Challenge: Low Organic Website Traffic
Unison struggled to generate organic traffic and relied on paid ads for visibility. When they approached Hurrdat, the home equity lender wanted to drive qualified leads and increase organic traffic to their site. Our agency identified their blog as a key opportunity to improve their organic marketing strategy.
Solution: Developed a Content Marketing Strategy
Unison’s product—home equity sharing—was a relatively new concept that differed from traditional home equity products like home equity loans, HELOCs, and reverse mortgages. Because their offering wasn’t widely known, most users weren’t searching for it—or the company—directly. Instead, we found that homeowners were looking for information about traditional home equity solutions.
That meant for Unison’s blog, rather than focusing on branded or product-specific terms that lacked search volume, our team leaned into educational and comparative topics targeting lower difficulty keywords to help Unison start building their organic presence and authority with Google. New content focused on topics like:
- Reverse Mortgage vs. Home Equity Loan
- Home Equity Loan Pros & Cons
- Alternatives to a Reverse Mortgage
Hurrdat’s Director of Digital Strategy, Aaron Mackel, further explains:
“Finding topics with enough volume to make an impact was important, but we also had to identify lower-competition keywords that Unison could rank for. This guided our strategy towards pros and cons, comparison, and alternatives content that targeted high-intent keywords but not the most competitive terms that are dominated by the biggest brands in the space. This was critical to their success, and now that Unison has built a foundation and has had success ranking for these topics, they can look to target more competitive searches.”
Results: Significant Growth in Organic Traffic
All new blog posts were published between June 2023 and March 2024, but the site did not see any initial improvement in organic performance.
Hurrdat’s Data Science Director, Ross Allen, suggests why:
“Unison’s blog had a number of issues with crawlability and lacked internal linking. With no navigation and only a few of the most recent posts on the blog homepage, it was incredibly difficult for search engines to crawl the blog and discover new (and older) posts. We recommended adding in a new navigation section with HTML links to each of the main blog categories. We also recommended those category pages have links to previous and next posts.”
Immediately following this solution, we’ve seen a major spike in organic traffic to the site.
And over the last four months, the site has captured wins like:
- 620% increase in total SERP features
- 445% increase in PAA results
- 238% increase in AIOs
Top-performing content on the Unison blog is now all new or updated posts worked on by Hurrdat, including:
- Reverse Mortgage Pros & Cons
- Potential Downsides of a Reverse Mortgage
- Home Equity Alternatives to a Cash-Out Refinance
Reverse Mortgage Pros & Cons
This post delivers what readers are searching for—trustworthy, balanced insights on home equity products. In the past few months, it’s ranked in the top 10 results and continues to bring in steadily increasing organic traffic month over month.
Potential Downsides of a Reverse Mortgage
Sometimes the best-performing content is the most honest. This article goes deep into the pain points of a typical home equity solution, helping readers understand potential risks and trade-offs. It’s ranking in the top 5 search results for several main and long-tail queries, and often earns repeat visits from users deep in the research phase.
Home Equity Alternatives to Cash-Out Refinance
As interest in alternative equity options grows, so has this post. It’s jumped in keywords and SERP features thanks to clear, helpful content that meets readers where they are—especially homeowners not ready to commit to refinancing.It’s a strong example of intent-matching posts that guides homeowners exploring their equity options to consider Unison’s alternative products.
Key Takeaways From Unison’s Blog Strategy
During this project, we:
- Identified opportunities through their blog for them to be part of the conversation around traditional home equity products
- Determined blog topics through competitive analysis and keyword research
- Optimized blog posts with lower ranking keywords to help client build an online presence
- Increased organic traffic after resolving a technical site issue causing their blog to not be crawlable
Need help developing a strategic blog content strategy? Hurrdat Marketing offers digital marketing services, including content and SEO services to help increase your company’s organic presence. Contact us today!
