Enlisted Nine Fight Company partnered with us to optimize their website and improve visibility, engagement, and conversions through data-driven SEO strategies.
The challenge was to increase organic traffic, improve search rankings, and optimize the website for enhanced user experience while contending with structural limitations in the website’s current setup.
Traffic Analysis and Search Insights
Plausible Analytics
The Plausible snapshot revealed initial strong traffic, showing promise in potential outreach. However, Plausible’s quick overview served primarily to establish a baseline for further investigation with deeper analytics tools.
Google Search Console
- Clicks: Traffic volume increased by around 500 visitors, reflecting a steady growth in user engagement.
- Impressions: Slight decline in impressions (-1500), suggesting more targeted, quality-focused reach over quantity.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): Improved by over 2%, doubling industry expectations. This rise indicates effective optimization, leading more users from search results to the website.
- Average Position: Jumped over 10 places in SERPs, elevating most pages from Page 3 to Page 2.
Our targeted approach aimed to shift from broad visibility to a more precise, niche-focused audience, ensuring those who visited were genuinely interested in the brand’s offerings.
Google Analytics Review
Visitor Count & Engagement
- Average Monthly Visitors: 1,000+ visitors per month.
- Engagement Time: Low engagement (1 minute, 15 seconds per session) implied potential user dissatisfaction or incomplete content delivery.
Traffic Attribution
- Direct Traffic: Nearly 50% of visitors accessed the site directly, indicating strong brand awareness.
- Search vs. Referral Traffic: Organic and referral traffic showed promise but suggested the need for ongoing SEO efforts to further validate improvements.
Event Tracking
- User Journey: Most users visited multiple pages per session, a positive indication of navigation engagement.
- Conversion Gap: Although visitors reached high-interest pages (programs, schedules), the lack of compelling content or calls-to-action likely impacted conversions.
Page View Breakdown
- Top Pages: The schedule page received more visits than the homepage, likely from existing students.
- Student Engagement: Frequent revisits to program pages highlight a recurring need for updated information but also skewed data away from prospective new customer insights.
Regional Traffic and Demographics
City Analysis
Unexpectedly high traffic from locations like Ashburn pointed to an expansion opportunity, especially given this segment’s engagement rate. Localized targeting could help balance and strengthen local outreach.
Competitor Comparison (Ahrefs)
Key Metrics:
- Domain Rating (DR): Current DR of 16 vs. competitors in the 30-70 range, underscoring a need for authority-building.
- Keywords: Limited keyword overlap with similar businesses (e.g., Renzo Gracie Academy), indicating underutilized SEO opportunities.
Backlink Strategy: While brand recognition is strong, backlink volume is low. We proposed link-building through local partnerships and content collaborations, such as podcast appearances and chamber of commerce listings, to build authority and reach.
SEO Strategy Drawbacks
- SEO-Driven Website Overhaul
An ideal strategy would’ve involved rebuilding the site from scratch with SEO as a foundation, but that wasn’t an option. This would’ve allowed for us to properly optimize for both major search engines and user experience from the ground up. Our “Launchpad” approach ensures technical precision and content relevancy, much like preparing for a NASA launch.
- Incremental Optimization vs. Full Rebuild
Given current site limitations, growth was slow with incremental changes. A comprehensive rebuild would yield quicker, more substantial results, designed for scalability and higher engagement.
Conclusion
Our SEO work with Enlisted Nine Fight Company demonstrates how strategic, data-backed decisions can drive engagement even on a constrained platform. By focusing on quality over quantity, optimizing for user action, and identifying growth opportunities in local and national visibility, we laid the groundwork for continued digital success.
