Global wedding vendor marketplace WeddingWire matches engaged couples with the venues, florists, and caterers who will make their big day memorable. Senior Manager of Digital Content Morgan Gibson says her team’s job is to make it easier for couples and vendors to connect: “A lot of the content in our Wedding Ideas section steers couples toward the vendor directory or our wedding planning tools, like the budget planner or checklists.”

Before Parse.ly, the content team mostly supported social media efforts. “Then the Facebook algorithm started to change, the landscape started to change,” said Gibson. “Users went down and we started wondering what those users were doing. We really wanted to build a strong foundation for our users coming in via content. Growing our organic search traffic has been a huge part of that.”

In the two years since WeddingWire started using Parse.ly, the team has been able to better determine what content the WeddingWire user responds best to, define what successful content looks like, and, as a result, grow organic search traffic significantly.

“My philosophy is that in order to create good content, you have to equip your editors with tools and the understanding of what good content is, so you can make more of it. Giving the team Parse.ly empowered them to become more analytics-driven,” said Gibson.

How does Gibson’s team use Parse.ly to help boost organic traffic and pick content strategies to pursue? Let’s find out.

Deciding which posts to optimize for search

With Parse.ly, Gibson is able to track the growth and decline of an article’s search traffic. When an article starts to dip, that’s a signal for Gibson to go in and update it.

She also keeps an eye on the top 50-100 posts by search referrers for up-and-comers. “Frequently, something starts popping that we hadn’t seen before, or an older article comes up with a lot of search referrals. Because of that finding, we’ll look at keyword rankings and then optimize the article accordingly. We’ve had a lot of success updating articles in that way.”

Content analytics that the team actually uses

Why did WeddingWire choose Parse.ly for their content analytics needs? Gibson said “One of the reasons we picked Parse.ly is because it’s so user-friendly. Especially for an editor who wants to be able to report on how their content is doing right away, to see how people are responding and how engaged they are. That’s been really useful.”

With the whole team able to understand their goals, track them, and actually look at the data about their posts, organic search traffic growth is just the beginning for WeddingWire.

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