EssayGrader is an AI-powered essay grading platform designed for teachers and educators. Their innovative tool leverages artificial intelligence to provide detailed, constructive feedback on student essays, saving teachers hours of grading time while maintaining high-quality, personalized feedback. Built specifically for K-12 and higher education instructors, EssayGrader helps educators focus more on teaching and less on administrative work while providing students with faster, more comprehensive feedback on their writing.

The Challenge

When EssayGrader came to us, they had achieved initial traction through cold outreach and in-person events at education conferences. However, their growth was constrained by low organic visibility and heavy reliance on paid advertising. With only around 3,000 monthly organic visitors, they were invisible for the high-intent search queries that teachers were using to find essay grading solutions.

Then, just 1-2 months into our engagement, a crisis emerged. A competitor launched a copycat website with a nearly identical domain name and began aggressively targeting EssayGrader's branded and non-branded keywords. Within weeks, this untrustworthy competitor was outranking EssayGrader for their own brand name and dominating positions 1-3 for category terms while EssayGrader fell to page two.

The damage extended beyond search rankings. Cold outreach campaigns and conference follow-ups were being undermined as leads would search for EssayGrader, land on the competitor's low-quality site, and lose trust in what they thought was the legitimate product. The copycat was actively sabotaging EssayGrader's business development efforts across multiple channels.

We set a target of 25% growth within 90 days, but the copycat situation demanded we move faster and more aggressively than originally planned. In under a year, we grew EssayGrader from 3,000 to over 77,000 monthly organic visitors while completely neutralizing the competitive threat.

The Strategy

We built an aggressive SEO strategy designed to reclaim brand dominance and establish category authority. This required comprehensive on-page optimization across their homepage, product pages, feature documentation, and educational content, paired with an intensive backlink campaign to rapidly build domain authority and outpace the copycat competitor.

The approach extended well beyond traditional SEO. We implemented sophisticated LLM optimization techniques targeting AI search engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. Our content performs exceptionally in Google, creating the foundation for visibility. We then apply specialized strategies that position EssayGrader prominently when educators query AI assistants for grading solutions, feedback tools, or teaching resources.

To combat the copycat, we executed a multi-front strategy. We aggressively built high-quality backlinks to establish EssayGrader's domain authority, growing their domain rating from 21 to 38 through strategic outreach and naturally earned links from authoritative education sites. We created comprehensive content that established topical authority across essay grading, teacher feedback, and education technology topics. The quality and depth consistently exceeded both the copycat's content and established competitors.

We also executed a competitive displacement strategy, systematically targeting competitor brand keywords. We created detailed comparison and alternative pages, including an "alternatives" post targeting Magic School AI that now generates over 5,000 visits per month on its own. We secured top positions (1-5) for keywords like "feedback for teachers," "constructive criticism examples," and numerous competitor brand terms.

The content strategy focused on providing genuine value to educators rather than just chasing rankings. Every piece addressed real teacher pain points around grading time, feedback quality, and student engagement. This authenticity translated into both strong search performance and natural backlinks from education blogs, teacher communities, and EdTech publications.

Throughout the engagement, we provide a custom automated reporting dashboard to all of our clients. This dashboard updates every 12 hours using the Google Search Console API, giving EssayGrader real-time visibility into their competitive positioning, backlink growth, content performance, and rankings across both traditional search and AI search engines.

The Results

In under a year, we grew EssayGrader from approximately 3,000 monthly organic visitors to over 77,000 monthly visitors, representing a 2,467% increase in organic traffic.

Key metrics:

• 2,467% increase in organic traffic

• From ~3,000 to 77,000+ monthly organic visitors

• Domain rating growth from 21 to 38 through backlink building

• Rankings in positions 1-5 for competitor keywords

• Magic School AI alternatives blog post generates 5,000+ visits/month alone

• Top rankings for "feedback for teachers," "constructive criticism examples," and related terms on Google and Bing results

• Successfully reclaimed brand dominance from copycat competitor

• SEO became primary customer acquisition channel, reducing paid ad and cold outreach dependency

Beyond the raw traffic numbers, we successfully neutralized the copycat competitor threat. EssayGrader now dominates their own brand searches and ranks ahead of the copycat across virtually all target keywords. The domain authority gap (38 vs. the competitor's significantly lower rating) makes it nearly impossible for the copycat to compete going forward.

The competitive displacement strategy proved equally successful. By ranking for competitor brand keywords and creating compelling alternatives content, EssayGrader now intercepts teachers searching for other solutions and presents a superior option at the exact moment they're evaluating tools.

Here's a review from Chan Yerneni, the co-founder of EssayGrader, about his experience working with us:

Future Growth Trajectory

EssayGrader's investment in SEO and LLM optimization creates a strategic moat as education search behavior evolves. Teachers increasingly use ChatGPT and Claude for teaching resources and tool recommendations. EssayGrader's visibility across these platforms ensures they capture demand regardless of how educators search for solutions.

The copycat competitor is now effectively neutralized, unable to compete with EssayGrader's domain authority, content quality, or search visibility. The threat that once undermined cold outreach and business development has been transformed into a competitive advantage.