306 Keywords in the Top, +196% Traffic: Akurateco Promotion Case Study

SEO promotion plays a critically important role for any business seeking success. The statistics speak for themselves: at least 43% of all traffic in the E-Commerce sector is generated by Google search.

This is understood not only by online stores but also by payment service providers like Akurateco – a platform offering comprehensive payment gateway solutions. Lead generation and traffic growth directly influence business expansion, which is why Akurateco turned to us for help with SEO promotion.

Our short-term but highly productive collaboration resulted in success: the number of clicks increased almost threefold, and 306 keywords reached the TOP-30 of Google’s search results.

Want to know how we achieved this? Read the detailed case study where we share all the nuances and secrets of successful SEO promotion.

A Few Points About the Client

Akurateco is a modern platform that offers everything needed to optimize payment processes and improve business operations. This includes multi-currency support, fraud prevention, intelligent payment routing, and detailed analytics.

The platform is ideal for: 1. high-risk enterprises;  2. payment service providers; 3. online merchants; 4. marketplaces and banks.

For over 5 years, Akurateco has been helping companies efficiently manage transactions, increase payment approval rates, integrate multiple payment methods, automate billing, and gain deeper insights for business improvement.

*Priority on Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, and especially the MENA region in the UAE..

** Priority on Egypt, Nigeria, Oman, and South Africa.

The client approached us with two requests that guided our SEO strategy development:

1. Attract maximum organic traffic to the platform.
2. Rank target keywords at top positions in search results.

Did we succeed? Take a look at the key results below and the answer will be clear.

Target Results Achieved

Defining goals is the foundation of any successful strategy. It not only simplifies the planning process but also ensures clear and consistent execution. Here are the results we achieved:

This was just the first step toward Akurateco’s significant business growth. SEO is a process that requires constant attention and effort.Partnership Launch

The first meeting with the client took place in June 2023. We discussed their requests, the vision for the collaboration, and our plans for future work. We aligned our directions, found common ground, and by July, communication became more focused. We conducted a comprehensive analysis of the Akurateco website, examining its technical features and content. Based on the data obtained, we developed a promotion strategy and promptly began its active implementation.

Promotion Roadmap

The SEO promotion of Akurateco became not just a successful project but a model of a comprehensive approach where each step was thoughtfully planned and executed using various SEO techniques. 

Let’s take a closer look at the stages that led to the desired results.

Step 1: Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis is the starting point of any successful SEO strategy. For Akurateco, we:

Based on the competitor analysis, we developed several promotion strategies and a corresponding traffic forecast for each.

Step 2: Technical Optimization

For the successful initial optimization of the akurateco.com website, a technical audit was conducted, aimed at addressing several issues simultaneously.

Issue 1: Lack of User-Friendly URLs (SEO-Friendly URLs)

SEO-friendly URLs are unique web page addresses that:

• Briefly reflect the page content.
• Are understandable and easy for users to perceive.
• Improve site indexing by search engines.

On the Akurateco website, URLs did not meet these requirements. To solve this issue, we recommended standardizing them as follows:

1. Use only lowercase letters.
2. Replace spaces, punctuation marks, and symbols with hyphens (-) or, if necessary, underscores (_).
3. Keep numbers and letters in their original form, using transliteration.
4. Remove unnecessary consecutive hyphens and underscores.

Additionally, URLs should not end with a hyphen or underscore (e.g., “/test-/”).

Issue 2: Incomplete Optimization of Internal Links

At this stage, we worked in two directions.

• The first was setting up breadcrumb generation on all pages except the main one.

Breadcrumbs are a navigation path on a website, showing the route to the page the user is currently on.

 We provided recommendations for their optimization: placing them at the top of the page, and including links in each element except the last one (where the user is currently located). Here are a few examples:

Page	Breadcrumbs View
https://akurateco.com/white-label-payment-gateway	Punctuality – Innovative White-label Payment Gateway
https://akurateco.com/blog/business-case-how-akurateco-payment-software-cut-420k-in-costs-for-a-forex-client	Punctuality – Blog – Business Case: How Akurateco’s Payment Software Cut $420K in Costs for a Forex Client

• Second – fixing pagination errors.

Pagination is the sequential numbering of pages, typically located at the top or bottom of website pages.

 During our analysis, we identified optimization errors related to pagination on the client’s site. To resolve this issue, we recommended: opening the pages for indexing, assigning a canonical URL to each page pointing to itself, adding appropriate meta tags.

Issue 3: Duplicate Pages

Duplicates are separate pages on the site with content that is fully or partially identical. We discovered duplicate pages on the client’s site with variations in letter case, for example:

• https://akurateco.com/payment-methods/Cauri 
• https://akurateco.com/payment-methods/Paynetics 

To eliminate this issue, our team recommended setting up a 301 redirect from the duplicate pages to the main page.

Issue 4: Incorrect Configuration of the “/robots.txt” File

Upon discovering the incorrect configuration of the file, we realized that the client would not be able to specify which files on their site should be visible to search engines.

To resolve this issue, it was necessary to:

We also recommended creating a “/robots.txt” file in the following format:

User-agent: *Allow: */uploads Allow: /*/*.js Allow: /*/*.css Allow: /wp-*.png Allow: /wp-*.svg Allow: /wp-*.woff Allow: /wp-*.ttf Allow: /wp-*.jpg Allow: /wp-*.jpeg Allow: /wp-*.gif Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php Disallow: /cgi-binDisallow: /wp- Disallow: *?s=Disallow: *&s= Disallow: /search/ Disallow: /author/ Disallow: /users/ Disallow: */trackback Disallow: */feed Disallow: */rss Disallow: */embed Disallow: */wlwmanifest.xml  Disallow: /xmlrpc.php Sitemap: https://akurateco.com/sitemap_index.xml

Issue 5: Errors in Title, Description, H1 Structure, and Image Sizes

As the issue title suggests, there were several problems, but we found solutions for each one.

1. Title Optimization

During the review of Titles, we identified issues related to their length (too short, too long), duplicate Titles and H1 tags, and Title duplicates.

Example of long Title

Example of Title duplicates

2. Description Optimization

We identified the following issues with the Descriptions: they were either too long or missing entirely.

Example of missing Description

3. H1 Optimization

During the review of H1 tags, we identified pages without an H1, pages with duplicate H1 tags, or pages with multiple H1 tags.

Example of missing H1

The solution to all the listed problems was straightforward and uniform: standardize the Title, Description, and H1 to the accepted format:

4. Image Optimization

The analysis of images revealed a variety of errors:

• Large image sizes, which complicate page loading and negatively affect user experience.

We recommended reducing the image size to 100-150 KB whenever possible.

• Images with missing alt/title attributes prevent search engines from recognizing the images and fail to inform users of the image’s name if it fails to load for any reason.

The solution to the problem was straightforward: implement alt/title attributes for images.

Issue 6: Low Page Load Speed

According to PageSpeed Insights, the site had a very low optimization score.

We recommended implementing the suggested fixes from the audit page and taking measures to improve the overall site speed.As a result, the score was improved to a green zone with a rating of 93 out of 100.

Our team also performed a range of other technical tasks, including:

• Replacing links with 3xx and 4xx statuses.
• Removing broken links.
• Removing external URLs and applying the “rel=’nofollow'” tag.
• Restoring lost backlink volume.
• Implementing microdata markup (for contacts, breadcrumbs, FAQ pages, etc.).

The details of our technical solutions for the above problems will remain confidential, as they are key to our clients’ success.

Step 3: Gathering Relevant Semantics

In the second phase of the project, we focused on collecting the broadest and most relevant semantic core, targeting the US audience.

 One of its features was clusters of connectors and GEO queries, which generally had low competition and good search volume.

Example of a portion of the collected semantic core

As a result of our work, an extensive semantic core was created, which became the foundation for further content optimization and the promotion of Akurateco.com in search engines.

Using relevant semantics allowed us to:

• Increase content relevance to user queries.
• Improve the site’s ranking in search results.
• Attract more targeted traffic.
• Enhance visitor-to-customer conversion.

Step 4: Conducting On-Page Optimization

In the fourth phase, we carried out comprehensive on-page optimization for five key pages of the Akurateco.com website:

• Analyzed existing Titles and Descriptions.
• Crafted new titles and descriptions, incorporating relevant keywords that are appealing to users and meet search engine requirements.
• Reviewed the content on the pages.
• Examined the site structure and the existing internal linking system.
• Prepared detailed briefs for copywriters, specifying the approximate structure, meta tags, keywords, and examples of competitor articles.

Example of a brief for a copywriter

Step 5. Blog Optimization

A blog is a great field for increasing SEO traffic. Articles were written by copywriters based on the briefs we developed (there’s an example in the previous step).

However, instead of regular articles, we focused on creating detailed and useful guides that address the most relevant user questions.

Published articles in the form of guides

Guides on the Akurateco.com blog not only inform but also attract traffic. However, we went a step further. We not only placed information on another trusted resource but also gained leads through referral traffic. Thus, we purchased links to third-party resources to ensure they ranked in the TOP and generated leads.

Vision for Further SEO Strategy for Akurateco

Based on the results achieved and the current state of the Akurateco.com website, we proposed the following strategy for further promotion:

We are confident that continued fruitful cooperation with Akurateco will achieve even higher results. For now, let’s summarize the current outcomes.

Results of Cooperation

As a result of a comprehensive approach to SEO promotion, the Akurateco.com website demonstrated impressive growth in just 7 months. For comparison, here are the metrics at the start and end of the project:

1. Positions for all key queries increased.

	TOP 1	TOP 3	TOP 5	TOP 10	TOP 30
July 2023	0	2	5	49	88
January 2024	2	21	70	188	306

Dynamics of position growth over the promoted period

2. Organic traffic to the site increased by 196%:

• From 2,970 to 8,800 clicks.
• The number of new users nearly tripled.

Traffic growth dynamics for the promoted period

In Conclusion

Our team successfully completed the SEO promotion project for Akurateco’s website. Within just a few months of work, we achieved stable growth in both positions and traffic on the site. What contributed to this great result? There are several reasons—starting with the client’s initiative and openness to new ideas and unconventional solutions, to the clear briefs that were timely implemented on the site, as well as the regularity and quality of outreach.

Most importantly, goals were achieved, the client is satisfied, and the collaboration process was positive.We are pleased to have helped Akurateco reach its business objectives. Do you have issues with your site’s SEO? Contact Luxeo specialists to discuss the details.