How Strategic SEO Helped MTN Sense 3X Its Organic Traffic in a Niche Market
Wellington’s SEO audit didn’t just give me a list of things to fix—it gave me a blueprint to grow.
He spotted things no automated audit ever could.
— Mark Smiley, Founder of MTN Sense, IFMGA Mountain Guide
MTN Sense
MTN Sense is a niche online platform led by Mark Smiley, an IFMGA-certified mountain guide, filmmaker, and educator with a mission to make mountain education more accessible. MTN Sense offers expert-led online courses on avalanche safety, crevasse rescue, alpinism, and backcountry skiing—targeting adventurers, outdoor enthusiasts, and even aspiring mountain professionals. Despite the authority and unique content, the website struggled to rank or gain visibility on search engines.
⚠️ The Challenges
When I first analyzed MTN Sense, the problems were subtle but critical:
Low organic traffic, with the main branded keyword “Mountain Sense” generating only ~88 visits per month.
Content duplication: Identical or near-identical course pages hosted both on Webflow and Teachable subdomains.
Wasted crawl budget: Google was indexing course preview pages with little or no useful content.
Missed branding opportunity: “Mark Smiley” had ~210 monthly searches but was barely mentioned across the site’s metadata.
Lack of keyword targeting: Pages were not optimized for the high-intent search terms like “avalanche course,” “crevasse rescue,” or “alpinism online training.”
Conversion flow split: Discounts and checkout optimizations worked only on outdated Teachable pages, not on the updated Webflow site.
Analytics chaos: GA4 was not fully configured, and Search Console lacked essential setup for the subdomain.
💡 The Process
Identified content redundancies, UX issues, and indexation problems using GSC, Screaming Frog, and Ahrefs.
Pinpointed underperforming course pages on Teachable subdomain and mapped them to the main site.
Discovered high-opportunity long-tail keywords: “online avalanche course,” “avalanche education for skiers,” “crevasse rescue tutorial,” and “climb Denali guide.”
Noticed strong branded demand for Mark Smiley—positioned his name prominently across pages, meta descriptions, and structured data.
Rewrote and optimized 5 key pages with strategic keyword placement (title, H1-H3, paragraphs, ALT tags).
Cleaned up title tags and crafted compelling meta descriptions using click-through psychology.
Recommended embedding course promo videos on YouTube for SEO leverage and social sharing.
Guided 301 redirects of low-performing duplicates (e.g.,
courses.mtnsense.com→www.mtnsense.com).
Updated the
robots.txtand noindex meta tags for non-content pages like course previews and thank-you pages.Removed outdated blog comment sections that were attracting spammy backlinks.
Highlighted Mark as the brand by incorporating schema markup (person + organization), author bio sections, and a stronger personal brand identity.
Suggested acquiring the domain marksmiley.com to future-proof brand visibility and protect name searches.
Delivered a Notion dashboard with keyword ideas for TikTok, Instagram Reels, and blog content.
Taught Mark how to access premium SEO tools for under $10/month (group license strategies), saving him over $500/year.
🏆 Results Achieved
In just a few weeks after implementation:
- Mark’s name started appearing as a top-3 result in search engines for branded queries.
- Pages targeting “avalanche course” and “crevasse rescue” began gaining impressions and early conversions.
Organic traffic tripled, even with no new content published—just by fixing what was already there.
The bounce rate dropped due to better navigation, and internal linking improved crawl depth.
Testimonial
“Wellington’s SEO audit didn’t just give me a list of things to fix—it gave me a blueprint to grow.
He spotted things no automated audit ever could.
For example, he realized people were Googling my name and not finding my site. That alone made a huge difference.
His understanding of the outdoor education niche, marketing psychology, and keyword strategy made this one of the best investments I’ve made.
Now, I’m seeing more traffic, better conversion flow, and I finally understand how to grow strategically.”
— Mark Smiley, Founder of MTN Sense, IFMGA Mountain Guide
Get In Touch
✉ hello@wduarte.online