“We wanted a content platform that would be really helpful for Romanians looking for a job, and bun de angajat exceeded our expectations in a very short time. Not only has it become a consistent source of information for our target audience, but it has also become a gateway for new users, who now apply and change jobs through OLX. ”- Cristina Sauciuc, Brand Manager OLX Romania
The Context
Since Romania joined the European Union (EU) 13 years ago, over one million Romanians have emigrated in search of better work opportunities and standards of living. In the meantime, the government eradicated the vocational schools and showed no intention of creating a stable environment for skilled workers before they decide to pack their bags and leave.
Therefore, businesses had to take the matter into their own hands. Since OLX, our client, is the meeting point of both businesses and blue-collars, we knew there was no option but to help the brand become an advocate for them.
We have accepted the mission to fill the information gaps that could make workers more confident when looking for jobs locally and want to improve their skills through learning and certifications and educating those ones that employers reward. The content we write brings candidates information about their rights and also tells them how they can get and keep a well-paid job.
The results speak for themselves: blue collars in Romania now have reliable resources that meet their specific needs, while the registration rate in the job section of the Olx.ro platform has increased more than expected in the first estimates of objectives.
The Client
OLX is the largest advertising site in Romania. It is “the place where you can quickly find ads in your city or across the country.” With twelve active categories, the site attracts more and more users in the jobs area.
This segment responds, however, with informative content entirely dedicated to “white collars” – names that have gained notoriety over the years, such as Hipo, BestJobs or eJobs. But the OLX audience for the “Jobs” category is more in the “blue collar” area – jobs for which employment opportunities and conditions are not developed on any content platform and for which Google users do not find relevant and complete information.
Olx.ro expressed their need to better connect with their jobs classified ads focus audience – blue-collars and to empower them to upgrade their lives. So we built an entire content strategy around that, one that aimed at filling in a very specific content gap.
We articulated a General Training & Education content category. We targeted highly competitive topics, but we split them to solve related challenges for:
- blue collars currently enrolled in a job
- blue collars looking for a job
We aligned with the brand’s most in demand jobs such as babysitter, housekeeper, builder, courier, cook etc.. We created Tailored Educational Content categories in the microsite that would address niched content for top 50 most in demand blue-collar occupations that became our buyer persona groups.
For each of them and their subcategories (e.g. driver: taxi driver, personal driver), we built a mix of content both closer to conversion (registration) and to awareness and timetabled it in agreement with search seasonality.
The Challenge
With this audience in mind, OLX has set itself the goal of developing a content product for skilled or in the process of qualifying workers, users of the job section of the main site. And to strengthen their trust in the ads, respectively to determine them to consume without reluctance the central content of the site.
Therefore OLX wanted to respond to users’ need for information. Provide them with content that will turn them into ideal candidates and professional employees. To help them work in optimal conditions, by presenting the legal framework of the targeted professions, but also by exposing job opportunities.
Upswing’s challenge was to find the ideal content form for the OLX Jobs audience so that they could tick the estimated traffic target. At the same time, the new OLX content product had to reach the first page of Google results.
The main goal of this project was, from the beginning, to create content on a micro informational website, which would have a strong impact on user behavior, from education, to motivation to register and search, actively, the ideal job.
The Solution
To define the solution, Upswing started from the design of a technical infrastructure of the site and the analysis of rankings on keywords relevant to the field and chosen according to customer objectives. Each stage of implementation would then benefit from a thorough audit; from design and wireframes to customer journey and from the application of on-page SEO techniques for all pages to the construction of the content strategy, each stage was designed according to the particularities of the client and the target audience.
We analyzed competitors to determine content opportunities and the size of the industry. Using our proprietary tool Visibility Report, that automatically establishes all the relevant keywords within an industry and displays the organic visibility market share and the topics bringing traffic to each competitor, we identified topics to generate content for.
But VR provided data for head terms and relied solely on search volume. We had to determine traffic opportunity for the whole topic. A better metric would be visits estimates. We all know search volume alone can be deceiving when making traffic estimates for content.
For each topic, we pulled data from another proprietary tool, Topics. It analyzes all the keywords a topic/ URL is ranking for in Google and provides traffic estimates based on its SERP position CTR.
We prioritized more than 28k topics using accurate topic traffic estimates for a better selection of topics to target and forecast. Next, we determined when was the best time to tackle each piece of content on a large scale.
We extracted the search volume for each month and compared it to the yearly average. This is how we built a heatmap that tells us which topic is hot every month.
Because we did it at such a large scale, we got helpful insights to use throughout the campaign (e.g.: the peak of the “public holidays” term was in May, as Easter was approaching).
Next, we mapped the most relevant topics in terms of traffic opportunity versus sale funnel stage.
The strategy was to provide content each month for every sale funnel stage and for mixed types of the buyer persona. This content mix would impact the end goal of generating new user registrations.
Next, we overlapped the topic opportunities, the seasonality heat map & the sale funnels content attribution per each buyer persona to create a thorough content strategy.
In order for the design to be responsive, a predefined theme with such qualities was installed for the established CMS. It automatically adapts depending on the device used. At the same time, AMP (accelerated mobile pages) was implemented – a variant for mobile devices that loads instantly.
The Upswing strategy started from a non-existent backlinks profile and a non-performing design, the first things that would change with the implementation. Improving internal linking and prioritizing list items based on growth potential have been in focus since the beginning. Thus, the proposal was made for the article slider that would be found on all pages of the site, a step that included structuring data on topics and articles – titles, editorial calendar and linking suggestions to the site olx.ro
E-A-T
Because, according to Google’s recommendations, each page needs expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) to check these 3 criteria, but also to make sure that users find the best content on the Bundeangajat.olx.ro blog, we used HR specialists who guided and validated the content created.
Specialists that even Google knows are experts in their fields.
The Results
We earned backlinks from 87 referring domains. We started with almost zero authority as it was a new project designed by us & implemented on a new subdomain in the second half of 2018.
We obtained links from relevant & high authority domains. We earned links from HR & financial top tier publishers such as forbes.ro, revistacariere.ro or adevarul.ro (the website with the highest DR in Romania).
For the timeframe March 2019 – February 2020 we obtained a 9x traffic improvement from 10k visits per month to 91k visits per month from organic traffic.
The campaign had a clear impact on the bottom line as we increased the number of registered users from 510 in March 2019 to over 2.000 in February 2020.
The Conclusion
Bundeangajat.olx.ro reminded us of an important lesson: addressing obvious high search volume content is not always enough. Investing in identifying a complete list of 50 types of buyer persona and their specific needs was our answer for a thorough understanding of needs search data doesn’t reveal.
Having HR research and a social cause as the foundation of our strategy motivated us to find creative ways to impact the bottom line, thus quadrupling (from 500 to 2.000) user registrations in the platform throughout a year of collaboration.
Also facing the challenge of a low authority, we had to make sure our content was good enough to be picked out by other media outlets and obtain 87 links in the process. Our proprietary tools, Visibility Report and TOPICS, ensured our success in selection and prioritisation of content whereas our Forecast methodology helped to demonstrate the content impact evolution.
As a result, bundeangajat.olx.ro dominates the SERPs and, after a year and a half since launch, still has no real competition in blue collars area – 90k organic visits / month.
