SEO Optimized Posts for Our Garden Works 🌿
Jeanne KF
Like this project
Posted Dec 22, 2023
From 0 to 588k traffic in 2022, we marked Our Garden Works in the horticultural space as a source of quality content for green thumbs.
🎯Project Details
This is a content writing project for an affiliate website designed for a gardening niche. My main duty is to create SEO-optimized blog posts and build a community out of it. The content formats I wrote for this project include:
How-to blogs. (2000-word)
Q&As (2000-word)
Buying guides (3500-word)
List posts (2000-word)
Feature posts (2000-word)
In some cases, I also edit images for blog posts and answer to reader's comments as needed. I also do some image editing even though it's not required since the posts also include images for plant parts, materials, and instructional directions. Amazon products listed for the posts are also curated based on different metrics set by my client.
One of the key objectives that has been developed in this project is to create in-depth content based on rigorous research to capture the target market and stand out among the competitors.
⚒️Content Writing Process
The content writing process for Our Garden Works is typically simpler than others since all the keywords are already laid out for me in a tracker. All I need to do is write and optimize the posts to improve SEO. Check out my writing process below.
💭Search Intent & Topic Research
Most of the time, topics chosen by my client lie in two things: a basic guide on gardening chores or in-depth horticultural topics. As someone who needs years to become a gardening expert, I spend tons of time learning more about what I am writing about.
My questions typically include:
Why do people search for this?
What is it and how does this affect their gardening experience?
What do the readers want to get out of this topic that they're not getting from my competitors?
How can I relay the information I researched in a way that's easier and more engaging for my audience?
👩🌾Content Outline
After collecting all insights and information based on my research, each post will be outlined to achieve their respective flow. This stage includes planning the draft so it will be easier to write the posts. Sub-processes under this phase include:
Section sequencing
Talking points
Keyword placements
Link sources
Amazon link research
Section and heading strategy
Additional image curation (for step-by-step type of posts)
🌱Content Writing & SEO Elements Application
.A good outline is the key to a smooth writing process. It helps me write fast and improve the flow of the content. I call my writing process as a process of weaving information tailored to a specific audience.
After creating the first draft, I read the content again to insert the SEO elements like:
Increase the number of keyword mentions
Optimize meta title
Add internal and external links
Highlight key information using bold and italics.
Monitor section maximum word count
Add call to actions
Add images to break blocks of text
Improve paragraph length
Adjust long sentences
🌳Proofreading
Once all the key SEO elements are added, I'll be proofreading the content. It will be done in 2 to 3 rounds until it qualifies the standard that I want. The finished content will be sent for approval to my client.
😎 Published Content for Our Garden Works
Within three years, I've written 293 blog posts for Our Garden Works. The majority of the posts are in the top 10 SERP results for two years straight which helped us keep the project going until this year.
Content Formats
Check out some of the high-performing content below under their respective category.
How-to Guides
🌟Content Transformation & Milestones🌟
We've built the website from scratch and now garners 132K to 589K visitors per year. It is one of the milestones of my client which are all built based on hard work and perseverance for the past three years.
The growth of traffic within two years
Insights:
2023 - 187,592 sessions
2022 - 588,274 sessions
2021 - 132,847 session
Our website traffic typically dies down during fall and winter and peaks during the growing season in the US.
The peak of our website performance is in 2022 when everyone is still recovering from the effects of the pandemic and started gardening. We achieved almost half a million traffic in just a span of one year.
Based on the numbers above, the website's traffic flopped in 2023 due to a lot of possible reasons. These include the return-to-office protocol in the US, the launching of ChatGPT where most people get the answers instantly, and inflation which makes product reviews less appealing to readers.
This is one of our most viral content that has been shared 120k times on Pinterest.
One of my posts is also among the websites considered as a credible source posted by experts from the USDA Knowledgebase. Link: https://ask2.extension.org/kb/faq.php?id=797169
It was a delight to see how Our Garden Works grew and developed a community of its own. I believe as more people start to grow their food, the website will continue to be a source of helpful information for a lot of people.