Search Engine Optimization Experience

Louis Greubel: SEO Success Stories

HY-C

I started at HY-C, a St. Louis-based metal fabricating company, in July of 2023 with the goal of increasing organic search traffic, improving domain authority and reputation, and driving brand and product awareness through search. I took a multi-step approach to this process:

  1. I performed keyword research based on HY-C’s product categories

  2. I devised a content strategy based on blog posts, pillar pages, and product pages to increase keyword rankings for high-impact keywords

  3. I executed the content strategy with a focus on core technical SEO best practices (keyword-appropriate headers, code minification, improved page speed, image optimization, mobile optimization, XML sitemap submission, etc.)

  4. I also assisted in migrating HY-C’s website from WordPress to HubSpot CMS, keeping key technical SEO best practices at the forefront

The result was a thirty-fold increase in organic traffic to hy-c.com from 1,100 monthly visitors in July 2023 to over 33,000 by October of 2024.

HY-C.com Organic Traffic Per Month

July 2023 - October 2024

(based on Semrush data)

0 2,500 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 25,000 30,000 35,000 7/23 8/23 9/23 10/23 11/23 12/23 1/24 2/24 3/24 4/24 5/24 6/24 7/24 8/24 9/24 10/24

Keyword rankings also increased dramatically during this period from just 174 in July of 2023 to over 21,500 by October of 2024.

HY-C.com Ranking Keywords

(based on Semrush data)

174

July 2023

21,515

October 2024

Cat5 Commerce

Cat5 Commerce is an ecommerce company based in Chesterfield, Missouri, that owns two online stores: tacticalgear.com and workboots.com.

To drive traffic, management decided to establish blogs on both sites (starting with tactcicalgear.com) with the goal of funneling users toward product pages. The site developers built out the blog framework and categories, while content topics, content creation and publication, keyword strategy, merchandising, and web traffic and purchase monitoring (through UTM links) were left to me.

After one year of posting SEO-rich content, tacticalgear.com’s monthly visitors rose 53%, from around 150,000 per month to around 230,000 per month:

TacticalGear.com Organic Traffic Per Month

October 2019 - October 2020

(based on Semrush data)

140K 150K 160K 170K 180K 190K 200K 210K 220K 230K 10/19 11/19 12/19 1/20 2/20 3/20 4/20 5/20 6/20 7/20 8/20 9/20 10/20

The website also began to rank for over 19,000 net-new keywords during that period.

TacticalGear.com Ranking Keywords

(based on Semrush data)

56,191

October 2019

75,791

October 2020

After the strategy was successfully implemented for tacticalgear.com, we began to implement a parallel strategy to replicate the success for workboots.com. After a year of developing and publishing SEO-focused, keyword-rich content for workboots.com, the site’s organic traffic rose from around 40,000 visitors per month to just under 150,000 visitors per month (October 2022 - October 2023).

WorkBoots.com Organic Traffic Per Month

October 2022 - October 2023

(based on Semrush data)

40K 50K 60K 70K 80K 90K 100K 110K 120K 130K 140K 150K 10/22 11/22 12/22 1/23 2/23 3/23 4/23 5/23 6/23 7/23 8/23 9/23 10/23 Additional-90k-line

We also more than doubled our ranking keywords during that period from around 17,000 to over 36,000.

WorkBoots.com Ranking Keywords

(based on Semrush data)

17,594

October 2022

36,232

October 2023

Prefer candidates with HTML and CSS knowledge? I coded all of these graphs and charts myself!