Case Study Hellenic American Union: How SEO Can Deliver Results Without Link Building
A common belief among established brands is that they don’t need SEO because they’re already ranking high for many keywords. Some even see no reason for off-page SEO and link building, thinking that having thousands of backlinks is sufficient.
This misconception can be detrimental to a brand’s online presence. Even if a brand is dominant in its industry, complacency can lead to missed opportunities for growth.
So why lose valuable revenue when targeted SEO efforts can leverage your recognizable brand name and significantly increase your earnings? With the right team, it’s possible to enhance your online presence and achieve even greater success.
This was the approach we took when we partnered with the Hellenic American Union (HAU), a renowned educational organization specializing in language proficiency exams, foreign language courses, and professional seminars.
✅ The Problem
The issue wasn’t that the site wasn’t achieving high rankings or lacking brand awareness. On the contrary, due to its strong brand name, it ranked for several industry-related keywords. At this point, the organization could have become complacent, potentially losing hundreds of visitors and, consequently, potential clients.
Just because a site ranks high for many strong keywords doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement. In this case, the HAU’s site had low rankings for significant keywords in the “training” (seminars) and “learning” (foreign language courses) categories, which are commercially two of the most important sections.
In other words, it wasn’t ranking high for keywords that indicated a user’s immediate intent to make a purchase.
Additionally, the budget for link building was minimal, so all our efforts had to focus on on-page SEO to maximize the site’s potential.
We were even surprised ourselves by how much impact on-page optimization could have on rankings and, consequently, on traffic.
✅ The Method
The first step was to conduct a thorough audit of all site parameters to identify and address any issues.
The main problems we identified were:
⭕ All pages had significant room for improvement.
⭕ There were old URLs due to a previous migration, causing link equity loss on targeted pages.
⭕ Cannibalization between pages.
Based on the SEO audit, it was clear that we needed to focus on optimizing all pages (which were numerous due to the organization’s extensive services and information), analyzing each one carefully.
Our actions included:
⭕ Structure and Keywords: We organized the site’s structure and defined target keywords for each page, ensuring clear differentiation and interlinking.
⭕ Interlinking: We enhanced and clarified the relationships between pages through strategic interlinking.
⭕ Metadata: We corrected metadata across all pages, conducting extensive research to create SEO-optimized titles and descriptions that would encourage clicks and conversions.
⭕ Content Optimization: We crafted content based on targeted keywords for each page.
⭕ URL Restoration: We removed inactive URLs, dead links, and corrected numerous redirects.
⭕ Technical Fixes: We made an action plan for the developers to correct as many problems as possible during the construction and migration of the site.
⭕ Topical authority: We created pillar pages and important cluster pages (e.g. in seminars), in order to properly strengthen the prestige of the brand in the local market.
⭕ User experience: As user experience is now a key ranking factor, we suggested improving the design in specific areas and in various popup and video mechanisms, so that it would be easy and pleasant for the user to navigate the site.
⭕ Language separation: We corrected the weaknesses that existed in the bilingual site and clarified the Greek from the English language on each page.
In addition, with continuous support and guidance, we trained in an understandable way the staff involved in the main pillars of the Hellenic American Union site, both at a technical level and in terms of texts, so that the management of the site and the uploading of texts is done in a correct and SEO friendly manner.
✅ What we achieved
Thanks to the above strategy, we managed to improve the general authority of the site in the eyes of both Google and users in just 6 months. This development was reflected in tangible and clear results.
The total increase in organic clicks was 33%. When we are talking about hundreds of thousands of clicks, then such an increase of one third translates into tens of thousands of additional clicks and spectacular revenue.
This increase came from the fact that the average position increased by 15%. This simply means that looking at the position of all the keywords for which the site achieves rankings (on this particular site we are talking about thousands of keywords), the average was 15% higher.
However, even more important for sales was that the average position was on the first page and mainly in the top three, when there is seasonality. That is, in periods when user searches are high for specific keywords (e.g. educational seminars at the beginning of the season), the Hellenic American Union site appears on average on the first page for all keywords.
In fact, in extremely popular searches, such as digital marketing seminars, the site rose from the second page (positions 12-18 previously) to the top three of the results.
This is very simply translated as follows: While before a user looking for a digital marketing seminar (and therefore extremely likely to convert into a customer) did not even find the Hellenic American Union in their searches (because few go to the second page), now they find it in the first three positions and therefore the probability of choosing it is very high.
And because having been involved in SEO for several years now we know that the second page is equivalent to condemnation of traffic, we were even more happy when we found that thanks to our actions over 200 important keywords with buying intent appeared on the first page.
SEO never ceases to amaze us. The tools it offers are so many and so powerful that it gives us the opportunity even without fully utilizing its capabilities, since we remained only in the on-page part, to achieve impressive performance.
In fact, if one considers that we are at the beginning of our collaboration with the Hellenic American Union and technical changes are continuing, then it becomes clear that all of the above is just a first sample of the success that will follow!
