How to grow a no code website from 0 to 20K monthly visitors

“We’ve been utilizing a no code approach since 2017, before it was mainstream. We’ve used our expertise to grow our client’s website traffic from 0 to over 20K monthly visitors,” says Andrey Kravchenko, the CEO of marketing agency Eveditz, about the experience of promoting a dental clinic online.

The client: Dental clinic D.Ante (Kyiv)
Website: dante.com.ua
No code instruments: Tilda, WordPress + Elementor Pro plugin

Step 1: A Landing Page and Local SEO

We needed to create a website and ensure the clinic’s online presence across all the key channels before its opening date, June 1, 2017.

We faced two key challenges. Firstly, the client invested almost all of his money into the clinic leaving very scarce resources for the website development. Secondly, we had less than a month before the opening.

Referred to as version 0.0, the first version of the website was a single landing page, put together in Tilda. We immediately transferred the exported code to our hosting so that the client would not pay for a subscription.

We chose to create a no code website as it was a cheaper and faster option that allowed us to launch on time while staying within the budget. It had nothing to do with our preferences.

Since we were on a limited budget for paid promotion, our first step was to optimize the website for local SEO. Among the keywords we used were the following: “dentistry near the Olympic stadium”, “dentistry on Gorky street”, etc. It took us only three months to make the website appear on the first page of Google by chosen search enquiries thanks to high-quality website content and strong presence on relevant resources, maps, and social media.

Step 2: Website scaling and full search engine optimization

In late 2018, the clinic was running smoothly. It was time to start a comprehensive SEO campaign and website scaling. We knew that a single landing page would not take the clinic very far in the competitive field of dental services.

Together with the client, we analyzed competitors and online resources dedicated to dentistry (listings, portals, forums, groups, channels, etc.). Analysis, internal discussions, and short interviews with target customers took us roughly two months. As a result, we crafted our approach to content creation and SEO.

The approach was clear and simple: “Simplicity and value.”

Unlike our competitors who would bombard potential customers with technical terms and cram their content with spammy keywords, we would talk to customers in a language they would understand.

Instead of relying fully on keywords, we crafted comprehensive pieces showcasing the essence of each service and procedure with the help of photographs and illustrations. Our goal was to make the clinic a go-to online knowledge source about dental care instead of selling dental services head-on.

Here’s our SEO strategy:

Top-level pages — specialties covered by the clinic (pediatric dentistry, therapy, surgery, etc.)
Second-level pages — services that the clinic provides in each area (for example, orthodontics: braces, aligners, retainers, plates, etc.).
Third-level pages — detailed procedures and services (for example, types of braces: ceramic, metal, sapphire, self-ligating).

Creating a dental care blog where doctors share opinions and cover topics not covered by the service pages.

Using the in-house expertise of the clinic’s staff to create original pieces rather than rewriting ready-made articles was a key element that helped us increase traffic quickly.

By that time the clinic could afford hiring a development team to create and launch a full-fledged website. However, it never happened. And here’s why:

The site had to be launched quickly so that targeted queries would start ranking in search engines as quickly as possible.
We knew that the visitors of the new website would behave differently as compared to landing page visitors, so we would need to test new visuals and calls to action constantly. This would be more difficult/time-consuming/expensive to do if we had to engage a developer every time we needed to do something .

To ensure further scaling of the site, we chose to use CMS WordPress and its add-on, a paid plugin called Elementor Pro.

It took us roughly two months to design and roll out a new website (version 1.0) as a minimalistic resource focused on content.

When we started promoting the website in June 2019, there were 544 monthly organic website visits.

Step 3: Website redesign, DIY, and a traffic drop

In Q1 2020, we redesigned the website. It was the time when we first realized that we needed to move from the Elementor Pro to something else.

f we were to repeat this journey, we would abandon the no code approach at step 2, when the design and calls to action were already optimized, but the site’s exponential growth was yet to begin.

We were moving incredibly slowly:

We were redesigning each website page manually (by that time the site had about 150 pages);
This needed to be done in two languages — the Ukrainian version was made shortly after the law which required websites registered in Ukraine to be in Ukrainian passed. This made things even harder;
We also had to check all non-standard forms showcased on the website.

The redesign took two people a month. We moved to lighter colors, unified website style and calls to action, and removed all the “artifacts” left from numerous visual changes, and then…

The traffic dropped.

Coincidentally, three things happened simultaneously: the website redesign, the first wave of lockdown, and the spring update of the Google algorithm.

At first, we wanted to go back to the previous design, but decided not to do it two weeks later. The thing was that our competitors’ websites that had poor content, few low-quality backlinks, outdated design and too many keywords were starting to climb up the Google ranking. That’s how we realized that we didn’t cause the traffic drop.

To redeem our success, we focused on guest blogging to get backlinks. By the middle of autumn, we saw the first results and the website returned to the “pre-quarantine” state in terms of traffic.

To prevent another traffic drop, we continued to publish new content on the website. On average, we produced three blog articles and 2-3 new subpages in the “Services” section per month.

Thanks to these actions, even the December update of Google’s algorithms did not affect the ranking of the website. It continues to grow at the same rate as before, by 20-30% per month.

Eighteen months of SEO promotion increased website traffic from 544 to 20381 visitors per month. Besides, 103 out of 145 search enquiries that we focused on now “live” on the first page of Google (top 10).

We understood that it would no longer be possible to scale the website by manually updating 300+ pages while still using WordPress and Elementor Pro. Therefore, in December, we began to work on the fourth version of the website.

Since Google’s new algorithms are even more focused on improving the user experience, we are now making the site as user-friendly as possible for all categories of users. We’ll add the internal search option and make the design even “lighter.”

I’d like to praise the clinic’s owners who understand that a website is a living organism that must be constantly perfected and developed to survive.

Outcomes

Instead of an afterword, I would like to share two lists that we have formed over the three years of work on the project. Let’s call it a global retrospective, if you are familiar with Scrum-related terms:

Our screw-ups:

We rolled out the redesign in the first wave of quarantine while Google was updating its algorithms. It was the wrong time to do it. But now we know that it is better to wait until the search engine update stabilizes so we do not have to look for the factor which influenced the metrics.
We moved from the no code approach too late. This required additional resources both from us and the client, as well as slowed down the website scaling.
We started working more actively to get backlinks only when the traffic dropped. If we made this our primary goal from the beginning, there would not be a significant drop in organic traffic after the search engine update.
We didn’t read the forums before updating the plugin. It turned out that Elementor Pro does not always work correctly when combined with other WordPress plugins, and sometimes with itself: our entire layout was once completely ruined after an update.

Our key findings:

It is essential to work closely with the client on content creation. The client’s expertise + the ability of copywriters to explain complex concepts in simple terms give an increase in behavioral metrics (time spent on a page, clicks within the site) that affect traffic.
Stick to one person from the client’s team. It would be impossible to increase traffic so quickly if it weren’t for D.Ante’s co-owner and director Ivan Molozhanov. It was he who ensured that the doctors who participated in content creation did their job on time.
Consistency and systemic approach bring results. There was a time when we paid less attention to the technical part of SEO (titles, tags, “alts” for pictures, correct markup, etc.), which resulted in the traffic drop. We quickly leveled it out and never neglected routine tasks ever again.

One last thing.

No code websites work well for those who have limited resources and need to test new UX/UI hypotheses a lot. However, this approach limits many aspects of daily tasks and hinders website scaling.

* For SEO specialists who managed to read till here : it’s true that an Elementor-powered website can reach the ranking top, but you shouldn’t stay on Elementor for long 🙂