Did you know that investing in SEO is one of the best ways to grow your brand’s reach, leads, and sales organically?
In this SEO case study, we’ll cover our proven SEO strategy and how it helped us grow the traffic to our client’s website manifold.
But why did we leverage SEO, after all?
One of the biggest reasons behind it was the fact that organic traffic is highly targeted. So, if you’re not ranking well for relevant searches, it’s likely that you’re losing out on many conversion opportunities.
That’s why we choose SEO to grow our client’s website traffic. And it paid off, too. In just six months, we drove over 619K visitors to their website.
Want to find out how?
In this SEO case study, we’ve put in every bit of our strategy so that you too can replicate the same and grow your traffic.
Disclaimer: This content contains some affiliate links for which we will earn a commission (at no additional cost to you). This is to ensure that we can keep creating free content for you.
SEO Case Study: The Objectives
Our main goal was to boost the traffic of our client’s website through organic search. Also, we wanted the client to rank for more competitive keywords.
And that’s not all.
We also wanted to rank them for high CPC keywords that could help the client boost their revenue at a later stage.
SEO Case Study: The Challenges
We had to face several challenges while improving our client’s rankings in the SERPs (search engine results pages). We’ll talk about them in this section of this SEO case study.
Let’s get started.
1. Competitive Niche
Our client’s website is in the digital marketing niche, which is one of the most competitive niches out there.
This meant that we had to compete with some of the top digital marketing experts and companies to increase our client’s visibility in the SERPs.
These competitors that we are talking about are all well-established players in the industry. When compared to them, our client’s website was relatively new, which made the situation even more challenging.
It also meant that our client’s website was ranking low for a lot of keywords that we were targeting.
What further increased the competition was the rise in interest in “digital marketing” after the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Numerous brands turned towards online media to promote themselves and boost their sales.
See how the popularity of digital marketing rose in 2021.
Image via Google Trends
2. Low Traffic (Relatively)
When we started out for this case study, our client’s monthly traffic was a little less than 100K. Sure, that’s quite a lot of traffic, but we were looking for ways to take it to the next level.
Prominent websites in the digital marketing niche have traffic that goes well into a few hundred thousand per month.
However, growing traffic in such a competitive niche was a challenge in itself. And that’s where our SEO strategy comes in.
Let’s take a look at it in the next section of this case study.
SEO Case Study: The Strategy We Leveraged
To grow our client’s website traffic, we outlined a new SEO strategy, focusing on extensive keyword research, on-page optimization, powerful content planning, and more.
Our idea here was to ensure that we were able to create content that could rank well in Google searches and also give it the right impetus through other SEO techniques.
1. Backlink Audit and Disavowing Bad Links
The first thing we needed to look at was our client’s backlinks. There were hundreds of thousands of backlinks from a few thousand domains.
However, that also meant that we needed to audit the client’s backlink profile well.
There were chances that some of the links were bad links, which were having an adverse impact on their site’s SEO. It was important for us to spot those links and disavow them.
For this, we first got a snapshot of our client’s backlink profile from Semrush. Next, we started going through the list of backlinks to spot bad links.
The idea here was to prune their backlink profile such that only high-quality links remained for better SEO.
We analyzed each backlink for a variety of parameters, including:
- Domain authority (DA)
- Page authority (PA)
- Type of link
- Anchor text
- Toxic score
- Link relevance
Once we checked all of the links for each of these parameters, we had a list of potential bad links.
The next step was pretty straightforward — disavow them.
We created a text file with a list of all of the bad links and submitted the same for disavowing.
2. Perfect On-Page Optimization & Timely On-Page Audit
The next step we used for making this SEO case study successful was to check the client’s site for on-page SEO parameters.
Why so?
Because even the best of content won’t rank well in organic search results if it’s not optimized well.
If the website offers a poor browsing experience due to slow loading speed or not being mobile friendly, it wouldn’t rank well in searches.
The Page Experience update also meant that we had to optimize the website for Core Web Vitals.
To ensure that our client’s website passed all these checks, we conducted timely SEO audits using Semrush. It helped us get a detailed idea of where the site stood in terms of on-page SEO.
Technical SEO audit helped us track the following:
- Core Web Vitals
- HTTP errors
- Structured data errors
- Page loading speed
- HTTPS
- Internal linking
- Crawlability
- JavaScript and CSS issues
We really like Semrush’s Site Audit tool for this purpose. It gave us detailed insights into each of these errors and helped us fix them to boost our client’s on-page SEO performance.
3. Keyword Research and Competitor Analysis
In this section of this case study, we’ll discuss the next important part of our strategy – keyword research and competitor analysis.
To improve our client’s site ranking in the SERPs, it was important to target the right set of keywords.
While our client’s posts already ranked for over 78K keywords, we wanted to take their SEO performance to the next level through the duration of this case study.
So, we came up with a new strategy for all of the new posts that we were going to publish. It involved both keyword research and competitor analysis.
Keyword Research
Before we started writing any post, we conducted thorough keyword research for better SEO targeting. We selected keywords that had good search volume, high CPC, and low competition.
We also went after high CPC keywords to open more opportunities for monetizing the client’s website.
Selecting low competition keywords made it relatively easier for us to rank the client’s site higher for those keywords.
And why did we choose to target keywords with high search volume for the client during the tenure of this SEO case study?
Our goal was to drive maximum targeted traffic from the new posts published during the period of this SEO case study. And that is something that high-volume keywords with lower competition could help us achieve.
Competitor Analysis
Along with keyword research, we also conducted in-depth research about the SEO strategies of our client’s direct competitors.
The goal here was to understand how well their competitors ranked for the keywords that we were targeting.
For this, we leveraged the Keyword Gap tool provided by Semrush. It helped us understand where our client stood and what else we needed to help them outrank their competitors.
To find more keyword ideas, we did an in-depth analysis of the keywords that they were already ranking for.
These were the keywords we could potentially target through our new content and improve our client’s SEO for this case study.
4. Solid Content Planning and Publishing
Content played a central role in the SEO strategy that we devised to grow our client’s traffic.
Once we had found the right set of target keywords for our client, we moved on to the content creation and publishing stages.
In this section of our SEO case study, we’ll delve into how we created content that helped them rank higher in the SERPs.
Strategic Content Creation
Content is at the heart of any SEO strategy and that’s why we decided to create content strategically during the period this case study talks about.
We started brainstorming ideas for our client’s blog posts and infographics based on the selected keywords. The idea was to create content that could rank higher than others and attract backlinks too.
After all, good content means better SEO.
We set out to create valuable resources for our client’s readers in the form of comprehensive blog posts.
Note how we created a detailed content calendar for the same.
The idea here was to create blog posts that dived deep into each topic and provided more information than any other competing post.
Also, we extensively created infographics, which typically help a lot when it comes to earning backlinks. Distributing the infographics well using their embed code helped us generate backlinks and improve the client site’s SEO.
What’s more?
We also created loads of tools and software review posts to help our client’s readers find the best solutions based on their requirements. These, too, helped boost traffic and contributed to turning this project into a successful SEO case study.
User Intent-Focused Content
Another important thing that we’re going to talk about in this SEO case study is how we created content focusing on user intent.
We did this as it’d ensure that their content aligns well with the expectations of searchers. As a result, it helped us boost the time readers spent on the client’s website.
For example, note how the post below serves the basic intent behind the search request.
And how did we go about this?
Rather than focusing on creating content for search engines, we decided to focus on the target readers.
We asked questions like:
- What would the searcher want to read about?
- What is the prime goal behind the search request?
- Does the content on our client’s website answer the questions posed by the searcher?
These questions helped us figure out if our client’s content truly helped satisfy the search intent behind the keywords we targeted. In turn, it helped us make our client rank for those keywords.
Content Upgrades
Yet another strategy that we employed was to update the already-published content on the client’s website.
In this section of this SEO case study, we’ll tell you how we updated the existing content on the client’s website to make it relevant to the present day.
We scanned through the few hundred blog posts published on the client’s website and made a list of posts that were ranking on the first or second page of Google.
We then created a plan to update them with new statistics, strategies, and examples. Here’s how we tracked all content upgrades in one place.
The idea was to improve their SEO and search rankings so that their posts can reach the top three positions in the SERPs.
So, how did we go about content upgrades?
We mainly did the following:
- Replaced old statistics with new ones
- Updated strategies to reflect new advancements
- Increased the content length to offer more value
- Replaced old examples with new and relevant ones
- Optimized content for the target keyword and other related keywords
- Improved internal linking structure
Optimization Using Advanced Tools
Publishing content or updating it wasn’t enough. We decided to take things a step further to make this SEO project successful.
We’ll tell you exactly what tools we used for better content optimization under this section of our SEO case study.
We didn’t just focus on keyword optimization. We also leveraged the TF-IDF (Term Frequency – Inverse Document Frequency) formula to improve the competitiveness of our client’s content on the SERPs.
Basically, we identified the frequency of relevant side words (secondary keywords and long-tail keywords) and optimized the client’s posts for those keywords too.
Internal Links Addition
Internal links are crucial for a variety of reasons. These include:
- Quicker discovery and indexing of new content
- Keeping visitors on the website for longer intervals
- Passing link juice from one page to another
While we already included internal links in every post that we wrote, we doubled down on our internal linking efforts.
Our goal was to add as many internal links as possible to each new post but in a relevant manner. Even while updating old posts, we added more internal links to them.
Experimenting with Content Frequency and Volume
Content frequency matters a lot for both search engines and your readers.
If your regular visitors don’t see new content being published frequently, they may likely think that your website is inactive.
On the other hand, if you publish too much content, they may think that you’re overloading them with content.
But what about search engines?
Search engines crawl your website regularly. If they find that you’re not adding new content, they may reduce the crawling frequency. This may lead to a long delay in indexing your new posts.
So, we experimented with content publishing frequency on our client’s website. This allowed us to get more posts indexed on Google and also helped us retain their readers.
For instance, we published 7 posts on the client’s site in December 2020.
On the other hand, we published 13 posts in January 2021.
5. Brand Mentions and Link Acquisition
The next step in our SEO strategy was to provide a focus on off-page SEO parameters. To achieve this, we had to get the client more brand mentions and backlinks.
We put sufficient impetus into getting branded backlinks too, which would serve a dual purpose of improving brand awareness and SEO.
But how?
That’s what we’re going to tell next in this SEO case study.
Along with guest posting, we also leveraged competitor research for link acquisition. This helped us spot websites from which our client’s competitors were getting backlinks.
We created content that could provide value to the readers of the target sites and approached those websites to link to relevant resource pages from our client’s site.
The result?
We were able to get backlinks for several important pages on the client's website that were ranking well in the SERPs.
Similarly, to secure brand mentions, we approached several websites and provided quotes and expert answers to them. They added our client’s quotes in their existing content along with a brand mention.
6. Content Promotion & Distribution
You’ve probably heard of the strategies we’re discussing in this SEO case study. But one thing that most marketers forget to give more attention to is content promotion and distribution.
These two things are necessary to ensure that the content you create reaches the right audience. For this, we came up with a powerful content distribution strategy for our client.
We’ll tell you how exactly we increased the exposure of their content in this section of this case study.
In our experience, guest posts are one of the most effective ways to distribute content and get backlinks.
We wrote several high-quality guest posts for prominent websites and linked back to our client’s content. This helped us increase exposure to their content and also strengthen their backlink profile.
In addition, we syndicated our client’s blog posts on platforms such as Medium.
What’s more?
In the case of infographics, we wrote short descriptions for our client’s infographics and shared them on numerous other websites. This not only helped us build our client’s brand awareness but also improved their link profile.
SEO Case Study: The Results
In this case study, now we’ll show you the results that our SEO strategies helped the client achieve. Let’s take a look at how our strategy and efforts paid off.
But before we delve into the results, let’s take a quick look at the period of this case study.
Case Study Duration
We implemented our strategy from 1st October 2020 to 31st March 2021 and tracked results for the same period.
In this case study, we are comparing results to the results from the previous six months – 2nd April 2020 to 30th September 2020.
Let’s now take a look at the results of our SEO efforts.
SEO Results At a Glance
Through our SEO strategy, we were able to:
- Rank our client’s website for 53K+ keywords on Google in the U.S. and for 150K+ keywords globally (as of April 2021)
- Rank the client’s site for 3.6K+ keywords on the first page of Google (as of April 2021)
- Increase their site’s organic traffic by 321% in just one year
- Increase their inbound leads by 52%
- Get their blog posts featured in Google’s featured snippets
Increased Number of Clicks and Impressions
The results were pretty good when it came to the number of clicks and impressions we generated for the client. We generated over 877K clicks, which was greater than 794K clicks generated in the preceding period.
And that’s not even the best part.
We nearly doubled the number of impressions generated from 37.8 million to 66.3 million. Even the average keyword ranking positions improved from 35.5 to 34.
Improved Backlink Profile
Another good result that we would like to highlight in this case study is how our SEO strategy improved our client’s backlink profile.
There was a massive jump in the number of dofollow and nofollow backlinks the client’s site had. The total number of backlinks shot up to 389K from over 7,200 referring domains.
And the best part?
Most of these links (69%) were dofollow links while nofollow backlinks constituted only 32% of all backlinks. These backlinks helped improve their off-page SEO.
Increased Organic Traffic and Page Views
Our main goal, of course, was to drive more traffic to our client’s website. Through our powerful SEO strategy, we successfully drove a lot more traffic to their website in the six months of this case study duration than in the preceding period.
We increased the number of visitors to 533,458 visitors between October 2020 and March 2021 from 463,185 visitors between April and September 2020.
This marked a 15.7% increase in the overall organic traffic to our client’s website.
And guess what?
The traffic growth was consistent throughout the case study duration. It dramatically shot up between October 2020 and March 2021.
On 1st October 2020, the client’s site received 93,150 visitors per month.
However, by 31st March 2021, it grew to 128,785 visitors per month.
This marked a 38.2% increase in traffic within just six months. And as you can see from the graph below, it’s still growing.
What’s more?
The results of our SEO strategy started showing pretty soon too.
The organic search traffic to their website grew by 18.82% between 24 September 2020 to 24 Jan 2021 when compared to the preceding period from 24 May 2020 to 23 Sep 2020.
Improved Keyword Rankings
One of the biggest tasks we had at hand was increasing the number of organic keywords that our client was ranking for.
And that wasn’t the only task.
We also wanted to ensure that our client’s website reached the top positions of the SERPs for the keywords it was ranking for.
In the duration of this case study, our client’s website started ranking for 7,134 more keywords. Additionally, the number of keywords ranking in the top 3 positions grew by 199.
Best Ranking Keywords
In this section of the case study, we’ll disclose the keywords that drove maximum traffic to our client’s website.
It was “how to become an Instagram influencer.”
We created a blog post for our client targeting this keyword and optimized it for relevant phrases and user intent.
Through our SEO efforts, we ranked the post on the top spot for the main keyword. We also ranked it for 1.1K keywords other keyword variations.
What’s more?
Among these 1.1K keywords, the post ranked in the top 50 positions for 589 keywords.
Posts Ranked as Featured Snippets
Another significant result we want to talk about in our SEO case study is that we got our client’s post listed in featured snippets results on Google.
The post we wrote on, “how to become an Instagram influencer,” for the client showed up in the featured snippets section of the SERPs for 29 keywords.
This helped us drive massive traffic to our client’s website from that one post.
Here’s how the post appeared as a featured snippet for the main target keyword:
FAQs
Q1. What is an SEO case study?
A. An SEO case study is a study that documents the challenges a brand or marketer faced, the strategy they used to overcome those challenges, and the final results they achieved.
An SEO case study uses relevant screenshots, figures, and reports that substantiate the strategy and the results.
Q2. How do I write an SEO case study?
A. Here are the steps you should follow to write an SEO case study:
- Write your goals.
- Cover the challenges you faced.
- Write about the strategy you leveraged.
- Showcase the results your strategy and efforts generated.
- Include relevant screenshots in the case study.
- Add data and reports to support your results.
Q3. How do I find case studies on Google?
A. To find a case study on Google, all you’d have to do is search for terms related to it.
For instance, to find this SEO case study, you can search for “SEO case study” on Google.
Similarly, to find a case study related to social media marketing, you can search for “social media case study” on Google.
Q4. Is SEO illegal?
A. No, SEO is a perfectly legal marketing tactic.
In fact, it’s one of the best ways to drive targeted traffic to your website in the long run. All you have to do is ensure that you follow white hat SEO techniques to make the most out of it.
We leveraged SEO tactics to grow our client’s traffic too, as you can see in this case study.
Q5. What is SEO in 2021?
A. SEO is one of the best ways to grow your website traffic in 2021. Using it, you can improve your search presence and reach your target audience.
We did the same for our client, as you can see in our SEO case study.
Ready to Replicate the Strategy Discussed in This SEO Case Study?
While we did face an uphill challenge in boosting our client’s traffic in a highly competitive niche, the efforts paid off very well.
Through a well-planned SEO strategy, we were able to significantly boost the traffic to our client’s website.
And that wasn’t even the best part.
We also helped the client build a solid backlink profile and enhance their online reputation.
If you’d like to replicate this kind of success, you can implement the SEO strategy mentioned in this case study. You can also leverage our SEO services.
Disclaimer: This content contains some affiliate links for which we will earn a commission (at no additional cost to you). This is to ensure that we can keep creating free content for you.
