Case study · Online courses
Underdog0 to 50 clicks a day. In 3 months.
An online course site with a Domain Rating of 2 out of 100, up against Coursera, Udemy and edX. In three months, it went from zero to about 50 clicks a day from Google. Here’s the complete strategy.
- Clicks a day
- 50
- was 0
- Clicks in 3 months
- 859
- Impressions in 3 months
- 52.6K
Google Search Console, web search: 3 months starting June 24.
The chart ends on its best day so far, about 50 clicks. Most September days were lower, but the trend kept climbing.
Small bird, big competitors. Still got found.
The receipts
Straight from Search Console
What I did
Win the questions first
With a Domain Rating of 2, I wasn’t going to outrank the big names on short, competitive keywords. So I went after questions with little to no competition, and pointed every answer at a course page.
Picked winnable keywords
For each course page, I chose keywords that mix research and buying intent, with a difficulty score under 20. Short, competitive keywords could wait.
Searched like a local
I set my Google search location to the market I wanted to rank in, searched each keyword and collected the “People also ask” questions.
Turned questions into articles
Questions with decent search volume became their own articles, each with a clear call to action toward the course.
Chose one anchor per course
For each course page, I picked a low-difficulty keyword with buying intent and used it as the link text pointing back to that course.
Wrote fast, with AI
The questions had almost no competition, so I chose volume over polish and wrote long-form articles with AI.
Linked every article three times
Each article links to the previous article, the next one and the course page. I call it “111”.
How it fits together
The “111” rule
Link 1
- Previous article
Link text: its exact title.
Link 2
- Next article
Link text: its exact title, added once it’s live.
Link 3
- Course page
Link text: the keyword you chose.
Every article gets exactly these three links. One, one, one: that’s where the name comes from.
Before you copy this
Two things that matter
- Pro tip
Make questions convert
Question traffic can turn into sales. Give every article a clear call to action that leads to the course.
- Fine print
Careful with mass AI content
I ran this in 2023. Since then, Google’s spam policies have cracked down on mass-produced, low-value pages. Use AI for speed, but make every article genuinely useful.
