Argentine Asado SEO Project At a Glance:
Problems:
- Argentine Asado was a brand-new domain with 0 market position or brand awareness.
- Highly competitive industry for food-related search terms.
- No experience in driving organic traffic to the website or content creation strategy.
- No domain authority, less than 3 DA.
- Less than 500 organic clicks a month.
- No schema optimization for recipes, guides, or articles.
Key outcomes:
- Argentine Asado achieved 15,000 organic clicks last month at the time of this case study (Q3 2024) and is on its way to achieving 50,000 clicks a month.
- Domain authority growing by 1-2 points monthly.
- More than 7,000 indexed non-branded keywords.
- Documented content strategy informed by research content clusters and search opportunities.
- AI for SEO adoption and integration.
About The Customer:
Argentine Asado is a food website, which focuses on showcasing the Argentine grilling culture, sharing recipes, grilling guides, buying guides and Argentine Asado techniques. This website, since it started in 2022 has been featured on mainstream food websites, Wikipedia and grown exponentially in the last 12 months, and is on its way to achieving 50,000 organic clicks monthly. Argentine Asado’s target audience is Europe, North America, Australasia and anyone interested in Argentine food and culture.
The Argentine Asado Website Started From ZERO: This How We 10x Organic Traffic.
Argentine Asado was a brand-new domain in 2022, no one had ever created any content and the domain had never recieved any traffic. A clean plate, with no data or experience.
This was the challenge, starting from ZERO in a competitive niche, food blogging.
There was very little data on the niche, Argentine grilling seemed like an interesting niche, but was there sufficient search volume, was the intent of the searches aligned with the type of content that Argentine Asado hoped to create? These questions were daunting, but we rose to the challenge.
Aside from just the content angle, the bigger question was, how do we build domain authority from absolutey ground zero to a number that would allow us to actually compete in the space and gain some visibility amonth major food brand and websites targetting these search terms and audiences.
Semantic Analysis of the Niche and Domain Authority
The mision of Argentine Asado was clear, create content targetting grilling aficionados or BBQ enthusiasts. But we had a problem, the grilling space is a “sub-category” of Food, and food is a sub category of culture, especially for the Argentine Asado use case.
Also Argentine Asado was concerned wether they should focus on long-tail keywords vs high volume broader keywords. This goes without mentioning building brand awareness with a 100% new website.
Therefore we had to identify 5 key pillars of authority to build out a unified content strategy that would align semantically. Breaking down the keyword strategy accounting for both long-tail variables and the defintion of broader terms to establish authority in the niche.
We established a content map that covered the following categories and then built our our target keyword list:
- Argentina > culture, geography country, interests, travel, restaurants etc.
- Food > grilled foods, grilled vegetables, grilled sides, salads, deserts.
- BBQ/Grilling > best practices, guides, comparisons, experiences.
- Drinks > wine, pairings, drink guides, best practices.
- Asado > history, guides, culture, cultural heritage, gauchos, etc.
In addition to analyzing searcher intent to inform the content strategy, we had to establish a route to growing domain authority. This was a large undertaking as we were competing with extremely experienced and established websites. Along with the content strategy Argentine Asado also needed to identify what type of schema type the website should adopt for each of its content types, pages, pillar pages, and URL structure to best fit the need.
Starting to build DA from zero is hard, but its the best opportunity to do it right, and have a sustainable approach to establishing long-term authority. Argentine Asado grasped this opportunity and leaned into it!
What did we do?
As we developed the SEO roadmap, we built the case for creating content in the first place before we expanded our domain authority.
We built out a thorough content calendar accounting for every potential variable within the content clusters, breaking down the content by schema type (recipe, review, step-by-step guide, article, etc) with this we segmented the long-tail keywords vs the broader keywords.
We phased the content into a 18-month program to build more than 1000 pieces of content in less than 12 months. Alongside this roadmap we worked with the team to build out the necessary key areas on the website including identifying the right url framework, pillar pages, interlinking and mega menu navigation.
The content team needed coaching with on page optimization of the content including establishing a cadence to publishing content and also updating older content.
Key implementations of the SEO Program:
- Built an 18-month SEO Roadmap.
- Branded keyword strategy (“Argentine Asado”)
- Semantic analysis and keyword research.
- Content strategy for content clusters.
- Implemented a schema audit.
- Built URL strategy for key clusters, archives and pillar pages.
- Assisted in the design of the mega menu, footer and website navigation.
- Established pillar pages, archive pages, and implemented the right page schema types.
- Implemented powerful CDN’s.
- Integration of AI content planning and assisting production.
- Clear, well-structured sitemaps were implemented, and indexing schedules were facilitated.
- Sitemaps were routinely indexed via Google Search Console.
- Achieved grade A (GTMetrix) and 99% performance score (Google Page Speed Insights).
- Optimized all metadata and tags on the site and content.
- Alt tag optimization: all media was optimized to load correctly in image search with the right tags.
The result?
Argentine Asado grew from 0 to more than 15,000 clicks monthly and the time of this article, they are well on the path to achieving 50,000 organic clicks a month. They also achieved an extraordinary click-through-rate for competitive keywords and many of their content pieces are now featured in SearchGPT, AI Overviews, major publications and Wikipedia.
Along with this, Argentine Asado has achieved an exeptional time on site and engagement rate. With more than 50% of the users visiting the site for more than 1 minutes 30 seconds, and viewing more than 2 pages.
Domain authority has grown around 3-4 points each quarter, this natural but rapid progress has allowed their content to recieve exponential organic visibility. We established a simple Backlinking stratgey compromising of strategic guest posting, PR and building link-friendly content that aligned to the semantic map of content that was needed to achieve visbility in this niche.
Argentine Asado the actual brand name for the website grew in positions, ranking #1 after 12 months of work. This effort was key to exposing searchers/users to the brand, websites and unique voice.
Long Tail Keywords (low volume) vs Broad Keywords (high volume)
One of the key learnings we had in the Argentine Asado project was finding the right balance with the long tail keywords, which had low volume, and the broader keywords that had extremely high volume
For example:
- Argentina travel (70k searches monthly)
- Av. CTR 0.3%
- Traffic: 210 clicks a month
- Argentina travel guides (5k searches monthly)
- Av. CTR 5%
- Traffic: 250 clicks a month
Focusing on identifying opportunities as well as the sweet spot was key for building relevancy and gain key positions in the SERPS (and AI!)
This type of analysis cropped up a lot. And what we established was an SOP for building content that could rank for both the long tail and broader keywords within the same article. Or we could create a pillar page and create supporting short-form pieces linking to overlapping topics on the pillar page.
We achieved this by optimizing content for both queries in one piece. This gave us multiple advantages, not just cutting down the volume of content created and publoished but also meant that the volume of indexed keywords per article became larger. This meant the article carried more “weight” was more link worthy and could rank for hundreds of variants instead of creating “micro-articles” for each long tail variation of the keyword.
This wasn’t applicable to all content clusters, it depended on the search volume of the keyword and wether the article could link if both variations where included and value was provided.
The Importance of Bringing Unique Value to Search Engines
This is a perfect segue from what I mentioned before, but providing value and giving unique insights was the catalyst for success. Argentine Asado shared content and valuable resources on Argentina from a very unbiased, native, culture rich and unique perspective. Not to mention that Argentine Asado content was all created by Argentineans, with local experiences and “jargon” showed immense value in the SERPS. This content in English became very popular in the search engines, rising through the search positions and gaining key rankings in Google.
And as simple as it sounds, avoiding fluffy conversations and buckling down to provide geniune insights is hard, but necessary. And wether or not AI was used, simply being unique and finding opportunoity to talk about something from a unique perspective can and did change everything.
As we coached the content team to expose and leverage these opportunities, the content grew in equal proportions to the input, value provided, and thoughtfulness of the content.
Topical Gaps in The Food Industry
One of the key strategies in our content analysis, strategy, and production was exposing opportunities in search engines and feeding them to content creators.
This methodology was employeed to provided more value in the SERPs, therefore increasing the liklehood to ranking in better positions, as the content was richer and more valuable than competing pieces of content.
Finding gaps in other pages meant analyzing the content and using observaibility to find aspects of the conversation that were “thin”. Then using this analysis to inform our content briefs and strategy.
By filling these gaps, or “plugging these holes,” we were technically providing essential value to the serps and doing what nobody else was, filling a void and simply being the one-stop source of truth on a specific keyword or subject.
Our SEO Program for Argentine Asado
Our program lasted around 18 months and is still ongoing to some extent, with the team engaging to provide support to the content, domain authority and integration of AI into key processes.
The program was broken down in 2 key phases:
Discovery, Research, Analysis and Roadmapping
This phase was focused on collaborating with key stakeholders in the project, understanding the key narratives, performing in depth analysis of the market, buyer persona, searcher intent and building content clusters.
This phase was coupled with roadmapping the entire SEO journey to meet Argentine Asado's objectives.
Execution of Strategy, Support, Enablement and Authority Building
The second phase was where the rubber hit the asphalt. Working with the team and Integrating the strategy to fully operationalize the vision for this SEO project.
We executed on our research and worked with the content team to enable the adoption of key processes to unlock more value and scale content output without sacrificing quality. Along with this, we began drip-feeding the domain with authoritative backlinks and exposing content to attract organically placed links. Finding a balance between guest posts, PR, backlinks, and getting mentioned in major food publications and magazines.
0 to 15,000 clicks and next stop 50,000: volume fixes most things!
They say volume fixes everything, sometimes! For Argentine Asado this was 99% true. As we saw an increase in traffic, we discovered and unlocked so many doors to understand better how the market performed, what the user actually wanted to read and refine our strategy accordingly.
More data, more learnings, improved strategy, and consistent execution = success.
As the website grew from 0 to 1,000, 1,000 to 5,000 and then 5,000 to 15,000 so many question marks (?) were answered, and you might say levels to the games were won. Argentine Asado learnt more about the niche as they went from o to 5k and then 5k to 15k! The SEO program was essential to this evolution and gaining immense knowledge of the audience was the biggest gain.
The next phase of growth is 50,000 clicks a month and then 100,000. As they use data and evidence to refine their SEO strategy, the predictability of growth becomes a lot more straightforward.
Argentine Asado SEO Dream Team: Supporting The Mission
Argentine Asado didn’t achieve this success by chance, there was a dream team, resources, dedication and discipline to achieve these results. The integrated high-performance SEO team behind the project were crucial to deliver at each stage of the SEO program.
This ranges from key strategic SEO oversight to website development and updates, SEO training for the team, and On-page optimizations.
The key roles we filled in this project were:
- SEO Oversight and Strategist
- On-page SEO Specialist
- SEO Coach
The Time Frame
- Phase #1 Kickoff Discovery: 1 month
- Phase #2 Audit and Alignment to Business Strategy: 1 month
- Phase #3 Implementation of Strategy: 2-3 months.
- Phase #4 Team Training and Adoption: 2 months
- Phase #5 Attribution, Measurement and SEO Coaching: 2 months.
- Ongoing SEO support for content strategy and key performance indicators such as domain authority, content production and website design/development.