Organic Growth for Credit Canada
Recovering traffic after a major algorithm hit.
+20%
Increase in Organic Sessions
-15%
Organic CAC
+44%
Form Submission Conversion Rate
Credit Canada experienced a significant drop in traffic after the September 2023 Helpful Content Update. We worked with them starting in December 2023 to identify specific content quality issues and created a roadmap to regain lost rankings.
After the August 2024 Core Update, Credit Canada’s traffic increased by 34%, recovering to higher levels than before they were first impacted.
“Partnering with Flywheel has been a pivotal decision for us.
After a Google algorithm update impacted our organic traffic, they provided the expertise, strategy, and collaborative approach we needed to get back on track.
Thanks to their efforts, our online visibility and engagement have significantly improved. Now, more Canadians struggling with debt can find us online, allowing us to provide the support and resources they need to regain control of their finances. Flywheel’s commitment to our success has made them a true extension of the Credit Canada team.”
LEAH WELLS
Director of Marketing, Credit Canada
Context
Credit Canada is Canada’s first and longest-standing non-profit credit counselling agency with over 50 years of service providing debt relief to millions of Canadians. They have an extensive resource library of blog articles, personal finance tips, debt management resources, and budgeting guides.
In late 2023, Credit Canada’s traffic took a big hit after the September Helpful Content Update. Traffic dropped by 25% the next month and continued to fall. For most of 2024, traffic was down by 50% year over year.
Outcomes
All results are from January 1, 2023 – October 30, 2024
Credit Canada initially hired Flywheel to support their website refresh. In January 2024, we became their ongoing SEO partner. We worked with Credit Canada to improve their content quality, narrowing down to high-intent and seasonal content to enhance their topical authority.
In the month after the August 2024 Core Update, they experienced a traffic uptick of 20% month over month, which has continued to climb. We have not only recovered traffic since the September 2023 Helpful Content Update but surpassed year-over-year numbers.
1. Traffic recovered from -50% YoY to +34% YoY (and growing)
2. Organic Customer Acquisition Costs decreased by 15%
3. Form Submission CVR increased by 44%
Process
We addressed our challenge in 3 steps:
- Content Refreshes
- Customer-informed Content
- High-intent Content
1. Content Refreshes
Nowadays, simply pressing publish isn’t enough. Content must be regularly optimized for quality, accuracy, alignment with current user intent, and up-to-date ranking factors. This is especially important for Credit Canada, a YMYL (Your Money Your Life) publication—one of Google’s specially identified categories where they weight E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) more carefully.
We ran a three-step optimization process:
- Analyze
- Identified “low-hanging fruit” keywords.
- Reviewed SERP competitors to determine content gaps and structures favoured by Google—like tables or lists.
- CTA mapping: analyzed blog content for conversion intent and identified relevant CTA copy, placements, and links.
- Collaborate
- Collaborated with Credit Canada’s credit counsellors and education facilitators, integrating their direct quotes into articles.
- Divided execution between Credit Canada and Flywheel to move faster. We provided a detailed brief for all Credit Canada tasks, including direction for new content to add and metadata to improve.
- Update
- Focused optimizations on credit and debt consolidation topics—Credit Canada’s main pillars, improving topical authority.
- Implemented structural and metadata updates based on competitor analyses.
- Implemented article schema to help search engines better interpret content.
2. Customer-informed Content
Credit Canada’s Credit Counsellors spend hours speaking with clients struggling to manage their finances. These conversations revealed a wealth of content opportunities beyond what keyword research tools could uncover.
For instance, clients frequently mentioned challenges like paying rising electricity bills and managing timely mortgage payments due to increasing interest rates. They also asked specific debt-related questions, such as how to budget to pay off debt and strategies for tackling debt on a low income. We leveraged this insight for smarter topics and more relevant copy.
Examples include:
3. High-intent Content
Many of Credit Canada’s articles included top-of-funnel subjects like Are lottery tickets worth your money? and Government benefits for low-income Canadians. While informative, they primarily attracted users looking for general financial information rather than those ready to engage with Credit Canada’s services. They did little to establish Credit Canada’s topical authority in debt management, nor did they result in conversions (measured by form submissions).
To address this, we shifted focus to topics that aligned directly with Credit Canada’s services:
- Does debt consolidation affect buying a home
- Debt consolidation vs bankruptcy
- Consumer proposal vs debt consolidation
This content showcased Credit Canada’s expertise in this space. It also created natural opportunities to guide readers toward contacting Credit Canada for free credit counseling sessions, using inline CTAs:
