Sanjeet Kumar

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Testbook’s SEO Success: Scaling from 200K to 50 Million Organic Traffic

  • Industry: Edtech
  • Duration: Jan 2020- Dec 2023
  • SEO Goal: A clear ask from CMO we need to hit 5 million of search console clicks in 1 year which is a 10X growth. 

About Testbook

Testbook, a leader in India’s EdTech space, embarked on a strategic SEO overhaul in January 2020, aiming for a 10X growth in organic traffic. Over the course of four years, through a combination of technical SEO fixes, targeted content strategies, and team alignment, Testbook not only achieved but surpassed its goal, growing from 200K to 50 million organic traffic and cementing its place as a key player in the education sector.

Challenge

When I first joined Testbook in January 2020, the company was facing significant challenges in scaling its organic traffic. Despite the high-quality educational content they were creating, they struggled to effectively leverage SEO, resulting in suboptimal visibility in search results. The main challenges were:

  1. Content Strategy:
  • Testbook’s content creation lacked a targeted, data-driven strategy. Blog posts were being published on WordPress without proper keyword research or a clear understanding of user intent. Writers often chose random topics without analyzing the search volume or SERP competition. As a result, many posts failed to rank, missing key opportunities to capture organic traffic.
  • The content team lacked SEO expertise, and there was no structured process for optimizing posts for search engines. While the content was valuable to students, it wasn’t structured in a way that would help it rank highly in search results.
  1. Technical SEO Issues:
    • Low Site Health: The site’s SEMrush health score was a concerning 40, indicating that there were numerous unresolved technical issues affecting the site’s crawlability and indexability.
    • Orphan Pages: There were thousands of orphan pages (pages not linked to from other pages), which made it difficult for search engines to discover and index valuable content.
    • Page Speed: With a page load speed score of around 40, the website was extremely slow, leading to poor user experience and higher bounce rates.
    • JavaScript-Rendered Content: Google was having difficulty indexing content that was rendered using JavaScript through a third-party platform, which meant that important pages and content were not being indexed properly.
    • Google Search Console Errors: The Search Console was cluttered with various errors, including crawl issues, broken links, and incorrect canonical tags, which hindered the website’s ability to rank effectively.
  2. Backlink Profile:
    • The site had a suspicious backlink profile, as identified by SEMrush, suggesting that Testbook’s domain authority was being undermined by low-quality or toxic backlinks. This required careful attention to avoid penalties and improve the website’s trustworthiness.
  3. Team Alignment and Resources:
    • The SEO team faced challenges in getting internal buy-in from the tech and product teams for prioritizing SEO-related tasks. The technical SEO fixes required collaboration with the product team, but there was a lack of understanding about how technical issues could directly impact organic growth. This led to delays in addressing key SEO problems.

Given these challenges, it was clear that Testbook needed a complete overhaul of both its technical SEO infrastructure and content strategy to make meaningful progress.

Plan

When I first assessed the situation, it was evident that the road ahead would be challenging. Testbook’s SEO was in a poor state, with technical issues, ineffective content strategy, and lack of alignment across teams. The goal was clear: to achieve 10X growth in organic traffic, reaching 5 million clicks in one year. To achieve this, I devised a multi-faceted approach, tackling both content and technical issues in parallel while ensuring alignment between teams.

  1. Parallel Focus on Content & Technical SEO:
    • The first step was to balance both content and technical SEO improvements simultaneously. I knew that content couldn’t rank effectively unless the site’s technical foundation was solid, and vice versa. So, I divided my approach into two primary streams:
      • Content Optimization and Expansion
      • Technical SEO Fixes
  2. Technical SEO Fixes: Addressing the Core Issues:
    • Collaborating with the Tech Team: I began by coordinating closely with the product and technical teams to communicate the importance of resolving the SEO issues. Though it was easy to explain the problems, it was initially difficult to get the team to prioritize them. I regularly followed up to keep SEO tasks at the top of the sprint list.
    • CMO Alignment: After a few weeks of delayed action, I escalated the issue to the CMO with a detailed progress (or lack thereof) report. Understanding the gravity of the situation, the CMO aligned the tech and product teams to make SEO issues a priority in each sprint. We committed to improving the SEMrush health score to 99 before focusing on any other SEO tasks.
    • Leveraging SEMrush: To pinpoint the source of each issue, I used SEMrush and screaming frog extensively, helping the tech team identify specific pages and technical problems that needed fixing. Within 8 to 9 weeks, we achieved a SEMrush health score of 99, a significant milestone in fixing the website’s technical foundation.
  3. Migration from CSR to SSR:
    • Page Speed Optimization: Even with the technical fixes in place, the page speed score remained low at 40. I identified server-side rendering (SSR) as a key solution to improve the site’s speed. SSR would allow pages to load faster and ensure content was indexed by Google more efficiently.
    • Executing the Migration: I worked with the tech team to migrate the website from client-side rendering (CSR) to server-side rendering (SSR). This migration was carried out category by category, ensuring that every part of the site was optimized for faster loading times. This move led to a substantial improvement in page speed, which was crucial for both user experience and SEO performance.
  4. Content Strategy Overhaul:
    • Targeting the Student Journey: To create SEO-friendly content, I mapped Testbook’s existing content to the user journey of an exam aspirant. This mapping helped me identify the topics we were missing, which we should have been covering all along. I collaborated closely with the content team to expand our coverage based on the exam preparation journey, including both evergreen content and frequently asked questions.
    • Content Templates for Consistency: I introduced content templates to streamline the writing process. Each template outlined the subtopics and key elements that needed to be covered for every article. This approach ensured that the content became exhaustive, addressing all potential user queries and ranking factors.
    • Optimizing for Keywords and SERP Features: I educated the content team on effective keyword usage, the importance of header tags (H1, H2), and how to optimize for FAQ snippets. As the content started to align with SEO best practices, we saw a significant increase in rankings and organic traffic.
  5. Scaling with Programmatic SEO:
    • Once we saw initial improvements, we focused on scaling our content creation efforts. We delved into the existing database of content and identified areas for programmatic SEO. Through detailed keyword research and competitive analysis, I discovered three major content buckets that could be expanded using programmatic SEO techniques.
    • Content Calendar and Execution: With a well-researched content calendar in place and with a larger team of content writers and SEO specialists to begin executing the strategy. We consistently produced high-quality content, targeting both long-tail and top-funnel keywords, leading to greater organic visibility.
  6. Internationalization via hreflang:
    • Targeting Regional Languages: To expand Testbook’s reach and visibility in non-English markets, I proposed implementing hreflang tags to target Hindi and other South Indian languages. I supported this decision by presenting data on the search volume and potential traffic from these regions.
    • Result: While the initial traffic from regional language content was modest, it gradually grew, and over time, certain categories’ Hindi content began outperforming the English content in organic traffic.
  7. Navigating Algorithm Updates:
    • Staying Agile: Throughout this process, we navigated several major Google algorithm updates, from the Spam update to the Helpful Content update to core updates. Our ability to adapt quickly to these changes allowed Testbook to remain competitive and resilient in the face of shifting SEO landscapes. I ensured that our content continued to align with Google’s focus on helpful, user-centric content.
  8. Aligning the Team for Success:
    • Collaboration and Focus: The key to this entire process was team alignment. I instilled a mindset across the content and SEO teams that if a piece of content couldn’t rank, it wasn’t worth writing. The team was fully committed to improving the quality of content and following SEO best practices, making it a collective effort to achieve organic growth.

Search Console data

Search Console Screenshot

SEMRUSH Data-