Why Wine Folly Dominates Organic SEO: A Content Teardown — Peter Alig

Disclaimer: Wine Folly is not and has never been a client of Alignment Wine Marketing.

Wouldn’t it be great if a Google search for “chardonnay” consistently resulted in your wine appearing first in results — or at least on the first page?

Sure, it wouldn’t solve all your marketing problems, but at least you’d drive site traffic without spending tons of money on paid ads.

As of this writing, Wine Folly holds the top spot for “chardonnay,” and they aren’t even a winery. In this first edition of Corks and Clicks, I’ll explain why this Wine Folly article sits atop Google Search for “chardonnay.”

A quick caveat: After reading this article, you won’t have the recipe for dethroning Wine Folly from its top spot for “chardonnay.” If that’s your goal, it will take years. But you will take away best practices that will help you rank for keywords that elevate your brand in Google Search.

Who’s Wine Folly?

Launched by Madeline Puckette in 2011, Wine Folly’s mission is to make wine education fun and accessible for beginners, without a hint of snobbery.

They started with online guides on how to taste, pair food and wine, and understand major wine regions and grape varieties. Videos soon appeared, alongside interactive courses.

Wine Folly now dominates organic search for many coveted wine-related seed keywords because three pillars hold up their content strategy. (More on keywords in a moment.)

They make helpfulness the core of their content strategy.
They grasp the basics of organic SEO and UX.
They share content widely to encourage backlinks and reach new wine lovers.

Today, Wine Folly is monetizing their massive organic reach and loyal following with a wine club, wine maps, sway, and more.

“Chardonnay” as a Seed Keyword

At its most basic, search engine optimization (SEO) starts with seed keywords. These are short phrases, rarely more than two words, that lay the foundation for Google Search queries.

Take “chardonnay.” By itself it doesn’t signal to Google whether you want to buy a bottle of chardonnay, simply learn more about it, or both. You’ll need to enter more words to get the most relevant and helpful content. “Buy buttery chardonnay” and “Is chardonnay a dry white wine?” — will each give you more specific search results. These two phrases are “long-tail” keywords.

Ranking for Seed Keywords in Google Search

It’s more difficult to rank in Google Search’s top ten for popular seed keywords than for long-tail keywords.

The main reason? Competition. Trying to rank first for a popular seed keyword in SEO is like taking on Amazon in the ecommerce space. It would take enormous effort to grab even a slice of Amazon’s market share.

Sites that rank on Google’s first page for seed keywords like “chardonnay” have spent years creating high-quality content around topics related to that keyword. And because users who search for just “chardonnay” have different search intents, Google wants to elevate a site that can satisfy as many needs as possible.

Long-tail keywords like “Is chardonnay a dry white wine?” are less competitive because fewer users search for them and search intent is clearly informational. It would be similar to competing with the corner hardware store rather than Amazon.

An authoritative article on chardonnay’s dryness won’t take as long to rank well in Google Search. But again, unless you cover other chardonnay-related topics, Google won’t consider your site an authority on chardonnay as a whole.

SEO performance tools like Ahrefs illustrate this difference in keyword difficulty. Here’s Ahrefs’s report on “chardonnay”:

With almost 200,000 global searches per month for the keyword, the demand for helpful content is high. This demand partially explains why it’s “hard” to rank in the top ten for the seed keyword. (I’ll get to the other reasons in a moment.)

But the more focused long-tail keyword (“is chardonnay a dry white wine?”) is a much easier lift. Look at the much lower global search volume and keyword difficulty score.

A quick note:

Wine Folly isn’t the top-ranking result for the long-tail keyword. In organic SEO a site doesn’t have to cover or rank well for every topic related to a seed keyword to rank first for that keyword.

Understanding Google Search’s Algorithm

Wine Folly’s solid core article on chardonnay that satisfies Google’s algorithm for helpful or relevant content, and it links to other relevant articles they’ve created.

The challenge and opportunity for content creators is Google only gives general guidelines for satisfying the algorithm. There is no blueprint. And this isn’t a bad thing. If the blueprint were public, there would be an epidemic of sameness in search results.

In August 2022, Google rolled out its first Helpful Content Update. In its supporting documentation, among other things, Google lists four criteria that sets helpful content apart.

Experience. Does the content creator have first-hand knowledge of the topic?
Expertise. Does the content creator have a successful track record working in or writing about the topic
Authoritativeness. Is the content of the page and site presented in a way that encourages readers to take it seriously?
Trustworthiness. Is the information on the page “accurate, honest, safe, and reliable”? In other words, does the information “work” in the lives of those who take it seriously?

So how did WineFolly meet each of these conditions, often known as EEAT? Keep reading.

Explaining Wine Folly’s “Chardonnay” Organic SEO Dominance

Wine Folly’s “ownership” of the seed keyword “chardonnay” is the result of a successful content strategy. They’ve mastered on-site or on-page SEO, but they also understand the importance of content distribution. Here’s a rundown of their strategy’s building blocks.

Overall page experience

Google states that its “core ranking systems look to reward content that provides a good page experience.” By “reward,” Google means elevate in search rankings. Wine Folly wouldn’t be at the top for “chardonnay” unless their core article for this keyword checked all the boxes.

One of the questions Google asks site owners trying to create good page experiences is “How easily can visitors navigate to or locate the main content of your pages?” A quick scan of the Wine Folly “chardonnay” article reveals how they’ve answered this question.

✅ Wine Folly’s article is a comprehensive introduction to the topic, so they’ve included a table of contents to help readers navigate to sections that interest them. (Tables of content are also great places to stick relevant secondary keywords.)

✅ Most of the paragraphs are short (2-3 sentences). Strategically placed bullet points and subheadlines help make the article easy to skim.

✅ Wine Folly uses playful but — here’s that word again, helpful — images throughout the text. So if a reader doesn’t want to skim the text, they can get the article’s gist from the images.

✅ The article displays perfectly on mobile and desktop. This element of the page experience is table stakes today, but Google clearly mentions mobile optimization as a “reward” criteria.

✅ Wine Folly does use display ads in the article, but they don’t “interfere with the main content.” This is another Google reward criteria.

Page experience, though, is only part of the battle. Wine Folly’s next hurdle is convincing readers (and Google) that its well-structured content answers the questions readers bring to it.

Subject expertise

Is Wine Folly’s top-ranking “chardonnay” article the best introduction to the subject available online? Many wine professionals might say no. But Google cares more about how — and how many — readers interact with a piece of content.

And Wine Folly’s audience has spoken.

Here’s just a few things Wine Folly has done to showcase their authority on wine in general and chardonnay in particular. Not all of them relate to what happens on the page itself.

The author of the “chardonnay” article is Christine Marsiglio, a Master of Wine. The MW exam is notoriously difficult, so difficult that only a few hundred people globally have passed it. So Christine probably knows a thing or two about chardonnay.
Wine Folly has spent more than a decade creating wine content. Google has spent that same amount of time indexing Wine Folly’s content, and now recognizes them as an authority on this niche subject.
Madeline Puckette, Wine Folly’s founder, was one of the wine experts featured in the popular 2016 film Somm: Into the Bottle. This exposure undoubtedly drove thousands of wine lovers to search Google for Wine Folly content. This surge in interest does not go unnoticed by Google.

But an even more important sign of site authority and trustworthiness, one that Google admits plays a role in rankings, is backlinks.

SEO Backlinks

Backlinks are links from one site page to an external site. To Google, the fact that I link to Wine Folly in this article is a sign of Wine Folly’s authority. Google then credits Wine Folly with a backlink.

And Wine Folly has lots of them. SEO monitoring tool Ahrefs estimates that Wine Folly’s “chardonnay” article has 237 backlinks.

One way Wine Folly attracts both site traffic and backlinks is sharing their content across major social media networks. Imagine having this amount of reach:

Instagram: 427K followers
LinkedIn: 45K followers
Pinterest: 51.9K followers
X: 58.8K followers
Youtube: 95.1K followers

Keep in mind they’ve had years to build these followings, and these followings are the result of their content resonating with their target audiences.

Backlinks result when a follower notices an article while scrolling their feed and links to it from their site. There’s other ways to build backlinks, but content distribution is a great place to start.

Also keep in mind that Google doesn’t value all backlinks the same way. If you’re starting a wine blog and want to link to a Wine Folly article, your backlink will mean less than a link coming from the New York Times. The higher the authority of the referring site, the more valuable the backlink and the greater the impact on search rankings.

Secondary keywords

When an article ranks well for a seed keyword like “chardonnay,” it usually ranks well for secondary, or related, keywords. An article ranking for multiple keywords sees much more organic traffic than an article ranking for one keyword only.

Ahrefs reports that Wine Folly’s “chardonnay” article ranks for close to 300 keywords. Wine Folly specifically targets many of them, while Google surfaces others that relate to the article’s content.

One secondary keyword, “what does chardonnay taste like,” sees 900 searches per month. When a user searches for that phrase, Wine Folly’s article appears third in Google search results.

“What does chardonnay taste like” does not appear word for word in Wine Folly’s article. But Google’s algorithm is smart enough to associate it with the article headers “Primary Flavors” and “Taste Profile.”

Secondary keywords also help Google understand what your article is about and who would most benefit from seeing it. “Chardonnay” is such a wide-ranging topic that Google only wants to recommend content that does justice to the subject.

Internal links

Internal links take readers from one page of your site to another. Secondary keywords often serve as the anchor or hyperlinked text for internal links. The linked articles usually go into more depth on subjects covered more lightly in the original article.

Wine Folly’s “chardonnay” article contains six internal links. One of them, with anchor text “malolactic fermentation,” links to Wine Folly’s deep dive on the subject.

And this deep dive — surprise, surprise — ranks second in Google search for the keyword “malolactic fermentation.”

Internal linking is a key part of the popular SEO tactic called “hub and spoke,” which has helped Wine Folly’s content dominate Google Search.

The “hub” article is the article that ranks first for the seed keyword “chardonnay.”
The hub article links to the “spokes” articles, which help Google recognize Wine Folly’s “topical authority” on the topic of chardonnay.

Click on any of Wine Folly’s longer guides, and you’re likely to see the hub-and-spoke model in play.

Wine Folly vs. Wikipedia

Most Google seed keyword searches result in a Wikipedia article appearing first (or close to first). But for “chardonnay,” it’s Wine Folly on top, with Wikipedia in second. It’s worth asking why.

Again, while there are a handful of SEO certainties (backlinks, page experience), Google is often vague about why some articles rank higher than others. Compared to Wine Folly’s article, Wikipedia’s “chardonnay” article has several advantages on paper:

The article is longer and more comprehensive.
It has many more backlinks and internal links.
It ranks for more secondary keywords.
It has a table of contents in a sidebar.
Wikipedia has been around for a decade longer than Wine Folly, so it’s had more time to build out its wine-related content.

Sure, Wikipedia might dethrone Wine Folly for the top spot at any moment. But here’s some reasons why Wine Folly will put up a strong fight:

Wine Folly has a better page experience. Wikipedia’s paragraphs are longer and more difficult to skim.
Wine Folly’s audience is more targeted. They appeal to novice and intermediate wine drinkers who want to learn more without judgment. And they’ve built and maintained that audience through authenticity and social media outreach. Wikipedia’s audience? Anyone who wants to know things.
Wikipedia’s article could have been written by anybody, making its content less trustworthy. Wine Folly’s content is clearly the work of Madeline Puckette and Christine Marsiglio MW.

Granted, there is a sort of vanity to ranking first in Google Search.

If Wine Folly slips to second, it doesn’t mean they’ve done something wrong. Their content will still get noticed. They may just need to update their “chardonnay” article.

Want to Be Like Wine Folly? Start with a Content Strategy.

Sure, you can’t compete with Wine Folly for most wine-related seed keywords. But that doesn’t mean content has no place in your marketing strategy.

Invest in an SEO tool like Ahrefs or Semrush and research long-tail keywords relevant to your wine brand. You might see an opening where a series of articles can put you ahead of the competition in Google Search.

Just be patient. SEO is a long-term marketing play. It took Wine Folly years to dominate Google Search.

Need help assembling your content strategy? Contact me here for support.

Corks and Clicks #1: Why Wine Folly Dominates Organic SEO