---
title: "Crowd Cow Case Study — Rambling Media"
url: https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/crowd-cow
description: "Rich, original recipe content paired with in-house how-to-cook video, published into hub-and-spoke meat category pages built to capture fan-out cooking queries."
lang: en
---

Case Study — Content SEO

Non-brand organic search up 63% year over year — 76.8K to 125K clicks.

Non-brand organic search clicks

Prior year

76.8K

Non-brand clicks, trailing 3 months

Year over year

63%

+48K clicks in Q4

After the content program

125K

Non-brand clicks, trailing 3 months

Rich, original recipe content paired with in-house how-to-cook video, published into hub-and-spoke meat category pages built to capture fan-out cooking queries.

## Milestone Timeline

1. 77K
   Non-brand clicks
   Prior year baseline
2. 1 category
   Ranking depth: Wagyu only
   Starting point
3. 4 hubs
   Beef, pork, chicken, seafood
   Mid 2020 rollout
4. 125K
   Non-brand clicks
   Q4 2020

### Non-brand organic clicks, trailing 3 months

Clicks (thousands)

A year before this program, Crowd Cow essentially ranked for Wagyu and a handful of beef long-tails. Everything else — pork, chicken, turkey, seafood — was invisible in search even though the catalog was already there.

This was never a programmatic play. Each recipe was written to be cooked from, with real directions and recipe schema, and paired with a how-to-cook video shot in house so the page answered the query in both formats.

Those assets were published into hub-and-spoke category pages: a hub per meat category, sub-hubs beneath it, recipe and how-to spokes fanning out across every phrasing of the same question, and links running down to the product pages that take the order.

The result was a search footprint that grew by category rather than by post — and lower-funnel wins on buy-intent terms once the same discipline reached the product category pages.

## Search performance

Trailing 3 months vs the same window a year earlier

125K

Total clicks

From 76.8K

7.85M

Total impressions

From 3.61M

1.6%

Average CTR

Larger query set

11.4

Average position

From 14.5 — lower is better

Work with us

## The same playbook, as a service

Video paired to the page it belongs on, and category content built to catch demand that already exists. We do the shooting and the search side, and they work better bought together — or you can take the content plan and run it in-house.

Video Production: https://ramblingmedia.com/services/video-production

Programmatic SEO: https://ramblingmedia.com/services/programmatic-seo

Content Strategy Consulting: https://ramblingmedia.com/services/content-strategy-consulting

## Video Production

Two paid social campaigns concepted, written, directed and edited in house — the creative half of the same engagement.

Image: Drone shot from the Grillville campaign shoot for Crowd Cow (https://ramblingmedia.com/__l5e/assets-v1/3451b439-9400-4117-a483-bb8be8b57be4/GrillvilleDrone-1024x597.png)

Top-of-funnel brand campaign

### Grillville

A top-of-funnel spot built to introduce the brand to cold audiences. The distribution strategy came first — paid social plus on-site integration — with audience targeting planned alongside the media buyers, then script, storyboard, casting, direction and edit before the spot went live.

- Script and rough storyboard before the shoot
- Cast and directed on location with a second camera operator
- Cut for social placements and on-site integration
- Became the cheapest ad the brand had run on Facebook

$0.01

Cost per view

Facebook

2%

Click-through rate

And above

200K

Added to retargeting funnel

First two weeks of the run

$0.46

Cost per product view

New top-of-funnel benchmark

Image: Still from the Crowd Cow holiday gifting shoot (https://ramblingmedia.com/__l5e/assets-v1/6da9c198-4aa3-4156-a32b-c8a1d106a869/CrowdCowHoliday_8879-scaled-r805jhv2a8let624recfr8le8cebne2c0o7o7ob0gk.webp)

Corporate gift note readings

### Holiday gifting campaign

The 2020 holiday gifting push: concept, scripts, direction and edit for a set of gift note reading spots plus a midnight snack piece. The readings were cut into 10 to 15 second variants and run head to head on social, and the fireplace and Elf gift note cuts came out on top on engagement and click-through.

- Gift note readings cut into 10-15 second social variants
- Head-to-head creative testing across social channels
- Fireplace and Elf gift note cuts won on engagement and CTR
- Traffic pointed at the corporate gifting landing page

2%

Click-through rate

Just under, into the gifting page

2

Spots produced

Gift note readings and midnight snack

2

Winning cuts

Fireplace and Elf gift notes

15s

Variant length

10-15 second social cuts

Handled in house

Concept Distribution strategy Script Storyboard Casting Direction On-location shoot Edit

## Category Breakout

### Category keyword growth

Clicks and average position, trailing period vs the year before

- Turkey
  Position 28.2 → 5.8
  Before
  199
  After
  7,830
- Chicken
  Position 28.2 → 15.4
  Before
  557
  After
  3,320
- Steak
  Position 16.6 → 14.6
  Before
  9,190
  After
  13,100
- Pork
  Position 40.1 → 18.4
  Before
  87
  After
  585
- Seafood
  Position 80.0 → 44.4
  Before
  1
  After
  108

## Hub & Spoke Architecture

Category hub Seafood

Sub-hubs

- Fish
- Shellfish
- Salmon

How-to & recipes

- How to eat Dungeness crab
- How to grill king crab
- Wild caught vs farm raised

Product pages

- Icelandic arctic char
- Wild Alaskan black cod
- Copper River coho salmon

Every category hub links down to sub-hubs, recipe and how-to spokes, then across to the product pages that convert.

### Fan-out query capture

One how-to asset, dozens of phrasings — position before and after

- thawing a turkey #69.3 #4.2
- how to thaw a turkey #34.3 #4.8
- thaw frozen turkey #84.4 #3.4
- defrost turkey #57.6 #4.4
- bacon wrapped turkey tenderloin Unranked #1.5
- defrosting a turkey #58.7 #3.6
- how to defrost a turkey #83.0 #5.6
- how long to thaw a turkey #93.7 #6.9

### Video paired to the page

How-to videos shot in house and published onto the matching recipe page — views in the trailing period

- How to Cook Frozen Burger Patties 13,679 viewsApr 2020
- How To Cook Top Sirloin 12,768 viewsMar 2020
- How to Cook TriTip Steak 9,630 viewsApr 2020
- How to Cook Bavette Steak 4,350 viewsApr 2020
- How to Cook Chuck Eye Steak 2,727 viewsMar 2020
- How to Cook a Flat Iron Steak 2,542 viewsApr 2020
- How to Cook Chuck Roast 1,736 viewsApr 2020
- How to Cook Skirt Steak 1,476 viewsApr 2020

## Execution Roadmap

1. 01
   ### Category hub architecture
   Build the hub-and-spoke skeleton so every meat category has a page worth ranking.
   - Category and sub-category hub pages
   - Interlinking hierarchy down to product pages
   - Meta data and URL structure per category
   - Keyword mapping by category, not by post
2. 02
   ### Recipe content + video
   Write genuinely useful recipes with real directions, then shoot the video that belongs on the same URL.
   - Original recipe copy with full directions
   - Recipe schema wrapped around the content
   - In-house how-to-cook video per cut
   - Video embedded on the ranking page
3. 03
   ### Fan-out expansion
   Extend each how-to asset to cover the full family of phrasings people actually type.
   - Question and how-long variants
   - Seasonal cooking demand (turkey, holiday roasts)
   - Internal links from hubs into each how-to
   - Rich result eligibility through schema
4. 04
   ### Lower-funnel optimization
   Push the same discipline down to product and buy-intent pages.
   - Manually built product category pages
   - Buy-intent meta data and URLs
   - Backlinks from category hubs to product pages
   - Reviews and ratings for star results

## Growth Drivers

### Unique recipe content

Recipes written to actually be cooked from — full directions, ingredients and cooking basics, not thin blog filler.

### Video on the ranking page

How-to-cook video shot in house and placed on the same URL as the recipe, lifting engagement and search visibility together.

### Hub-and-spoke interlinking

Category hubs feeding sub-hubs, recipes and product pages, so authority flows to the pages that convert.

### Recipe schema

Structured recipe markup making the pages eligible for rich results and richer SERP real estate.

## Key Insights

- Non-brand organic clicks grew 63% year over year, adding 48K clicks in Q4 alone.
- Impressions more than doubled from 3.61M to 7.85M as category coverage widened.
- Turkey queries went from 199 clicks at position 28.2 to 7.83K clicks at position 5.8.
- Buy-intent category pages ranked too: Copper River salmon moved from position 25.3 to 7.2.

## More Case Studies

Programmatic SEO

### Career Vault

From 10K to 220K monthly organic traffic in eight months.
https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/career-vault

Search Growth

### Cruise Parking

From a standing start to 31.5K clicks and 2.04M impressions.
https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/cruise-parking

Programmatic SEO

### WAY

Local-intent programmatic pages built at scale across gas, parking, car wash and insurance.
https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/way

Startup Launch

### MaineLove

Zero to top-5 for "canned water" in year one — non-brand search doubled in the final six months.
https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/mainelove

SEO & ASO

### Big Fish Games

Organic traffic +50% year over year, app installs +35% — and a 1M+ pre-registration launch.
https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/big-fish-games

Programmatic SEO

### VRAI

Faceted jewelry pages, original content and a review engine built for high-intent search.
https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/vrai

Short-Term Rental Marketing

### Arnold Haven

Bought the house, ran the remodel, built the marketing — a Superhost listing running three-plus years on big-group pricing, not high occupancy.
https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/short-term-rental

Talk about your growth plan (https://ramblingmedia.com/contact)

## Structured data

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    "https://x.com/RamblingMedia",
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  ],
  "slogan": "Where Stories Roam",
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  "address": {
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    "streetAddress": "100 N Howard St",
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```