How Absolute Cosmetic went from algorithm-update casualty to position 1 in Perth

Google's 2018 mobile-first and medic updates stripped Absolute Cosmetic of rankings and traffic. We found the causes, cleaned up the site and its links, and took the money terms to position 1.

I Want Results Like This Traffic up year on year

A woman on a rocky beach, from the Absolute Cosmetic body treatment campaign

112%Google visibility

36%More keywords in top 3

450+Keywords top of page 1

#1Botox PerthFrom position 12

The problem

A run of major Google algorithm updates through 2018 left plenty of business owners watching rankings and traffic slide with no obvious explanation. Absolute Cosmetic was one of the casualties. Traffic declined across the year, with the sharpest drops in March, after the mobile-first update, and in August, after the medic update.

After a competitive pitch against a number of SEO agencies, we were chosen for the job. The brief had two parts: work out what was actually causing the drop, then win the lost traffic back.

What we were up againstTraffic falling since the March and August 2018 updatesTarget keywords pushed to the bottom of page one or lowerMany pages competing for the same keywordsDozens of questionable backlinks pointing at the domain

Organic keywords through 2018. The mobile-first update in March and the medic update in August each took a large bite.

What we did

We started with the archived version of the old website, checking which keywords each page had targeted and whether old pages were redirecting to the right place. A crawl of the live site then showed the bigger issue: a large number of pages competing with each other for the same keywords.

1Audited the old site and redirectsWe reviewed the archived site to map which keywords each page targeted and confirmed old URLs were redirecting to the right new pages.

2Fixed keyword cannibalisationLow-value pages jeopardising the main procedure pages were identified and pulled from the search results through a mix of redirects, robots.txt and noindex tags.

3Re-optimised the procedure contentFor every page that had lost traffic, we analysed the terms and phrases top-ranking competitors covered for the target keyword, then optimised the copy against that list.

4Cleaned up the link profileA link audit turned up dozens of questionable backlinks. These were disavowed and replaced with links from authoritative, high-quality sites and publications.

The Absolute Cosmetic site is rich in procedure content, which made it a strong base for content and keyword optimisation.

The results

We didn't just recover the lost traffic and rankings, we went past them. Overall Google visibility is up 112%, keywords in positions 1 to 3 are up 36%, and over 450 keywords now sit at the top of page one. Last month organic traffic was up year on year for the first time in over 12 months.

Keyword movement

Search termBeforeNow

breast augmentation perth81

botox perth121

liposuction perth91

dermal fillers perth81

Target keywords that had dropped to the bottom of page one or lower now rank top 3, and in some cases position 0.

Liposuction Perth: Absolute Cosmetic holding the featured snippet above the organic results, position 0.

With the money terms at position 1 and visibility still climbing, organic traffic continues to improve month on month, and the site is now in far better shape to weather whatever Google updates next.

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How Absolute Cosmetic went from algorithm-update casualty to position 1 in Perth

The problem

What we did

The results

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