How The Sill's Blog Drives 30% of Web Traffic with Evergreen Blog Content

Key Takeaways

The Sill is one of the top online retailers for houseplants in the US. From January 2021 to August 2021, the eCommerce brand generated an average of 676K visitors a month, with search driving 68% of all traffic. The Sill’s search traffic success can be attributed to its high-quality blog content and paid search ads.

Organic Search Tactic — High-Quality Blog Content:

• Categorizing Content: The Sill classifies their blog into six categories, making it easy for users and search engines to find what they are looking for.
• Valuable Content: The content of The Sill's blog is centred around information related to plant care and education. Their posts are easily understandable for all readers. Each post provides valuable and helpful information for both beginner and expert plant owners.
• Niche Keywords: The Sill has a corresponding “How to Care for” blog post for each plant type. These niche keywords usually have less competition, thus making it easier for these pages to organically rank.
• Templates: “How to Care for” blog posts follow a simple template that make them straightforward to create and easy for readers to understand.
• Evergreen Topics: The Sill creates evergreen content pieces by finding relevant long-tail keywords with consistent interest over time, then crafting blogs to match that search behaviour.
• Evergreen Formats: The Sill uses evergreen content formats to help maintain the relevance of its content over time.
• Video Content: Blog posts use video content to help reduce bounce rates and increase their average page durations.

Paid Search Tactic — Branded Keywords: The Sill bids on their branded keywords to prevent competitors from poaching high intent search queries. 30% of their paid search traffic comes from the keywords "the sill", "thesill" and "sill".

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The Sill is one of the top online retailers for houseplants in the US, known for its convenience and affordability. The Sill sells various indoor plants, shoppable by size, the light required, and collection. Additionally, the brand offers plant delivery subscriptions, flat shipping fees, a rewards program and a plant care resource centre.

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From January 2021 to August 2021, The Sill generated an average of 676K visitors a month. Traffic was predominantly driven from mobile devices (59% of total traffic). 

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From January 2021 to August 2021, search traffic made up 68% of total traffic. The Sill’s total traffic and search traffic increased by +19% YoY (January 2021 to August 2021). 

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Non-branded keywords drove 76% of all of The Sill’s organic search traffic (desktop). 

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The Sill’s organic search traffic success can be attributed to their dedication to creating high quality blog content. On average, their blog section captures ~30% of all incoming traffic to the website.

The Sill categorizes their blog posts into the following six categories: The blog section has been thoughtfully laid out to ensure that users can quickly find what they are looking for.

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Content on the blog focuses on plant education and care. All content is highly digestible and provides the reader with valuable information. Posts are written to be easily understood by beginners and avoids using technical jargon.

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The Sill has a corresponding “How to Care for” blog post for each plant type. These niche keywords usually have less competition, thus making it easier for these pages to organically rank. Search terms using the name of these following five plants drove +340K web visit from January 2021 to August 2021. 

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The “How to Care for” blog posts follow a simple template making them straightforward to create and easy for readers to understand. The “How to Care for Monstera” blog post drove 7% of The Sill’s total traffic from January 2021 - August 2021.

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The Sill creates evergreen content pieces finding relevant long-tail keywords that have consistent interest over time such as the "How To Repot" article. These blogs posts continue to drive traffic and remain relevant over time.

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The Sill’s blog posts utilize popular evergreen formats to help drive long-term traffic. Below are some of their most popular content formats:

Content Formats

• How To...
• Tips & Tricks
• Q&A Interview
• Top 10...
• X # of Ways To….
• What/Why is…..
• The best...for...
• Most popular/trends
• Gift Guides
• DIY

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The Sill adds embedded video content to some of their How-To blog posts to help the reader visually learn. This helps increase page duration and lower bounce rates. 

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The Sill supplements their organic search traffic with paid search ads. They focus on branded keywords to prevent competitors from poaching high intent search queries. Additionally they target middle of funnel users by bidding on specific type of plants.