How an Atlantic City Tourism Site Grew Traffic by 661% YoY
https://www.visitatlanticcity.com/
Stats
17.3K to 141.2K Monthly Visits
Industry
Travel & Tourism
Niche
Travel Guide
Reporting Date
February 2025
What if the secret to massive website traffic isn't just about creating more content, but consolidating what you already have?
Visit Atlantic City tested this very idea by bringing together several websites under the umbrella of visitatlanticcity.com.
The results?
A huge surge in organic traffic—661% year-over-year (YoY)—and a streamlined user experience.
This SEO case study explores how Visit Atlantic City leveraged existing content to transform its visibility in SERPs. You'll learn how to apply similar techniques to your website and get tools that help you achieve comparable success.
In This Article
The Catalyst: How Visit Atlantic City Reached 141K Monthly Visits
1. From Scattered to Centralized: 301 Redirects Unleash Traffic Potential
Visit Atlantic City's growth story revolves around the decision to consolidate several websites under a single domain.
Previously, they maintained multiple websites, each targeting different aspects of Atlantic City tourism.
However, in 2025, they debuted a more comprehensive online experience by centralizing all tourism topics in one place. This required redirecting traffic from several sites to the following domain: visitatlanticcity.com.
Now, here's the thing about domain migrations: they’re complex and need a well-organized strategy.
You don't want to risk losing all your hard-earned rankings or domain authority by changing URLs.
So, to execute this strategy flawlessly, one of the components Visit Atlantic City had to implement was 301 redirects. These tell search engines that you have moved content permanently.
301 redirects preserve your “link juice,” which is essentially all the good SEO-related things associated with a web page.
The most impactful domain in this consolidation was atlanticcitynj.com. At its peak, this domain attracted approximately 464K monthly visits.
By implementing 301 redirects, Visit Atlantic City effectively channeled the valuable traffic and SEO authority of atlanticcitynj.com, and other domains, to visitatlanticcity.com.
Here, we can see how that traffic fell from the former domain:
And, consequently, got picked up the primary domain:
This move ensured that visitors looking for information about Atlantic City, regardless of the domain they initially landed on, would now find themselves on visitatlanticcity.com.
Now, the other important part of redirecting traffic is giving users a new place to land. This meant migrating a lot of content to the primary domain.
One such addition was the creation of the “Things to Do” subfolder. This section address the city's most popular attractions, activities, dining options, and more.
This section has since become the biggest traffic driver for the Visit Atlantic City website. It generated 48% of all organic traffic in February.
Why This Matters:
Domain consolidations, when executed properly, can offer significant SEO advantages:
- Centralized Authority: SEO value from multiple domains is combined, boosting the primary domain's ranking potential.
- Improved User Experience: Visitors find all relevant information in one place, simplifying navigation and engagement.
- Traffic Aggregation: Organic traffic from various sources is funneled to the main website, increasing overall visibility.
- Content Focus: Resources are concentrated on a single, comprehensive website, enhancing content quality and relevance.
- Streamlined Management: Maintaining one website is more efficient than managing multiple separate sites.
Ultimately, Visit Atlantic City’s domain consolidation demonstrates the power of a unified online presence for maximizing SEO impact and user satisfaction.
How to Consolidate Domains:
If you’re considering domain consolidation, here’s a (very) simplified process to guide you:
- Audit your domains. Identify all websites you own and assess their traffic, content, and SEO value.
- Choose a primary domain. Select the domain that will become your main website. Ideally, this should be your strongest domain or the one that best aligns with your brand.
- Implement 301 redirects. Set up 301 redirects from all secondary domains to the relevant pages on your primary domain. This ensures search engines and users are seamlessly directed to the new location.
- Consolidate content. Migrate valuable content from your secondary sites to your primary domain.
- Test, monitor, and analyze. Make sure your site and redirects are working properly. Then, track your website’s traffic and rankings to ensure your strategy is yielding positive results.
Note: There’s a lot that goes into creating and executing a domain portfolio consolidation. The above steps are meant to give you a general idea of the process, but you’ll need to do additional research to perform this process to perfection.
WordPress Site Migration Tools:
If you have a WordPress site, you’re in luck. SEO plugins make website migrations much easier than having to do it all manually.
All in One SEO (AIOSEO) has a powerful Redirection Manager that allows you to move your WordPress sites to new domains.
Just go to Redirects, then click Full Site Redirect and enter your old and new site address.
Redirection Manager will implement permanent redirects automatically for you, sending traffic from the old site to the new one.
For a more detailed explanation of this process, check out this tutorial on full site redirects in WordPress.
2. Beyond Text: Driving SEO Success with Visual Content
Visit Atlantic City uses visuals to showcase the points of interest of their city. The site is rich with high-quality photography, creating an appealing user experience.
They also optimize their visuals for search engines.
This is important because search engines can't “see” images like us. So, Visit Atlantic City uses image SEO best practices to make sure search engines can understand their content.
Some examples of these optimizations include:
- Writing descriptive alt text
- Using schema markup
- Sending strong on-page signals (clear subheadings, metadata, etc.)
Let’s look at an example.
Here’s an image from a blog post about things to do in Smithville, New Jersey:
And here are some of the earlier mentioned optimizations for this image:
- Alt text: Smithville
- Schema markup: ImageObject
- On-Page SEO: “Things to Do in Historic Smithville, NJ”
These signals allow Google to infer that the image is of Smithville.
By implementing image SEO, Visit Atlantic City has boosted their presence in the highly visible Google Image Pack.
This section of the SERP features a handful of images related to the user's query. Ranking here is an excellent way to capture attention and drive traffic to your site.
By February 2025, Visit Atlantic City had achieved an impressive 2.4K keyword rankings within the Image Pack.
Why This Matters:
Optimizing images for search provides numerous benefits, such as:
- Enhanced Visibility: Ranking in the Image Pack expands your reach beyond traditional text-based search results.
- Increased Clickthrough Rates: Eye-catching images attract user attention and encourage clicks.
- Improved User Engagement: Visual content enhances UX and keeps visitors engaged on your pages.
- Brand Building: Consistent use of high-quality imagery reinforces brand identity and creates a positive impression.
- Diversified Traffic Sources: Image search provides an additional avenue for organic traffic, diversifying your sources and reducing reliance on text-based searches alone.
Visit Atlantic City’s focus on image SEO highlights the importance of visual content in a comprehensive SEO strategy.
How to Optimize Images for Search:
Want to replicate Visit Atlantic City’s image SEO success? Here’s a guide to optimizing your visuals:
- Choose high-quality images. Use clear, visually appealing, and relevant images. High resolution is important, but optimize file size for page speed.
- Use descriptive file names. Use keyword-rich and descriptive file names instead of generic names like “image1.jpg.” For example, “atlantic-city-beach-sunrise.jpg.”
- Write detailed alt text. Write concise and descriptive alt text for every image. Accurately describe the image and include relevant keywords naturally.
- Optimize relevant surrounding text. Embed images within content that is contextually relevant. Ensure the text around the image supports and enhances its meaning.
- Implement schema markup. Schema markup helps search engines understand the content of a page. You can use ImageObject schema for images.
- Have an image sitemap. Create and submit an image sitemap to Google Search Console to help search engines discover and index your images.
By implementing these image SEO techniques, you can significantly improve your website’s visibility in visual search and attract a wider audience.
Image SEO Tools:
AIOSEO has image SEO features directly in WordPress. You can use smart tags to generate alt text, image titles, and captions automatically. This allows you to save time and use consistent optimizations across all images.
3. Answering the Web: Readability Dominates People Also Ask
Visit Atlantic City prioritizes clear and easy-to-understand content on their website. They recognize that readability is crucial for both users and search engines.
Readability refers to how easy it is for users to read and comprehend written text.
Websites with high readability tend to keep users engaged longer. This reduces bounce rates and improves overall user experience.
Search engines also favor readable content as it indicates quality and user-friendliness.
Visit Atlantic City employs several techniques to enhance content readability:
- Clear Subheadings and Descriptive Titles: Using well-structured headings and subheadings (H2, H3 tags) to break up text and guide readers through the content. Titles are descriptive and informative.
- Short Sentences and Paragraphs: Writing in concise sentences and keeping paragraphs short to prevent overwhelming readers with large blocks of text.
- Strategic Use of Imagery: Incorporating images and other visuals to break up text, illustrate points, and maintain visual interest.
By focusing on these readability best practices, Visit Atlantic City has not only created a more pleasant reading experience for their visitors but has also been rewarded by search engines.
Notably, they have achieved 2.3K keyword rankings in Google’s People Also Ask (PAA) section by February 2025.
The People Also Ask box features questions related to the user’s initial query. Websites that provide clear, concise, and readable answers are more likely to be featured in this prominent SERP feature.
Why This Matters:
Prioritizing content readability yields significant benefits for SEO and user engagement:
- Improved User Experience: Easy-to-read content keeps users engaged and on your site.
- Enhanced SERP Visibility: Readable content is favored by search engines and increases the likelihood of ranking in SERP features.
- Increased Content Comprehension: Clear writing ensures users understand your message effectively.
- Better Accessibility: Readable content is more accessible to a wider audience.
How to Improve Your Readability:
Enhancing your website’s content readability is an ongoing process. Here are key steps to focus on:
- Use clear and concise language. Avoid jargon, complex vocabulary, and overly technical terms. Opt for simple and direct language.
- Write short sentences and paragraphs. Keep sentences and paragraphs brief and focused on a single idea.
- Break up text. Use headings, subheadings, bullet points, lists, and white space to make your content visually digestible.
- Incorporate multimedia. Use images, videos, and infographics to break up text, illustrate points, and enhance engagement.
- Read your content aloud. Reading your content aloud helps you identify awkward phrasing and overly complex sentences.
By using these techniques, you can work toward a more user-friendly and SEO-friendly website.
Content Readability Tools:
Readability tools are a great way to assess the readability level of your content and identify areas for improvement.
AIOSEO’s TruSEO tool comes equipped with a Readability Checklist that’s easy to follow. It gives you recommendations and lets you know where to make the adjustment (just click the eye icon to go to that specific area of your page).
Once complete, each item should have a green check mark.
Standout SEO Wins
Beyond these core strategies, Visit Atlantic City also implements another SEO best practice:
Sitemaps for Enhanced Navigation and Crawlability
Visit Atlantic City uses both XML and HTML sitemaps on their website.
XML sitemaps are designed for search engines. They act as a roadmap of your website, listing all important pages and help crawlers find and index your content. This is crucial for ensuring all valuable pages are discovered and included in search engine results.
Here’s what one looks like:
HTML sitemaps, on the other hand, are designed for users. These sitemaps are customer-facing and provide a clear, hierarchical list of pages on the website. Each item in the list contains an internal link, so users can easily navigate to that particular page.
They’re more visually-appealing than their XML counterpart, as you can see below.
By using both HML and HTML sitemaps, Visit Atlantic City caters to users and search engines. This strategy underlines the importance of details when it comes to optimizing your website for best performance.
Tool: AIOSEO make it incredibly easy to generate both XML and HTML sitemaps. XML sitemaps are generated automatically while you can customize HTML sitemaps and how they appear to users.
Takeaways
At this stage, we've discovered the key strategies to contributed to Visit Atlantic City's success.
Now, it's time to transform these strategies into actionable to-dos for your website.
Top 3 Strategies to Emulate
- Leverage 301 redirects to preserve SEO equity during URL changes. Whether you're consolidating domains, restructuring your website, or updating URLs, 301 redirects are essential for maintaining SEO rankings. By permanently redirecting old URLs to new, relevant pages, you ensure that search engines transfer the SEO value. It also ensures users are guided to the correct content. This is crucial for websites undergoing changes or moving content.
- Optimize images for visual search. Don't overlook image SEO. Use high-quality images, descriptive alt text, and keyword-rich file names to improve your visibility in Google Image Search and the Image Pack. Visual content is increasingly important in search and can help your site stand out from the competition.
- Prioritize content readability for engagement and SERP features. Make your content easy to read and understand by using clear language, short paragraphs, subheadings, and visuals. Readable content improves user experience and can increase your chances of ranking in SERP features like People Also Ask.
Bottom 3 Strategies to Reconsider
- Forgetting to set an H1 tag. An H1 tag is the primary heading of your web page, signaling the main topic to both users and search engines. While Visit Atlantic City has well-structured content, overlooking H1 tags on some pages can make it difficult to grasp the main theme. For your site, you should make it a habit to include a clear H1 tag on every indexable page. The AIOSEO Headline Analyzer can even help you optimize your H1 tags to be both user-friendly and keyword-rich.
- Omitting canonical tags. Canonical tags tell search engines which version of a page is the preferred version (aka, which one you want them to serve in search results). They're essential for managing duplicate content issues and consolidating link equity. Visit Atlantic City appears to be missing canonical tags on some pages, which is a missed opportunity for technical SEO. You can easily set canonical URLs in the AIOSEO settings of WordPress.
- Allowing metadata to exceed character limits. Meta titles and meta descriptions are text snippets that appear in SERPs. They're your website's first impression to users and directly influence clickthrough rates. When you exceed character limits, your result will be truncated. This can decrease their efficacy. To avoid this issue, use a SERP preview tool to check that your metada fits within the limited SERP space.
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Take Your SEO to the Next Level With AIOSEO
Visit Atlantic City's journey showcases that impactful SEO often boils down to mastering the basics.
With All in One SEO (AIOSEO), you can take control of your website's SEO and achieve real results.
From managing redirects to optimizing images, you'll get everything you need to implement these core strategies effectively—and easily.
AIOSEO is the best WordPress plugin for SEO. You’ll get tons of features that make SEO beginner-friendly and help you reach your online goals. Some customer-favorite tools include:
- 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.
- Redirection Manager: Prevent humans and bots from getting lost when you move content or domains. Our Redirection Manager helps you select and implement the best redirect type that preserves SEO.
- 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.
- TruSEO Score: Level up your content and go beyond a simple pass or fail. TruSEO analyzes your on-page SEO, giving you actionable tips to maximize your content's reach and readability.
- Smart Sitemaps: Easily generate HTML, XML, and RSS sitemaps with the help of AIOSEO. These dynamic sitemaps ensure all your content is crawled and indexed efficiently for faster rankings.
- Headline Analyzer: Get more clicks with compelling and keyword-rich headlines. This tool analyzes your H1 tag and helps you improve it for better engagement.
