How we increased organic traffic of the crypto exchanger 20 times: Godex.io case study

Promoting in the crypto niche is problematic not only because of the high competition, as this problem is inherent in many industries. The main reason is that it is almost impossible to get links and place them on top resources here. For example, some bloggers and website owners do not want to deal with cryptocurrency. And if you have got a chance to buy a place on a related website, in 90% of cases, it will entail significant expenses that do not always pay off. So you have to look for other ways to promote, less expensive in time, effort, and money.

And the Luxeo Team managed to choose the right path for the development of a promising startup, which, however, could not get into the TOP of the search queries on cryptocurrencies for a long time. We helped it become 20 times more popular in just 8 months, without even focusing on link promotion. Next, we will tell you what steps we followed to achieve the goal and why we chose them. 

Who is our client?

Godex is a decentralized anonymous cryptocurrency exchange.

Godex is a simple, fast, and reliable service for cryptocurrency exchange: no limits and fixed rates with guaranteed anonymity. It was created by a team believing in crypto-economics and striving to share experiences with crypto enthusiasts. The service was developed to meet the requirements of crypto traders: the relevance of courses, the efficiency of transactions, and data security. But it had problems with the promotion.

The client contacted Luxeo Team in April 2020, hoping to solve the situation caused by the previous SEO contractors, as the client believed. Earlier, Godex ordered link promotion and was disappointed with the result: link building was slow and with minimum links. As we mentioned at the beginning, it is a common cause of failure in the crypto niche, so we never limit ourselves to this direction. We presented our vision of the situation to the client without focusing on link building and soon entered into cooperation.

Goals and problems of crypto promotion

When approaching us, the client understood well what they want from SEO, and even better — what they do not want. The reason for this was the negative experience of link promotion, which gave almost zero results. 

This time, together with the client, we aimed to achieve goals in less than a year, even in a highly competitive environment.

Our joint plans for SEO:

The client wanted to get measurable results in 6-8 months and enter the multilingual environment, avoiding at least half of the crypto niche problems.

Barriers that we had to overcome:

This integrated approach allowed us to assess the possibilities and difficulties of promoting a startup wisely. We decided to be realistic in everything, so we chose a full technical audit as the first step. It would help (and actually helped) to predict and prevent many minor problems that didn’t even depend on the industry but could slow down the entire promotion.

Faced barriers to promotion? Leave your contact details, and we will help you understand the situation and make the right decision.

Technical audit as the basis of an SEO strategy

Problems + solutions

SEO audit is a detailed check of a resource for technical problems that hinder the promotion online. Regarding the Google search engine (relevant in 99% of cases), it is necessary to consider the compliance of the website with its current requirements. We emphasize: current! SEO standards are changing at lightning speed: what was important today will be bypassed by search robots tomorrow. We always remember it, regardless of the industry and goals. 

Actually, we perform the first so-called “pre-sale” audit for free, as it helps to assess the condition of the website. Later, we research details and make an action plan. 

Identified problems and proposed solutions:

An example of implementing breadcrumbs:

Example:

Do you want to identify weaknesses and risk areas of the project? Check out our technical audit service.

Priority areas

As you can see, there were a lot of problems, but we offered our solution for each of them. We described all the nuances in the technical specification for primary optimization and sent it to the developers for prompt implementation. 

But only some of the defects could be eliminated quickly (for example, removing duplicates or adjusting breadcrumbs), so we will not focus on them. But some points had to be enhanced significantly.

Areas that we focused on:

This is how a client came to us:

Prioritization allowed us to think ahead about assembling the team. As a result, our “fantastic four” took on the project: team lead, project manager, SEO specialist, and content manager. So how did they achieve their goals?

The path we passed in 8 months

Market analysis and collection of semantics

It is impossible to imagine SEO without this stage: everything starts with it. The results of market research and semantic core (SC) are the foundation for developing a competent strategy. The difficulty of promotion depends on which keywords are used: high, medium, or low frequency. But many startups choose popular keys and forget that not only are they so smart, so they can hardly count on quick success. We maintain a balance in our semantics.

This time we did not have a standard SC but a multilingual one. We analyzed target markets and clustered semantics, highlighting competitors in RU regions. Next, you can see what we got.

Popular queries by region (the search volume is indicated in brackets):

SC report (part):

Based on the analysis results, we developed meta tags for the Home page and currency pairs for each region. 

For currency pairs, we built and clustered a separate SC.

Basic SC for currency pairs (part):

Extending the structure

4 page types 

Since it is not the first time we have worked with a cryptocurrency exchange service, we know several interesting tricks. And we will share one of them with you. The secret of the successful promotion of a crypto exchanger is the widest possible structure. What does it mean?

There are several page types:

So, ideally, the website should contain all page types. Do you remember that structure was one of the most prominent issues? To remedy the situation, we developed a technical specification for expanding the structure from scratch.

In addition, we organized a high-quality linking: we created an Exchange Rate, where we placed links to each page of the coin. And from each page of the coin, we put down links to popular currency pairs. Section navigation was placed as standard in the footer (screenshot). So, a broad and user-friendly structure was built, which increased the chances of getting into the index and improved the user experience.

Development of the forecast section

Do you think that’s all? Of course, no! We went on and developed a new section — Forecast — for forecasting the exchange rate. We admit that this is not our standard approach, and the client was at first skeptical about this idea. But when we analyzed the traffic that we could receive from the Forecast… So, the answer was “Yes!”. The only thing remaining was to implement it.

As a result of a large-scale brainstorm where the whole team participated, we decided to take a difficult path, but the best one possible. Develop a script that could search for news in the vastness of the network and create a news block! Let’s omit unnecessary details and just say that we, SEO specialists, wrote this parser on our own, and we’re very proud of it 🙂 The working scheme can be called automatic-manual: the parser provides the search, and the developers provide the placement.

The result is the following algorithm:

parsing third-party sources → transferring data to developers → posting content on a news page.

Parsing websites (part of the report):

Content uniqueness

Promotion in the crypto industry, as in any other, is not easy without relevant content. However, it was impossible to create and place it on the website manually, considering the number of pages + blog + FAQ. We have always been supporters of automation, including in work with content. 

We developed templates with interchangeable words that contain keys and fit into the context well. Also, the templates included variables that automatically pull up values ​​ according to the region. A FAQ was added to each page.

Variables for currencies and currency pairs:

Example text for currencies:

Creating an expert blog

Let’s skip the technical aspects of blog optimization, such as micro-markup, map settings, etc. Instead, let’s talk about copyright content. The website belongs to the YMYL category (Your Money or Your Life). That is, its content must affect the reader. Inaccurate or false information can lead a reader to make the wrong decision, harming health, financial wellbeing, or safety.

We suggested adding an author and a link to their profile on the website to each article to inspire confidence in the audience. Each article author should have a separate page (with a photo, description, link to social networks, and a list of articles) and implement breadcrumbs. 

Expert blog example:

Additionally, we recommended creating AMP, i.e., pages suitable for maximizing loading speed on phones and any other devices with slow Internet connections so that articles can rank in Google search results better.

Measurable Promotion Results

In April 2020, when SEO work was just being planned, the website had 315 visitors. In a few months, traffic has grown 20 times: in February 2021, it reached 4,700 visitors! It intensified in December and continues to this day. 

Traffic growth in April 2020 – February 2021:

The situation is stable with the keywords: 83 keywords are in the TOP 30, and 20 of them are priority ones, for example, anonymous crypto exchange. 

The situation with the keywords:

Conclusion

Our team has not worked with a crypto exchanger for the first time, but we remember this client especially. First of all, because of the work scale. We eliminated technical problems, expanded the structure, independently developed a news search algorithm, created unique content, and introduced a blog. And all this in 8 months! But the main thing is that we managed to achieve our goals and meet the customer’s expectations. 

Want to make your SEO expectations come true? Contact Luxeo Team!