As a digital marketing agency that has worked with hundreds of clients over more than a decade, we have seen that SEO strategies lead to lasting improvements in search results. However, there isn’t one single SEO strategy that leads to quick results and applies to everyone. SEO strategies have to be tailored to fit the needs of the business and the current state of the company’s website, online profiles, and authority. The real experts in search engine marketing have a toolkit of different SEO activities and optimizations and know how to apply them in different scenarios. This skill is sharpened through continued practice by working with clients of different sizes and industries.
Let’s take a look at how we recently improved organic traffic for one client to see how our SEO team customized their efforts to make a significant difference in just one quarter.
Does SEO Work?
People still ask us, “Does SEO work?” Yes, it absolutely does. The biggest companies in the world wouldn’t be investing hundreds of thousands of dollars into it if it didn’t! The more important question is, “How can SEO work for you?” When looking for the answer to this question, it’s important to look to experts who have demonstrated results and model your tactics off theirs. Once you’ve gotten started with SEO , you can begin to implement next-level strategies. In this article, we will touch on how analyzing improving user experience, combining SEO and content marketing, and utilizing silo analyses can lead to significant improvements in organic website traffic, as we have seen for our clients.
Why is Content Marketing Important?
Have you heard, “Content is king”? Most people have…but WHY do people say that content is the king? Because the right content helps your website and important pages in it to rank higher in search engine result pages. This is primarily because search engines read mostly text content on your site’s pages and make decisions on what keywords those pages should rank for. Since Google search and other search engines’ primary goal is to show relevant content in search engine results, it is absolutely crucial that the text content of your site includes all the relevant keywords that you want to appear for. Beyond simply including keywords, having an abundance of valuable content on your site about related topics is of benefit to your site, as it gives search algorithms even more incentive to show your site in search results.
But does this content strategy actually lead to results? Let’s dive into a SEO client case study that showed a 43% increase in quarter-over-quarter organic traffic, from this specific content marketing focus.
How We Increased Organic Traffic 43% QoQ
To provide some context, this specific client operates in a extremely niche B2B industry around office space improvement. When the client began working with us, they did not have any blog posts on their website and they had not focused their marketing efforts on SEO. Despite this starting point, our team made quick work to get the client site caught up to best practices, evaluating and addressing aspects of a good SEO foundation like mobile optimization, keyword research, structured data, and more. While these changes are essential to build a strong foundation for growth, much of the actual growth in traffic and conversions comes from the content marketing work that follows. The following are some of the primary actions and tactics that our team of digital marketing experts took to generate significantly more traffic to the site in just one quarter.
Identify Money Pages – Silo Analysis
The very first step in any successful content marketing strategy is mapping out the structure of the site and identifying what pages on the site are “pillar pages.” These are the main pages of the site, often the products/services pages or primary pages you want users to visit. Along with these primary pages, it is important to identify supporting pages (usually content pieces) that are relevant to the pillar page, would draw users to the site, and then could direct those users back to the pillar page. As an example, if the pillar page was a product page for a pizza oven, supporting pages could be content pages that discuss the cost of a pizza oven or the best ways to clean a pizza oven, etc. If those content pieces don’t exist currently, the topics for them will need to be created, either through looking at successful competitor content or high-ranking content in organic search. In mapping out this structure and drafting new ideas for supporting content pieces, our team began the SEO campaign with an idea of what pages were the primary focus and what quality content still needed to be created.
Optimize On-Page Content of Primary Web Pages
Once the primary pages were identified, they needed to be optimized. This involved reviewing existing content for keyword implementation, internal linking, image alt text, and more to ensure the SEO value of those pages was the highest it could be. In addition, if our team believed there were content sections missing within those main pages, we added in the content we believed necessary to increase the likelihood of organic traffic growth.
Create Topical Authority Through Relevant Content Marketing
As laid out in the silo analysis (mapping of the content structure), new content pieces and blog posts need to be created to support the pillar pages. Our SEO team did a thorough review of related content already ranking well when drafting a list of content topics. After creating the list, our team began outlining the content topics by each individual blog post with specific SEO guidelines, so the client team could easily begin to create content. With this combined effort, 6 new blog posts were posted in the first quarter of 2023 alone, all of which were highly relevant to the client’s target audiences. With each new blog post, search engines gained further insight into what the client’s site was about (through proper keyword research and implementation) and had more valuable content that incentivized them to direct organic traffic to these posts and the site overall.
Leverage Internal Linking for Search Engine Optimization
With several new pieces of quality content posted on the site and the pillar pages fully optimized, it was time for the glue that brought it all together. Each pillar page was linked to the supporting page, while each supporting blog post under the pillar was linked to each other. Every link also utilized strategic anchor text that included target keywords, a crucial factor in improving page ranking in search results for those keywords. In connecting each of these pages, search engines and users could better understand which pages were related, helping to create topical authority for the site and provide better user experience.
Monitor Performance and Adjust SEO Content Strategy
Though all these changes are important parts of a strong SEO strategy, they are just tools. Your overall strategy needs to be adjusted based on what the data is showing. As our team evaluated the wide range of performance data across Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and third-party tools, we were able to see what content pieces were working, which weren’t, and where there was room for improvement. Several blog posts and pages were optimized again if they weren’t appearing for certain terms or if user engagement metrics were poor. In this way the site was able to maximize organic traffic with current content, while there still was room to gain more traffic with the addition of more quality content.
Become an SEO Case Study – Work with Our SEO Team!
The previous case study is only one of the many SEO case studies and client successes that our expert team has had. But we aren’t satisfied! We would love to help you achieve your organic search goals, increase organic traffic, and rank higher while feeling confident that your digital marketing is led by experts who always keep your business goals in mind. Our SEO strategies are always improving and ever-evolving with industry changes.
Our agency also offers paid media services , website optimization , social media management , and more to take you and your organization to the next level. If you want to become an SEO success story like this one, contact our team today to get more information on how you can receive a free digital marketing audit .
