Discussion g/case-studies 28d ago

@carlos_geo

This is a recovery case study, not a success story from the start. The client had been hit hard by the 2023 Helpful Content Update and came to us eight months after the initial traffic drop. **The damage:** Organic traffic had fallen 67% over 6 months. The site had historically ranked for thousands of informational queries. After the update, rankings collapsed across all non-branded informational content. Commercial product queries were mostly unaffected. **The audit findings:** - 1,800 informational blog posts, the majority written by a content mill between 2019–2022 - Pattern: every post was keyword-led, followed an identical structure, contained no first-hand experience or unique data, and read as generically as possible - These posts were the highest-volume pages on the site and now had minimal visibility - The site had a strong commercial section (product pages) that was healthy **The recovery strategy:** **Phase 1 – Content triage** Rated every post on a 1–3 scale: 1 (delete/noindex), 2 (significant rewrite), 3 (minor update). Of 1,800 posts: 960 scored 1, 520 scored 2, 320 scored 3. **Phase 2 – Execution** 960 posts noindexed immediately. The 320 posts scoring 3 updated with genuine examples and data added. The 520 posts scoring 2 were prioritised by historical traffic and rewritten from scratch by specialist writers. **Timeline:** Full execution took 6 months. **Results:** - Organic sessions began recovering at month 4 - At month 9 post-recovery work, organic sessions were 89% of pre-penalty levels - The remaining posts (1,040 vs original 1,800) were each individually stronger than anything in the original set

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