How we have increased organic traffic of ePojisteni.cz by 300%

11. 11. 2020 Autor Roman Teuschel

Although the online insurance market was relatively saturated at that time, ePojisteni.cz managed to change this segment fundamentally, dominating the majority of the market and defining how people obtain insurance in the Czech Republic. How did they manage to increase organic traffic by order of magnitude and achieve maximum SEO visibility through search engine optimisation? The following case study will tell you more.

How has the insurance market changed since ePojisteni.cz entered the market?

The company ePojisteni.cz entered the market in 2008. Already at that time, the market was quite segmented. There was a dominant player Top-Pojisteni.cz, and consecutively, other graders entered the market. In addition to the insurance graders, there were traditional insurance companies. The latter, however, had yet to discover digitalisation and its possibilities; their websites resembled rather extensive forms, which went directly against the basic principles of the Internet, i. e., quick and straightforward ordering of services. To set the market context, it is necessary to mention the activities of the Direct pojišťovna/insurance company. It was the first insurance company to offer its products via the Internet.

The company ePojisteni.cz is the largest and most influential online insurance provider in the Czech Republic, specialising mainly in comparing and selling insurance. At the beginning of its presence on the Czech market, ePojisteni.cz primarily focused on car insurance. Initially, they started with mandatory liability, later came accident insurance. Finally, they challenged other types of insurance policies, such as property insurance or travel insurance.

Over the years, the websites of traditional insurance companies have also been gradually digitalised, and they have started to simplify their products and adapt them to the internet environment. Over time, the insurance market has, thus, become a hub for most agencies and freelancers. The saying “Anyone who hasn’t done SEO for an insurance company is not a proper consultant” still persists in the SEO community for a good reason. This fact meant that a comprehensive strategy needed to be developed to dominate the market and achieve the client’s goals.

“The incredible performance and commitment of the fellas and gals at eVisions showed us early on that we couldn’t have chosen better. To this day, their position as SEO experts is demonstrated not only by the great traffic results generated from organic search but also by the praise we hear from people in the industry about Lukáš Palkovič’s team.

Over the years, we have come to perceive them as part of our own team. That is why we entrusted them with our new project Srovnejto.cz, which will be much more challenging than ePojisteni.cz.”

Antonín Florián Kretschmer,

Head of Content

ePojisteni.cz and its initial position in organic search

The second decade of the new millennium was a rather busy period in terms of SEO. In 2012, Google released a major update – the so-called Google Penguin concerning backlinks and their ranking.

One of the main reasons why ePojisteni.cz and eVisions Advertising began to cooperate was the so-called manual penalty from Google, which resulted in a drop in the website’s visibility and a decline in traffic from organic search by 50%. In addition to the penalty mentioned above, the website also faced poor performance on the Seznam search engine, which was caused by technical shortcomings of the website.

Keyword analysis revealed that ePojisteni.cz did not cover the so-called long-tail queries. This is how we refer to specific words, have lower search rankings and competitiveness, but ultimately represent an interesting segment and traffic potential. The website was not very large in terms of the number of pages, and besides the homepage, there were only several basic landing pages that were virtually not optimised at all.

Defining the SEO strategy and getting the project off the ground

Marketing Director David Holý was the main initiator of the change. His proactive approach enabled essential modifications to the website, quick implementation of recommendations and created an environment where SEO took a clear priority. Setting up detailed collaboration and defining effective procedures consecutively proved crucial in achieving results.

Every SEO collaboration has two main parts. The first is about assessing current flaws as well as the market position. The second part focuses on the growth strategy and relies on increasing the website’s visibility. Thus, the first step was to implement our technical suggestions. After removing the penalties, we focused on setting and meeting the goals of the collaboration, i. e., increasing organic traffic and overall market share.

Detailed keyword analysis has directed us to the following strategy; however, at that time, we also worked with the search engine whisperer. The strategy stemmed from the very foundation of traditional STP (Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning) marketing. We gathered queries for the client’s main segments, analysed different potential target groups and mapped their online customer journey. The goal was to include ePojisteni.cz in any stage of the user’s customer journey.

In this context, we recall the Marketing Festival and a very inspiring talk by Avinash Kaushik, who described a similar approach back in 2014 using the relatively new STDC framework.

No long-term SEO strategy can survive without building backlinks (linkbuilding) in a highly competitive environment. During our cooperation with ePojisteni.cz, we worked closely with their PR consultant, and we tried to reach customers on all quality and thematic websites as part of our goal to be present at any stage of the user journey. In addition to the usual linkbuilding methods, we took advantage of the fact that ePojisteni.cz became a sponsor of the premier football league. Regular optimisation of offpage factors contributed significantly to the ranking results of ePojisteni.cz.

From carpet raid strategy to precise content creation using tailored personas

Of course, SEO in 2013 was different from the 2020 SEO. If you’re involved in a long-term project and don’t follow current trends, the project freezes and stops meeting the client’s goals. We are not afraid to admit that we decided to cover all relevant phrases in the shortest possible time at the beginning of the new content creation phase. We knew that the client would start appearing in search results for a large percentage of queries fairly quickly; thus, relatively simple landing pages were created for different query patterns.

This technique allowed us to quickly cover a large share of phrases, which translated into the development of market share and the overall search engine visibility. Just as ePojisteni.cz and SEO changed, so was our approach to content creation and review. We went from “carpetbagging” to pinpointing the most important queries that generated the most leads and were the most effective. Gradually, we expanded the content on these pages to cover the topic and provide our target audience with the best possible information on the queries.

We have maintained the highest market share in a highly competitive environment with timely coverage and regular content updates.

Timeline of the cooperation

Elimination of penalties and technical problems
Elimination of penalties and technical challenges, extensive keyword analysis and setting SEO strategy and KPIs

Review and optimisation of content
 for priority landing pages and start

Setting content strategy
and building macro-content within the context of STDC

Focus on micro-optimisation
 of landing pages and CTR, stabilising results on Seznam

Optimisation of the SEE AND CARE phase
 within the STDC framework, achieving dominant SEO market share

Entering the Slovak market and optimising
 the Slovak version of the site, preparing the redesign

Preparation and implementation of SEO umbrella strategy
 or unified strategy across the holding’s websites

Optimisation of the umbrella brand
 Srovnejto.cz and new business verticals

Launch of the SEO umbrella strategy or acquisition of Srovnejto.cz

In 2012, projects with similar business plans such as iPojisteni.cz or Uspory.cz were managed by ePojisteni.cz. In 2017, another acquisition took place, namely the website Srovnejto.cz; we also cooperated with them on performance marketing.

Acquiring another website impacted the SEO performance very strongly, and at the turn of 2018/2019, we started using the so-called umbrella strategy, which aimed to multiply the visibility of the client in organic search and unify communication under one brand. As a result, other business verticals were integrated and expanded, both within insurance and calculators and mobile tariffs, discount portals, energy and loan comparators. There were positive impacts in terms of brand awareness.

The primary objective of the umbrella strategy was to create a solid player in the field of complex grader sites while leveraging the sites for the so-called “wallpapering with search engine results” (search engine results page or SERP). In reality, it means that for a set of fundamental queries (“mandatory liability comparison” and similar), the domain ePojisteni.cz will get the zero position in the featured snippet, for example, and Srovnejto.cz will be right second. Eventually, similar results should also be achieved in the case of long-tail terms or blog articles.

Results of the cooperation between eVisions Advertising and ePojisteni.cz

Although quick wins do exist, of course, search engine optimisation is a long-term activity; however, it is impossible to build a workable long-term strategy that will result in achieving your goals. At the beginning of our cooperation with ePojisteni.cz, we clearly determined our priorities, goals, and expectations from our mutual collaboration. Our cooperation lasted for quite a long time, seven years. In such a period, a lot can be done and spoiled. However, it is always about keeping the trust between the agency and the client intact. And trust and close teamwork enabled us and ePojisteni.cz to realise our ambitious plans.

In particular, we would like to thank Mr David Holý, Mr Arnošt Machytek and Mr Antonín Florián Kretschmer for the opportunity and excellent experience.

Visibility

The visibility of a website is closely related to the development of traffic. Our main goal was to be visible for the most relevant keywords in the TOP 3 and TOP 10 organic results. The compulsory liability segment was and is the leading vertical for ePojisteni.cz. Over the last four years, the client grew by an average of 18% per year in the TOP 3 and 36% in the TOP 10.

Market share

Suppose you want to track all the relevant metrics of your website that give you information about your position in search engines. In that case, you need to monitor the so-called SEO market share. At eVisions Advertising, we define market share according to the Collabim tool. It refers to the percentage of keywords we observe in the tool that appears on the first page of search results.

For ePojisteni.cz, the essential vertical value is the mandatory liability. Therefore, we closely monitor in particular keywords that have the highest conversion potential, i. e., keywords associated with the following attributes:

• Comparison, comparing, negotiation;
• Price, cheapest, cheap;
• Calculator, calculate, calculation.
• Of course, we also consider the main keywords such as:
• General keywords with the highest search rankings,
• Types of insurance (annual, seasonal, long-term).

For a given dataset, generating the most business potential and containing around 200 keywords, ePojisteni.cz has gained a market share of 96%, making it the dominant player in the mandatory liability insurance market.

Long-term optimisation and rapid adaptation to best results

Search engines change constantly. What was true yesterday may no longer be valid today. Although the fundamental principles of SEO remain more or less the same, the environment and the entities operating it are changing. The results and experience with optimisation for ePojisteni.cz have demonstrated that long-term optimisation consists of a clear vision and honest implementation of the SEO strategy and the ability to adapt to changes in the market and to the innovations that search engines bring. At ePojisteni.cz, we have succeeded!

The initial optimisation phase proved to be a big challenge for us. The website faced many shortcomings and penalties from search engines. Working on the project was one of the most extraordinary experiences I’ve ever had. I loved being part of the team that helped ePojisteni.cz become the leader in organic search.

LUKÁŠ PALKOVIC, SEO consultant