Bonnet EV App: 10x Organic Traffic to 16.3k in Ten Months

About Bonnet

Bonnet is a mobile app that solves the problem of locating and using charging points for electric cars across the UK and Europe. Traditionally, electric car owners have to download multiple charging network apps, each with its own EV charging location maps and its own e-wallet for payment.

That process is inconvenient for EV owners, who need to switch between apps to find the nearest charging station and then pay through the app of the relevant charging network. For a new network the driver has not used before, they first have to download that network's app, sign up, and add a payment method.

Bonnet designed an all-in-one solution. Their app lets you locate thousands of charging stations across the UK and Europe from a range of charging networks and pay from a single e-wallet.

Bonnet came to NUOPTIMA wanting to organically grow brand awareness and increase app installs and subscriptions among electric car owners. They needed a partner to run a large-scale SEO strategy across onsite, offsite, and technical work. As a consumer app business, this fit our B2B SaaS SEO approach: rank for high-intent search, then convert qualified visitors into installs. The team chose the growth package, which included 25,000 words of content, six DR 40+ backlinks, and full technical support.

Team

JoinBonnet Team

Patrick Reich

Co-founder & CEO

Rebekah Kane

Digital Marketer

Action plan

Bonnet wanted more organic exposure, but they also needed to convert visitors into installs and subscriptions. So we prioritized bottom-funnel keyword structures and built content that would keep visitors engaged and move them to install. This work also required Bonnet to restructure parts of their website and create new pages, so we gave their development team detailed instructions to get the technical work right.

Once bottom-funnel search intent was covered, we moved to informational blog content to build topical authority, brand awareness, and organic traffic. Blog topics were prioritized by conversion estimates: content with a higher chance of converting new customers went first. Bonnet had no blog section yet, so we also handed their developers the best practices for implementing one.

Finally, we optimized off-page SEO. We published content on websites with high domain authority and relevance to the EV niche to raise Bonnet's domain rating, which helped our content rank higher and faster for target keywords. Our full approach is on our off-page SEO services page.

Keyword research

Our Head of SEO ran a deep dive in Ahrefs to find bottom-funnel keywords worth targeting. We quickly landed on the "electric car charging + location" structure. These keywords (see image below) had strong intent, high search volume, and relatively low ranking difficulty. That combination fit the action plan perfectly and gave us the best chance of driving installs and subscriptions quickly.

For blog content, we found a range of middle-funnel topics and marked them second in priority. Content for these pages would start right after we finished the bottom-funnel topics above. Topics like "London hotels with electric car charging" and "London malls with electric car charging" were tailor-made for listicles such as "Top Ten Hotels With Electric Car Charging."

We also found search intent around free electric car charging. It was less of a priority given the lower buying intent, but we knew we could rank highly for these terms by building a UK map of free charging points. It was unlikely to drive installs directly, but the high search volume made it strong for brand awareness and topical authority.

Technical work

Before writing content, we fixed technical issues that could hold back rankings. To avoid overwhelming Bonnet's developers, we drip-fed technical tasks starting with the highest priority. The first document we handed over covered the must-fixes before any SEO work began. A summary of those tasks:

• Add meta titles and descriptions to existing content

Bonnet had not added meta titles and descriptions to many of the existing pages on their site. These are important for getting pages indexed and ranked on Google. We listed every URL with the issue and asked Bonnet to write meta titles and descriptions for each. This kind of foundational cleanup is core to our technical SEO work.

We also gave guidance on what makes a good meta description by comparing bad and good examples with explanations. Common mistakes include no call to action, no emotional pull, and stuffing with long-tail keywords.

• Fix 404 links and delete pages that are no longer needed

A few of Bonnet's pages returned 404 errors, which meant they could not generate organic traffic. We listed those URLs and asked Bonnet's development team to fix the implementation so Google could index the pages.

Bottom-funnel content

On every bottom-funnel page that followed an "EV charging station + location" keyword structure, we added a map of all charging station locations at the top. This was the best way to fulfill search intent: Google would see visitors engaging and spending time on the page, and reward it with a higher ranking.

Below the map, we added a section promoting Bonnet's app to convert visitors into installs and subscriptions. Placing it high on the page raised the chance that visitors would read it and learn about the product. Most visitors were qualified, since the intent of the search term implied they owned an electric vehicle and many did not know a single-app charging and payment solution existed.

The rest of each page covered owning and charging a vehicle in that location: the history of EVs there, new charging stations being installed, upcoming emissions legislation, and other relevant detail. Giving visitors a full overview of EV plans for a specific location helped us fulfill search intent and rank for the target and associated keywords.

Every page also included a conversion block for downloading the app.

Backlinks

Offsite SEO matters for building trust with Google. The more third-party sites in your niche that refer to you, the better your chance of ranking for target keywords. For Bonnet, we needed new backlinks from publishers with high domain authority across the car, EV, and technology niches. We reached out to relevant publishers and offered to write an article for their site with a link back to Bonnet. Because we have relationships with thousands of publishers across many industries, we could win high-authority, niche-specific backlinks quickly. See how we run this on our link building page.

Over ten months of working with Bonnet in 2023, this work earned 60 new backlinks (not counting organic backlinks). Bonnet's domain rating rose from 38 to 44, a signal that the work had a clear, positive impact on the site's trustworthiness.

Results

After ten months of working with Bonnet in 2023, every SEO metric moved sharply upward. Here is a summary of the key results.

Organic traffic

• Organic traffic increased from 1,193 to 16,398

Organic keywords

• Organic keyword rankings in positions 1-3 increased from 7 to 187

• Organic keyword rankings in positions 4-10 increased from 11 to 919

Organic traffic value

• Organic traffic value increased from $272 to $10,411

Referring domains

• Referring domains increased from 332 to 498
• Domain rating increased from 38 to 44

New positions for bottom-funnel keywords

• We started ranking for a range of bottom-funnel keywords relevant to charging apps, charging networks, and charging point locations.

Key takeaways

1. Lead with bottom-funnel intent when the goal is installs, not just traffic. Ranking first for terms like "best ev charging app" put Bonnet in front of qualified EV owners ready to act, which is the core of our B2B SaaS SEO approach.
2. Fix the technical foundation before scaling content. Adding missing meta titles and descriptions and clearing 404 errors let Google index and rank the pages we then built. See our technical SEO work.
3. Pair onsite content with high-authority backlinks to compound results. Bonnet's domain rating went from 38 to 44 and referring domains from 332 to 498, which helped new pages rank faster.

Want organic growth like Bonnet's for your app or SaaS? Book a call and we will map out the path.