Leverage Marketing had success with this article, in which we explored what we know about the indexing process for Google and what can be done to ensure that your new site (and new pages) get indexed legitimately using white-hat SEO techniques and Google-recommended procedures.

The piece was written with the specific goal of providing more accurate, updated and stronger information than our competitors. Internal knowledge of SEO and our own experiments helped us solidify the piece with experience-based information rather than secondary research. It was also one of the first pieces for which we started creating custom graphics. We then added meta information, defined focus keywords and “minified” data to optimize load times in our content management system.

Promotion was minimal at first. We pushed the piece out to our usual social channels, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. What unexpectedly seemed to garner the most attention and increase in backlinks and engagement was our comments section. We diligently replied to nearly every comment, and the piece organically expanded to include even more comprehensive coverage of the topic.

It now ranks number one for more long-tail keywords than we can count, and is slowly creeping in on famously difficult short keywords such as “google indexing.” We’re excited to see where it can go, but our approach for now is to leave it be until it reaches its full potential.

Result: After a few weeks, we saw a dramatic improvement in our keyword performance and SERP of the article itself. Once we were on the first page of the Google SERP, I continued to tweak and add to the article until we replaced the previous Featured Snippet. This has generated substantial increases in organic and repeat traffic to our site and has resulted in new sales of outdoor furniture.