Case Study: Increasing Site Traffic by 5,609% by Building a New Wiki

Across every continent, mushrooms have been used for medicinal, spiritual, and healing purposes for millenia. From traditional Chinese medicine to spiritual rituals performed by the Mayans and Aztecs, fungi was one of the earliest aids of psychological and physical healing.

And yet, the general public knows very little about the versatile powers of mushrooms today. In 2022, a group of editors, writers, and mushroom enthusiasts sought to change that.

The company aimed to build a wiki for mushrooms, becoming the go-to database for all things fungi. The team believed education was the missing link in harnessing mushrooms’ natural abilities to boost the immune system, reduce anxiety and depression, and even treat HPV. They hoped to build the largest library of fungi resources on the internet.

There was just one glaring problem: Just because the company wrote the content, didn’t mean anyone would be able to find it. 

In February of 2023, roughly one year into business, the soon-to-be Growth Machine client received just 1,100 monthly visitors. After enlisting Growth Machine for SEO, content writing, and link building, the site’s traffic snowballed to 62,800 visitors in just seven months — a jaw-dropping growth rate of 5,609%. 

Here’s how we did it. 

The Business Problem: Getting Readers to Find Their Content 

When the company was founded, the team had one primary goal: Encourage an international adoption of fungi into everyday routines. They knew that education and awareness were key in working toward their mission.

They got to work writing content to address the education piece. But building awareness? That’s where Growth Machine came in.

One year in, the site had barely crossed the four-digit threshold in site visitors. To get science-backed mushroom education into the hands of their community, their goals were twofold: 

1. Build the wiki of mushrooms: The site aimed to become the unrivaled source of mushroom education. The company approached Growth Machine with an initial list of 72 mushroom varieties to build their content plan on.
2. Get mushroom education into the hands of consumers: Averaging just 1,100 visitors a month on their site, the client leveraged Growth Machine to build a well-crafted SEO strategy to increase content visibility on Google.

The Strategy: Filling a Void in an Uncharted Niche

The client wanted to build something that didn’t exist: A compilation of all mushroom education, allowing readers to easily incorporate fungi into everyday use. The client’s vision encompassed a database of all culinary, medicinal, and psychedelic uses for every mushroom variety — but they needed a team of writers to build it and a team of SEO strategists to make the content visible online.

The Keywords: Ranking for Two Keywords for Every Post 

In their aim to become the go-to source of science-based mushroom education, the client provided an initial list of mushroom 72 initial varieties. And while our SEO strategists were more than happy to build a keyword strategy from the client’s list, we noticed one anomaly, given the nature of the industry: For every mushroom variety, there are not one, but two names — common and scientific. 

Our decision? We decided to rank for both.

To build up a library of content, our SEO strategists decided to target mushroom varieties with high search volume and medium-to-low difficulty first. We prioritized scientific names for the keywords, even though each article was written to rank for the common name as well. Over time — and as the site built up domain authority, thereby bettering the client’s chances of ranking on Google — we targeted keywords with low search volume and/or higher competition.

The Writers: Building a Science-Backed Mushroom Wiki

The brand, at its core, is a content website. Their mission and their revenue model depended on writing thought-out, well-researched mushroom education. Beyond simply publishing wiki pages for 70+ mushroom varieties, the client aimed to become the go-to resource for fungi news, trends, and health benefits.

Each highly sourced article had to be backed by science, while written in a way anyone could understand. Growth Machine pieced together a detailed style guide and hired writers who could accomplish both. In each article, our team of writers offered an overview on the mushroom variety, its history within natural medicine, health benefits, where it grows, whether ethical wildcrafting is possible, and popular consumption methods. 

Growth Machine worked with the client to develop a template for each wiki page, presenting education on each variety in a way that was easy to digest for the end reader.

The Link Building: Building Up Domain Authority 

Before we launched this SEO strategy, the client experienced modest site traffic at 1,100 visitors per month. To build up domain authority, attract new readers, and ultimately achieve the type of traffic growth the brand needed to be successful, link building was a necessity.

Initially, the client didn’t have budget for link building. That said, when we more than doubled the site’s traffic in just 30 days (bringing in 2,600 visitors), the client knew it would be worth the investment. With link building added to the contract, the site’s traffic tripled in just one month, and doubled again in two.

The Results: A 5,609% Increase in Traffic in Just 7 Months

Growth Machine’s content and SEO strategy scaled the client’s traffic immediately. In 30 days, the site’s traffic more than doubled from 1,100 to 2,600 visitors. 

When the client added link building to their contract, site traffic grew exponentially. By month two, the site nearly tripled to 7,000 visitors, then more than doubled to 15,000 in month three. Month after month, the site shattered its previous record for monthly visits. Six months in — the initial length of the client’s contract — the site hit 54,500 visitors, a growth rate of 4,854%.

Thrilled with the project’s progress, the client immediately extended their contract. One month later, the site set yet another record, hitting an all-time high of 62,800 visitors — a 5,609% growth rate. Over the course of the contract, the client went from virtually no traffic to receiving 201,000 clicks online and hitting a staggering 7.87 million impressions.

What Could You Do With a 5,609% Increase in Site Traffic? 

If your primary goal is to educate readers, you need an SEO strategy to get your valuable information into the hands of the public. Our client wanted to become the #1 source of mushroom education online, and with Growth Machine’s SEO strategy, they did just that.

We successfully doubled the client’s traffic in just 30 days, and set monthly traffic records every month thereafter. Seven months later, the site had grown from 1,100 to 62,800 monthly visitors, a staggering growth rate of 5,609%. All those new visitors got to read science-backed, easy-to-digest articles that helped answer their fungi-related questions.

At Growth Machine, we help even the most niche brands gain visibility online and rank on Google — even when that niche doesn’t quite yet exist. To see how we can design and execute an effective SEO strategy to help you move up the ranks of search engines, schedule a consultation.