5 SEO Game Changers Which Worked Like Magic For The Indian Startup: PortraitFlip.
PortraitFlip, a startup which took birth 2 years back with a vision of selling handmade paintings from photos with absolutely no funds, today has a turnover of 1 Crore only for the past year and the founders are positive about 150% growth in the next Financial Year.
They are aggressively expanding and delivering handmade paintings in more than 20 countries. By doing some amazing work in logistics management the Best Startup Winner Of VIT 2018 offers Free International Shipping to all the foreign customers.
PortraitFlip can convert a photo into a handmade painting in 6 different mediums and deliver it to the customers anywhere in the world.
So,
What did the 3 Founder Engineers from VIT do to become one of the two major global competitors who sell handmade paintings from photos?
How are they receiving orders from countries which they have never heard of?
And, how is this possible without any funding?
Here are the 3 major SEO game changers for PortraitFlip which you should follow to increase reach and eventually boost your sales and profits.
The Game Changers (These Bring Business To PortraitFlip From 20+ Countries)
A. SEO
- Keyword Research and Competitor Analysis.
- Optimizing Product Pages.
- Knowledge Sharing, And Blog Marketing.
- Link Building: Backlinking through Guest Posting.
- Analytics
B. Social Media Marketing (Bonus Tip #1)
FB & Google Ads.
C. Testimonial Promotion (Bonus Tip #2)
Building trust through testimonial promotion.
Now let’s zoom in to each Game Changer one by one.
A. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Everyone is searching for something on Google, right?
All those are keywords, but the keywords which are relevant to your business are relevant keywords for your products or services.
The act of including these keywords on your website to improve ranking is SEO.
For instance:
PortraitFlip included keywords like handmade paintings from photos, portrait painting, oil painting, charcoal painting, pet painting, anniversary painting, and a lot more on different product pages and blogs. All these are relevant keywords for PortraitFlip and will bring in organic traffic.
But how do you know what your target audience is searching for?
- Keyword Research and Competitor Analysis:
In PortraitFlip’s case, they analyzed what keywords were bringing traffic to their competitor’s website and then worked upon including them on PortraitFlip’s website.
The tools which you may use are Moz, SEMrush Keywords Everywhere, Google Keyword Planner, Uber Suggest, etc.
Once you know which keyword is working for your competitor you just have to replicate them onto your pages.
There are 2 places you need SEO;
Product Pages and Blogs
- Optimizing Product Pages
All you have to do to optimize the product page is to add various relevant keywords in various segments just like this one on PortratiFlip’s website.
PortraitFlip has 10-12 major product pages like Pet Portraits, Anniversary Portraits, Couple Portraits, Christmas Portraits, etc.
They created a page for every product and included all the keywords relevant to it like painting from photo.
Also, your link address should have the keywords which is one of the major ranking factors, for example for the pet portrait page the link they created is – www.portraitflip.com/christmas-portraits/.
- Blog Marketing
Add a blog section on your website and share relevant knowledge to bring in traffic.
As PortraitFlip has a product which is used for gifting they have blogs like:
- 30 Christmas Gifts For Brothers
- Christmas Gifts For Dog Lovers
- 51 Personalized Anniversary Gifts For Her (Traditional Gifts Included)
In every blog, handmade paintings from photos by PortraitFlip are mentioned 2-3 times with link which gets them to the product page.
Some of the keywords used in the first blog are personalized Christmas gifts for brother, thoughtful gifts for brothers, gifts for brother who has everything, etc.
What this does is whenever someone searches for Personalized Christmas Gifts For Brother this blog shows up (subject to ranking), and because handmade painting by PortraitFlip is the very first on the list, the viewer might checkout the website or place an order.
But, PortraitFlip was still not in the top 3 results for their relevant keywords, why?
- Link Building:
Google doesn’t have people sitting in their offices to look at each website and give them a rank; instead they depend on some data or ranking factors, one of which is backlinks.
Backlinking is simply the natural presence of your products link at some other website, this happens when:
- People share your product through social media.
- Bloggers Include a link to your product on some blog (Guest Posts).
- People include a link on sites like Quora and Reddit.
- People send the link to their friends through various mediums like SMS, Whatsapp or DM’s.
Ethically, your product can get you a backlink if the quality of your product is good, except in one case which is Guest Posting.
When a blogger has a segment of audience which is relevant to your business, you can pay him a small fee and feature your product there with a hyperlink to your website.
Although this is not the right way of getting backlinks, people do it because it has good results.
Now let’s understand,
Interlinking:
When PortraitFlip published blogs like 30 Christmas Gifts For Brothers, I made sure I added suggested blogs like Christmas gifts for sisters, or Christmas gifts for brother-in-law which would take them to that blog.
Interlinking is also one of the ranking factors because people then spend more time on the website, which tells Google, these guys are doing some good work! And this leads to increased Domain Authority.
Ok! You understood SEO, You did keyword research and added them in your product pages also you established backlinks, but how do you track what is getting you business?
- Analytics:
Use tools by google or any third party services of Moz or SEMrush to understand which keyword is bringing you business.
Also, gain a grasp over what is not working like a page which has not brought a single person on your website and then do more SEO or delete the page.
B. Social Media Marketing
Once you are seeing SEO do its job and getting you business, you can venture with Google and FB ads just like PortraitFlip did.
PortraitFlip created ads images and defined target audience in FB’s ad creator to pet owners, dog food buyers, cat food buyers, etc.
This ensured the ad is showed to only those who were Potential Customers and got them on PortraitFlip.
C. Testimonial Promotion
Ask your past customers to record a video of unpacking or what their experience was with your company and post it on YouTube and all your Social Media Handles.
This will build their trust in your company and give a real-time vision of what should be expected?
PortraitFlip has all their customer testimonials on their channel and has also featured 2 of them on their homepage, you can search PortraitFlip on YouTube or visit their website to get an idea.
And That’s A Wrap
So, that’s how you can also rocket your sales with SEO and then eventually Social Media and Testimonial Marketing.
This post was written by Anmol Ramgiri, the lead content writer at PortraitFlip who looks after the SEO of blogs and Product Pages.
