It’s easy to talk the content marketing talk. It’s not so easy to walk the walk. We all know content marketing can be used to drive better organic search positions in Google. Here’s how one of my clients achieved exactly that, and did it in a pretty dramatic way.
Content marketing case study success
When my client, their SEO consultant and myself started work on the account, the website was bringing in around £60,000 a month and they employed fewer than ten people. 18 months later the site generates an average of £350,000 a month and the client employs almost 20 people.
If that isn’t a thrilling content marketing case study success, I’m not sure what is!
How did we do it?
- The SEO consultant carried out an initial in-depth analysis of the site and recommended a suite of essential on-site optimisation fixes. He also did in-depth keyword and competitor research plus a thorough backlink analysis. All this gave the client the information they needed to set benchmarks
- The SEO consultant briefed me once a week with a blog post subject and a list of keywords to include. I wrote direct into the WordPress CMS and every post ran to at least 1000 words, usually more: totally unique, valuable, in-depth and wholly relevant information and £60 each. The job included writing the meta data, which I also created bearing the focus keywords and best SEO / direct marketing practice in mind
- The SEO consultant carried out social media marketing, outreach and social sharing of the new content every week
What happened?
- The client steadily carried out all the recommended on-site optimisations, in support of overall better natural search engine visibility
- The blog has turned into a remarkably popular and lively forum where a surprising number of readers ask questions and leave comments. Fair play to the client – they respond to blog comments straight away, which really helps boost their popularity and seals their reputation as professionals
- The client has seen their ecommerce income increase six-fold
- They’ve gained much better and wider natural search visibility for a shed-load of important keywords including a host of popular longtail terms, achieving page 1 Google positions for a wide range of useful core and supporting search terms
- They’ve become an acknowledged expert in their field, talking with authority about evergreen issues, core and wider issues, and related subjects
A lesser effect in a more competitive landscape
It’s great to see classic content marketing work the way it should. But I’ve been working in exactly the same way on another website, in a much more competitive arena, and the results weren’t quite so dramatic.
We achieved better visibility for lots more useful keywords, generated more visitors, more sales, more revenue and all that good stuff. But the improvement, while impressive, wasn’t quite so big, hinting that you need to work your content marketing mojo an awful lot harder in a crowded market.
There were extra challenges, too. In this case the site was static and, apart from the blog, it was never updated. The blog generated fewer comments too, probably because there wasn’t an obvious menu link – it was hidden at the foot of the home page. As far as all that goes, you can only work with what you’ve got.
Go forth and multiply!
The client is confident enough to go it alone at this point, and we’re delighted to see them taking blogging and social promotion in-house to carry on the good work. We wish them every success. It has been a real pleasure.
Next time: Blog posts plus keyword research equals a much more powerful and influential post that people searching for the information will find more easily. Next time I’ll be looking at how to maximise the content marketing impact of blog posts through the judicious use of keywords and meta data.
