Part of my responsibilities as the Blog Content Specialist at School Specialty was to review old articles and make adjustments as needed. Because many of the articles were 5-7 years old, this meant they often contained broken links, outdated information or terminology, and formatting problems.
Below are some of the articles I edited for SEO and a variety of results due to my optimization efforts.
Drawing Hands 101
I was excited to find this article as part of a deep series on basic art skills developed by subject matter experts from School Specialty. My goal was to take their expertise, displayed within the articles they had already written, and make SEO adjustments that would increase visibility and push their ideas and knowledge to a broader audience.
In this article, I made simple adjustments, such as adding alt text to the images, adding a Table of Contents, and creating a heading structure that can easily be followed by both readers and algorithms. I then took steps to clarify any confusing portions of the copy and adjusted image sizes and formatting to ensure the article would look good on any device.
The result is a massive increase in traffic. Within a month, the featured image and even an image from within the article were on the first page of image rankings on Google for high-performing keyphrases like “drawing hands” and “hand drawing.”
Creating an Ideal Early Childhood Classroom Space
This article already had some visibility, but it was hampered by broken links and lack of an SEO focus.
After solving those problems, I then pivoted to finding a way for the article to make a deeper impact. That led me to add the last portion, which offers an all-in-one solution sold by School Specialty to meet the needs brought up in the article.
As you can see below the article, a teacher commented asking for more information about that package. I responded to her and quickly found the sales representative in her area. The result was the sale of a 5-figure project to create an early childhood learning environment in their school.
Travis Bille 