website, consider combining all these elements to achieve a similar result. An SEO plugin can help you execute these strategies seamlessly.
Bottom 3 Strategies to Reconsider
- Don’t underestimate the power of SEO titles. Most of SimplyCodes’ SEO titles are optimized for keywords and clicks. However, some of their pages have very basic SEO titles that underutilize character limits. This oversight can have negative impacts on clickthrough rates and organic traffic. To avoid this issue on your website, you can use an AI meta title generator and aim for 50-60 characters. You can also run your SEO title through a SERP preview tool to make sure it's the correct length.
- Don’t leave meta descriptions empty. Like SEO titles, meta descriptions play an equally important role in your website's organic performance. Meta descriptions appear below your SEO title and summarize your content. When done well, they can encourage users to click through to your website. Most of SimplyCodes’ pages have meta descriptions, but a handful are missing. TruSEO will help you avoid this mistake by checking for your focus keyword in your meta descriptions and other key places.
- Don’t forget to include image titles. Despite SimplyCodes image optimizations, they've overlooked the use of image title tags. Title tags appear when users click or hover over an image. They provide additional context for users and search engines, which can boost their visibility in search results. You can add image titles automatically to your website using an image SEO plugin like AIOSEO.
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Elevate Your Organic Performance With AIOSEO
What if you could skip the guesswork and enjoy a direct route to replicating SimplyCodes’ winning formula?
AIOSEO can help you do just that.
AIOSEO is the best WordPress plugin for SEO. Its user-friendly features can help you improve your website’s organic performance regardless of your SEO experience. You'll get real-time recommendations for improving your content's reach and access to several powerful tools.
Some customer favorites include:
- Link Assistant: Get link suggestions, edit anchor text, and add internal links to your content in just 1 click. Link Assistant helps you effortlessly build a better linking strategy.
- Writing Assistant: Connect your SEOBoost account to AIOSEO to get content optimization suggestions directly in the WordPress editor. You’ll get live feedback to improve your content’s visibility in search results.
- TruSEO Score: Level up your content and go beyond a simple pass or fail. TruSEO analyzes your on-page SEO, giving you actionable insights to maximize your content's reach.
- Rich Snippets Schema: Win more rich results with AIOSEO’s beginner-friendly schema generator. Just pick the schema type you want, and we’ll format the structured data properly for Google.
- Image SEO: Turn on automatic image alt text and title attributes with a single click. You’ll save time from manual entries while helping users and search engines understand your images.
- FAQ Blocks: Add FAQs to your content to increase the likelihood of appearing in Google’s People Also Ask box. These results help boost brand awareness and increase clickthrough rates.
- AI Title & Description Generator: Save time writing SEO titles and meta descriptions with the help of AI. With just a click of a button, you can generate unique metadata for any page on your website.
