Semrush & GroupM SEO case study

Abdi Ibrahim Has a Prescription for SEO Content

This pharmaceutical company felt sick over low organic traffic until they took website health seriously and soared organic traffic by 410%.

Table of Contents

410% organic traffic growth
580 blog posts published
786% increase in ranking keywords

Semrush is an all-in-one SEO tool we use for actionable insights, strategic growth, and staying ahead of the competition.

Aybuke Yerlikaya, Growth Director at GroupM

Challenge: grow organic traffic across 9 brand websites

Abdi Ibrahim, a major pharmaceutical company that sells vitamins and dietary supplements in Turkey, faced the challenge of low organic traffic and weak content on 9 of their brand websites. Competing against strong healthcare websites, they also had a limited content budget.

In January 2023, the pharma giant partnered with GroupM Turkey, a leading media investment management company, to improve SEO for the 9 websites, and outperform competitors.

By publishing around 580 blog posts for 9 websites throughout 2023, the agency grew Abdi Ibrahim’s organic traffic by 410%: from 615K to a total of 3.14M visits.

Here’s how they did it.

Step 1: Keyword research and gap analysis

GroupM started by doing extensive keyword research for all 9 websites. The keywords were selected according to KPIs, and categorized to be targeted throughout 2023.

The team used Semrush keyword research tools to create new main categories and subcategories for the Pillar & Cluster content strategy, focusing on new content opportunities.

For example, they used the Semrush Keyword Gap tool to find category keywords that work best for competitors but that Abdi Ibrahim is missing:

For best content topics, the team entered the seed keyword into the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool and filtered the results to questions:

Step 2: Pillar & Cluster Content Model

To enhance visibility for highly competitive keywords, the team didn't just write a single long-form piece focusing on the main keyword. Instead, they created multiple blog posts targeting specific subqueries related to the main keyword.

This strategy, based on the Pillar & Cluster Content model, significantly boosted visibility within the target keyword groups. For instance, to improve rankings for the keyword "Vitamin C," GroupM crafted five separate blog posts addressing different variations, such as "Does Vitamin C cause weight gain?" These posts were interlinked, further strengthening their content strategy.

Step 3: Content Briefs

Next, the team created briefs based on the keyword research. Doctor-writers collaborated on all blog posts, which were verified for accuracy by the expert brand team before publication. Each post included references, and the names and titles of the doctor-writers were added to the structured data schema. The team endeavored to meet E-A-T criteria for the brand operating in the healthcare sector as a result.

Step 4: Overcome Keyword Seasonality

Many of Abdi Ibrahim’s products are related to vitamins and supplements. This leads to seasonality in the targeted keywords, with a decrease in related searches during the spring and summer months.

To compensate for the keyword seasonality, the GroupM team created lifestyle-focused content that is related to the ingredients of the products. With lifestyle-focused content such as “Tips for balancing work and life” and “Which vitamin deficiency causes insomnia?”, GroupM Turkey managed to attract high organic traffic during the spring and summer months without deviating from the target audience.

In addition, calculation pages that can be associated with brands and have high potential such as menstrual cycle days, body mass index, and basal metabolic rate were published to decrease keyword seasonality.

Step 5: Technical SEO Audits

While deploying the new content, GroupM kept a close eye on Abdi Ibrahim’s website health. They conducted regular audits using the Semrush Site Audit tool, maintaining high technical score:

The Site Audit tool offers a breakdown of the website’s crawled pages showing how many pages were found healthy, broken, having issues, redirects, or blocked by the crawler.

The tool’s ‘Internal Link Opportunities’ feature helped the team strengthen internal linking within blog posts and from blog posts to categories.

Step 6: Backlink Analysis

Next, GroupM made sure all websites had a solid backlink profile. The team ran a Semrush Backlink Audit to identify and disavow toxic backlinks leading to Abdi Ibrahim’s websites.

Next, they also examined the backlink profiles of competitors using the Semrush Backlink Analytics and Backlink Gap tools. This gave them a list of link opportunities for Abdi Ibrahim’s websites:

“We rely on Semrush to enhance our link-building strategies with its in-depth backlink analysis feature,” shares Ilker Akin, SEO Manager at GroupM.

Results: 410% increase in organic traffic

During 2023, GroupM published 580 blog posts for all 9 websites, or an average of 5-6 blog posts per website each month. Despite a relatively low number of articles, there was a significant increase for the 9 websites in organic performance in 2023 compared to 2022.

Key Takeaways

Keyword Research and Content Strategy:

Content Creation and Collaboration:

Technical SEO Audits and Internal Linking:

Backlink Analysis and Disavowal:

Monitoring and Reporting:

By following these strategies and leveraging tools like Semrush, marketers can improve their SEO efforts, increase organic traffic, and achieve better visibility in search engine results.