How a Vacuum Review Site Grew Traffic by 1,046% in 3 Months
https://vacuumwars.com/
Stats
24.8K to 284.8K Monthly Visits
Industry
Digital Publishing
Niche
Reviews Site
Reporting Date
September 2024
Vacuum Wars is a review site founded by Christopher White in 2017. It offers in-depth and impartial reviews of vacuums, home floor care products, and air purifiers.
Despite its 7-year online presence, Vacuum Wars has unlocked a new level of visibility in 2024.
Organic traffic has increased by more than tenfold in just 3 months.
This SEO case study reveals how Vacuum Wars unlocked greater visibility in the SERPs and shares what you can do to replicate their success.
In This Article
The Catalyst: How Vacuum Wars Reached 284.8K Monthly Visits
1. Fresh Content & Core Update Boost Rankings
Between June and September 2024, Vacuum Wars published around 70 new pages on its website.
This was a sizeable increase and brought the total page count to around 370 URLs.
Fresh content is a powerful SEO strategy for several reasons:
- Relevance: New content often aligns with current trends and search intent, making it more likely to rank for relevant keywords.
- User Engagement: New or updated content keeps visitors coming back for more, which can improve user engagement metrics.
- Search Engine Signals: Search engines value websites with fresh content, as it indicates that the site is active and relevant.
Additionally, Vacuum Wars' content push appears to have coincided with the August 2024 core update, leading to a boost in rankings.
This algorithm update addressed some feedback from the September 2023 helpful content update (HCU), which seemed to hit small, independent websites the worst.
Google’s John Mueller wrote, “This latest update takes into account the feedback we've heard from some creators and others over the past few months. As always, we aim to connect people with a range of high -uality sites, including small or independent sites that are creating useful, original content, when relevant to users' searches. This is an area we'll continue to address in future updates.”
While Vacuum Wars doesn't appear to have been negatively affected by the September HCU, it's possible that its fresh content aligned with the August core update's goals, increasing its current keyword rankings.
Why this matters:
Fresh content and staying informed on algorithm updates are essential for long-term SEO success.
By consistently creating high-quality content, you can improve your rankings, establish authority, and gain a competitive edge in the SERPs.
Additionally, tracking rankings and algorithm updates is crucial. This approach allows you to identify recent updates, measure their impact, and adapt your strategy.
How to track rankings and algorithm updates:
Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool for tracking your website’s performance in search results. You can see which queries your website is ranking for, along with their impressions and positions.
If you notice a decline in performance in GSC, you can cross-reference Google Search Status Dashboard to see if a recent algorithm update has gone into effect.
Google recommends the following steps to see if an algorithm has impacted your site:
- Confirm that the core update is complete.
- Compare the right dates.
- Analyze your top queries and pages.
- Assess where the drop happened (web search, Google Images, News tab, etc.)
Tools for tracking SEO performance:
All in One SEO (AIOSEO) has made it easy to monitor SEO performance directly in WordPress.
Search Statistics is one of its tools that allows you to quickly understand and gain valuable insights into your site’s SEO.
The dashboard displays your overall performance and provides Google Update markers to show when an algorithm update could have impacted your site.
You can also leverage the new Keyword Rank Tracker to monitor the performance of your keywords. You’ll get key metrics and position history tracking so you can easily see when a keyword starts to improve or decline.
Tip: You can import the ‘Focus Keywords' you've set in WordPress posts to the Rank Tracker. New to AIOSEO or setting focus keywords? You can also import keywords from a CSV.
Now, let’s explore how Vacuum Wars used images to stand out in search results.
2. Image Optimizations Dominate the SERP
Images are a key component of creating a positive and engaging user experience.
Vacuum Wars understands this and uses original imagery to support its reviews and showcase products in action.
Every review comes packed with images taken by White or his team.
Take this photo as an example, which shows one of the cleaning tests for a product in the Best Cordless Vacuums lineup.
Vacuum Wars also includes specific optimizations to support users’ and search engines’ understanding of the images.
Each image comes with the following:
- Captions to provide more context or detail.
- Alt text that accurately describes the image.
- Image filenames that include the focus keyword.
- Optimized title tags on some images.
These optimizations have been instrumental in search engines’ ability to understand Vacuum Wars’ images.
In return, the site has been rewarded with Google displaying these images in search results.
Here we see how the above article ranks with several images from the page:
And this one shows how Vacuum Wars appears twice in the image pack:
Note: An image pack is a set of images Google displays in search results.
Overall, these examples are just two of the many image snippets Vacuum Wars received in September 2024.
They ranked for more image snippets than ever, at 9.1K rankings.
Why this matters:
Images are essential for SEO and user experience. Here are some of their most significant benefits:
- Enhanced search engine visibility: Google often displays images in search results. Optimizing your images increases your chances of appearing in image packs, rich snippets, or Google Images.
- Improved user experience: High-quality images can make your content more visually appealing and easier to understand.
- Increased engagement: Images can help to capture attention and keep visitors on your website longer.
- Improved accessibility: Alt text provides a textual description of images, making your website more accessible to visually impaired users.
How to do image SEO:
Here’s a recap of Vacuum Wars’ image optimizations:
- Include image captions.
- Write descriptive alt text.
- Optimize filenames and titles.
This article on 18 tips for image SEO also recommends the following optimizations:
- Choose the right image format.
- Create an image sitemap.
- Lazy load your images.
- Compress images to reduce file size.
Tools for image SEO:
You can streamline image optimizations with the help of AIOSEO’s image SEO tool.
This innovative feature allows you to automate writing image attributes like titles, alt text, and captions. It uses customizable smart tags to generate these elements without you having to manually craft each one.
For the final growth strategy, we’ll look at how Vacuum Wars answers common FAQs to stand out in search results.
3. FAQs Win New SERP Features
In addition to comprehensive reviews and original images, Vacuum Wars goes the extra mile to cater to user questions by including FAQs within many of its articles.
FAQs are a great way to provide users with additional information and optimize for search engines.
That’s because they translate easily to certain SERP features like the Google People Also Ask box and Things to Know section.
Let’s look at an example.
Here, we have some FAQs about the Dyson V12:
And here we see the first answer appearing in the People Also Ask (PAA) box, which provides users with related questions to their query:
In total, Vacuum Wars ranked for 5.4K keywords in the PAA box in September 2024.
That’s more than double the PAA rankings they had in June.
Similarly, Vacuum Wars appears in the Things to Know section, which provides users with related information to their search.
This is the first time Vacuum Wars has ranked in the Things to Know category.
They ranked for 1.2K keywords in September.
It’s important to note that Vacuum Wars also includes FAQ schema markup on these pages.
Schema markup is a type of structured data that search engines use to understand a web page.
By using FAQ schema, Vacuum Wars provides search engines with additional context, helping them to better understand and index their content.
Why this matters:
FAQs and schema markup are a powerful duo for SERP features.
The FAQ-structure lends itself naturally to certain SERP features while the schema markup ensures search engines can easily understand the page’s content.
When you use both, you increase your chances of ranking in covetable areas of the SERP, such as Google’s People Also Ask and Things to Know sections.
These SERP features bring higher clickthrough rates and more organic traffic to your site.
How to include FAQ schema on your site:
This tutorial demonstrates how to add schema markup without a plugin.
It requires basic coding knowledge and uses JSON-LD.
When working through the process manually, you can use the Google Structured Data Markup Helper to generate the FAQ schema.
Tools for schema markup:
Implementing schema markup can sound intimidating without the right tools.
Luckily, schema generator plugins make the process beginner-friendly.
Take AIOSEO, for example.
It offers FAQ blocks in the WordPress editor. When you add them, the plugin implements FAQ schema automatically for you.
I also want to mention that you can use the Schema Catalog to add other types of schema markup.
Standout SEO Wins
At this point, I’d like to highlight a final SEO strategy at vacuumwars.com:
Internal Linking Supports Content Discovery
Internal linking is the practice of connecting different pages of your website via hyperlinks. Users and search engines can follow these links to reach other areas of your website.
Internal linking offers a double benefit.
First, it enhances the user experience by allowing visitors to discover related topics.
Vacuum Wars, for example, includes Related Resources to provide users with similar models or comparison guides. This helps users find reviews and products aligned with their needs and keeps them engaged on the website for longer.
Second, internal linking can positively impact your keyword rankings.
Search engines consider how you connect your content and use anchor text to understand how connected pages are related. When a page is linked from other relevant pages and has keyword-optimized anchor text, rankings may improve.
When we look at the links in the above screenshot, we can see how Vacuum Wars uses its focus keyword as the article’s anchor text.
This can ultimately boost the authority and visibility of linked pages in search results.
Tool: While internal linking is rather straightforward, it’s easy to forget. Luckily, with Link Assistant, you’ll never have to worry about overlooking internal linking opportunities again. Link Assistant populates internal link suggestions and anchor text directly in the WordPress editor.
Takeaways
In our analysis of Vacuum Wars, we’ve uncovered the growth strategies that led to its recent success.
Now, let’s recap which of these strategies to replicate on your website and others to reconsider.
Top 3 Strategies to Emulate
- Track your rankings and SEO performance. Measure the success of your SEO efforts by monitoring keyword positions and organic metrics. You can do this by using tools like Google Search Console to track your progress. Or — even better —use the AIOSEO Search Statistics to get GSC data right in WordPress. This helps you avoid jumping in and out of multiple tools and puts your content and SEO data all in one place. This tool will also let you know when an algorithm update occurred so you can determine if there’s a correlation with a change in your performance.
- Make your images search-friendly. Vacuum Wars excelled at making its images friendly for search engines. This included writing descriptive alt text, captions, and keyword-optimized filenames. Follow these image SEO best practices on your site to see your images rank in search results. These optimizations can also help you win image snippets or rank in the Google image pack.
- Include FAQs for users and search engines. FAQs provide valuable information to users and can improve your SEO. Their format lends itself naturally to popular SERP features like Google's People Also Ask and Things to Know. Ranking in either of these sections can boost your clicks and drive more organic traffic to your site.
Bottom 3 Strategies to Reconsider
- Don’t forget to include image title tags. While some of Vacuum Wars images include title tags, I noticed many were missing them. Title tags appear when users click or hover over an image. They provide additional context for users and search engines, which can help improve their rankings. You can use image SEO plugins to automate writing image titles like AIOSEO. This tool uses smart tags to customize and generate image titles automatically.
- Don’t exceed metadata character limits. Character limits ensure your page title and meta description appear in their totality on the SERP. When you exceed them, search engines will truncate your search result. This leads to a nonoptimal user experience and can negatively affect your rankings. Keep your titles under 60 characters and meta descriptions under 160. If you run your metadata through a SERP snippet tool, it will show you if they fit or not.
- Don’t overlook the importance of organized subheadings. Some of Vacuum Wars' subheadings appear in nonlogical order. SEO best practices recommend subheadings follow a sequential order, such as H1, H2, H3, and so on. This approach improves the readability of your content, which measures how easily users can read and understand your web page. With the TruSEO tool, AIOSEO checks your readability in real-time and provides insights to improve it.
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Unlock Higher Rankings & More Traffic With AIOSEO
Want to replicate Vacuum Wars’ path to SEO success?
With AIOSEO, you can streamline your SEO efforts to achieve similar results.
AIOSEO is the best SEO plugin for WordPress. It has over 3 million active users and thousands of 5-star reviews. You’ll get a suite of powerful and intuitive tools that make SEO easy.
Here are a few of our favorites:
- 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.
- Search Statistics: Track your website’s organic performance with comprehensive and easy-to-understand reports. Search statistics include content decay tracking, enabling you to reinvigorate a page when it starts to slip.
- Keyword Rank Tracker: Take control of your SEO performance and monitor keyword rankings directly in WordPress. This tool empowers you to have a constant pulse on your most important keywords, allowing you to adjust your strategy as necessary.
- 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.
- Rich Snippets Schema: Win more rich results with AIOSEO’s user-friendly schema generator. Just pick the schema type you want, and we’ll format the structured data properly for Google.
