I've been writing about SEO since I was 15 years old, and a decade later I'm fortunate to have consulted for companies I love like Ahrefs, Kinsta, Buffer, ConvertKit and multi-billion dollar brands.
The basics can be incredibly effective, but hundreds of sites cover them well and I want to focus on unique, creative ways to achieve better rankings.
Instead, here's my promise: I will put my absolute all into guides like this one to give original insights that help you get an edge over your competition.
That's it. That's my pitch for you to stick around (or perhaps let you know this isn't the site for you).
This is already too much text for a 'click-to-read-more-fade-thing' but there's more if you like.
Thank you for being here!
You might not have heard of MVF Global, but you’ve no doubt seen some of their brands at the top of Google’s search results.
The media powerhouse is behind sites like:
- Startups.co.uk
- WebsiteBuilderExpert.com
- Tech.co
- ExpertMarket.co.uk
- ExpertReviews.co.uk
It’s the last site on the list, Expert Reviews, that I want to discuss today. As part of an announcement about the Expert Reviews team being up for an award, MVF revealed the sites’ traffic grew by 42% in 2022 and they were able to deliver a “huge boost in rankings for the site whilst battling tricky economic conditions”.
I’m a little bit late this news (it was published in April and updated in May), but still thought it was worth sharing as I didn’t see any other sites covering it.
Expert Reviews is a UK-focused site that helps you find the best electric toothbrush, pillows, mobile phones, coffee machines and items in any other product category you would expect on a generalised review site.
If you’ve read my report on who ranks across 10,000 affiliate-populated search results then you’ll know that while generalised sites can rank well, it tends to be niche review sites (e.g. tech product reviews) or hyperniche review sites (just printer reviews) that Google are rewarding the most.
What I love about companies announcing their own results is that we don’t have to assume third party data from the likes of Ahrefs, Semrush or Similarweb is accurate. Them publicly saying 2022 was a great year for the site has to be motivating for anyone focused on a similar business model.
While Ahrefs traffic reports aren’t the most reliable at the moment – they’ve recently updated their keywords database so most charts look quite impressive – it does look like traffic dipped for the site for a while but it’s recovering strongly now in 2023.
Numbers look consistent in Similarweb, who estimate the site receives around 4.2M visits each month, with 66% of those coming from the UK.
Similarweb also report the site is massively reliant on search traffic, with an estimated 84% of visitors coming via top rankings, so it makes sense they commented on improvements there.
As part of our model of being respectful to the sites we cover, I’m not going to dive into their top ranking keywords or how they’re acquiring backlinks.
MVF don’t get into figures on specific sites too often, but they do share how their network as a whole is doing front and center on their homepage:
There’s really not too much more to say on this one besides reiterating that this is the kind of thing I would want to read about, which is exactly why I’m writing about it.
It’s not the most important story happening in the world of marketing, but it is nice to see brands doing well and getting confirmation on that directly from the source.
