Drove 935% YoY organic traffic growth by building a content program from the ground up
When I joined Launch Potato as Managing Editor for AllAboutCookies.org, the site had potential it wasn’t living up to. Some categories had traction. Others were barely touched since the site first launched in the early 2000s. The opportunity was clear, but so was the work ahead. Here’s how we got there.
Launch Potato
Company
Managing Editor
role
Apr 2022-Nov 2023
timeline
935%
YoY organic traffic growth
2
full-time staff hired and managed
5
freelance writers and editors hired
Full funnel
from awareness content to high-intent conversion pages
the situation
The AllAboutCookies.org site had the bones of something good, including a 90+ domain authority score. But the content was stale, underdeveloped, under-optimized, or not yet built at all. My job was to figure out what we had, what was missing, and build a program that could scale both.
That meant taking stock quickly. What was ranking and why? Where were the gaps in funnel coverage? Which categories and verticals had the most upside? The strategic work came first, because without a clear picture of where we were, production would just be noise.
WHAT WE DID
The growth came from my team and these four things working together, not any single lever pulled in isolation.
01
Expanded the topical footprint.
We identified content categories and verticals the site wasn’t covering and built them out intentionally, not just adding pages, but thinking through hierarchy, internal linking, and where each category sat in the funnel before we wrote a word.
02
Optimized what already existed.
Existing content was leaving rankings on the table. We worked through it systematically to improve on-page SEO, tighten structure, update information, and making sure every piece was doing a job in the overall site architecture.
03
Built for revenue, not just traffic.
Page views don’t pay the bills. I made sure high-intent content was woven throughout the funnel with pages designed to convert, not just rank. Editorial calendar decisions always weighed SEO data against current offers and revenue priorities.
04
Built the team to execute it.
I hired two full-time team members and managed 5+ freelancers, then set quality standards, ran editorial brainstorming and feedback sessions, oversaw the freelance budget, and reviewed quality. A content program is only as good as the people running it.
A 935% traffic increase sounds like one big move. It wasn’t. It was a hundred smaller decisions, like what to prioritize, what not to build, where the real opportunities were, made consistently over time that added up to such a substantial leap.
what i’d do differently
I’d build the editorial infrastructure earlier. Briefs, style guides, and feedback/product testing frameworks took time to develop while we were already in production, and every week without them meant more revision cycles and slower onboarding for new writers. Getting the scaffolding right before you scale execution is worth the upfront time investment.
I’d also instrument content performance tracking sooner. We were making good strategic decisions, but clearer attribution between specific content investments and revenue outcomes would have sharpened prioritization and made the business case for the program even stronger.