From 600 viewers to over 21,000: How This Science Writing Company Instantly Increased Website Visibility Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

Fancy Comma, LLC is a science writing company based in the United States. Fancy Comma provides clients with professional writing and editing services including scientific writing, blog and article writing, and copywriting.

Founded just before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, Fancy Comma needed a content and blog strategy to increase their web presence in the ensuing months. After teaming up with Nidhi Parekh of The Shared Microscope, the company gained a 35x increase in website traffic, going from 600 website visitors over 4 months, to over 21,000 visitors over the next 6 months.

Key Outcomes:

• Fancy Comma’s website enjoyed a 35x increase in website visits
• Fancy Comma developed a website blog and content strategy that helped them stay relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic
• The company received an increased number of business leads from potential clients who were impressed with the COVID-19 blog content and strategy

The Challenge: Establishing a COVID-guided web strategy for a new company to boost its reach and visibility in a digital, remote-only world

Fancy Comma was founded in February 2020, just less than a month before COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic. Once the COVID-19 lockdowns started and the world transitioned to a remote-only way of life, the company realized that they would quickly need a web presence to stay relevant. Fancy Comma was seeking to pivot in the pandemic and boost website reach and visibility by offering informative content regarding COVID-19. 

The Fancy Comma website was established on March 5, 2020, as a skeletal web presence that could help the company pivot as the world grappled with how to respond to the emerging COVID-19 threat. As science writers, Fancy Comma also felt an obligation to help inform people regarding the science of COVID-19. The company relied on Nidhi to create a workable content strategy in the form of blogs and explainer posts about the coronavirus and vaccines in development/deployment.

The Solution: Partner with The Shared Microscope for content strategy, guidance, and blog content 

Fancy Comma partnered with Nidhi Parekh of The Shared Microscope, who provided content strategy and guidance, as well as content writing, regarding all things COVID-19 (www.fancycomma.com/covid-19). With help and guidance from Nidhi and her knack for researching and writing about topics on which the science was constantly evolving, Fancy Comma established the first structured knowledge base regarding the science of COVID-19, including COVID-19 vaccines, which superseded mainstream media coverage of this science by several months.

Nidhi took on the tripartite goals of marketing strategy, blog strategy, and content writing for this fledgling project, which would soon become the cornerstone of the Fancy Comma blog and help brand the company as a leader in explaining science in a useful and accessible way. Nidhi proposed a series of blog articles; worked with Fancy Comma to align the blog content with the company’s mission, goals, and brand; researched and wrote the blog articles; and promoted the articles, which were shared on the web by leading virologists such as Dr. Ian Mackay (known for his Pandemic Swiss Cheese Model), Prof. Akiko Iwasaki, and even the Director of the Wellcome Trust (Jeremy Farrar). Check out some of Nidhi’s work for Fancy Comma here.

We wrote a detailed explanatory article on the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for @fancycomma. Well worth the read! @wellcometrust @JeremyFarrar @Virusnerdette @NicolaSturgeon https://t.co/1Q71g3NDwW

— Nidhi | Freelance Science Writer + Strategist (@TheSharedScope) July 5, 2020

The Result: Increased visibility, increased reach, and increased number of potential business leads through content 

The end result of Nidhi’s efforts was a boost in science knowledge globally, as well as an SEO boost for Fancy Comma. All of the traffic generated by the COVID-19 articles, including backlinks to this novel and uniquely authoritative content, helped Fancy Comma gain visibility on Google, Bing, and other search engines. For a brief period before the vaccines were covered by the national news media, many of Nidhi’s COVID-19 vaccine articles ranked #1 on Bing.

Key Deliverables:

Timely, authoritative COVID-19 strategy and blog content, published months before mainstream media got around to covering the science of COVID-19 vaccines. These deliverables were the cornerstone of the Fancy Comma blog and helped brand the company as a leader in providing science explainers in an accessible manner.

A testimonial from Fancy Comma’s Sheeva Azma:

I worked with Nidhi on a series of blog posts about timely topics in science which are relevant in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Based on my experience working with Nidhi, I can say that she is a true professional with a keen mind for creative projects. She is a talented science writer and illustrator and an absolute joy to work with. Her work is top-notch quality and she has excellent communication skills. She can help take a project from a simple, kind of vague idea to a well-executed content strategy. In working on our collaborative blog posts, I relied heavily on Nidhi’s technically precise science writing, and her ability to digest a large amount of technical information and summarize it in a way that can be understood by a general audience. I feel very grateful to have met Nidhi and look forward to many fruitful collaborations together in the future!