It stands out that SEO is an imperative tool in the campaigns of businesses and companies in digital marketing. The key to achieving SEO success can therefore be illustrated in SEO success case studies which indicate what does work and why.
Businesses globally have as a goal to be listed as higher in search engine results. So It is very important to learn those strategies.
That can be applied to facilitate the problem solving process and those strategies which are counterproductive.
In this article we will discuss real situations and the insights resulting from them.
WHAT ARE SEO SUCCESS CASE STUDIES?
About SEO success case studies It is evident that SEO success cases are the real life success stories of SEO.
Here are the main on page score:
These sources demonstrate problems, approaches, and results as an important level of digital marketing.
Studying them is helpful in making the observations concerning the strategies that businesses and marketers should or can implement.
It helps in strategic planning and increases the factors of SEO.
1. THE SUCCESS OF GLOSSIER’S SEO AND CONTENT STRATEGY
A case in point is Glossier, a beauty brand needed to boost its organic traffic. Otherwise, they concentrated on the SEO technique centered on their community.
This is on the basis that Glossier created content around what their customers wanted. They also produced blog articles and guides and tutorials that responded to frequently asked questions.
Many of their content were user-generated content, which was good for the creation of trust.
Glossier aimed at long-tail keywords that have a lot of users’ interest. They provided dense information to their content by concentrating on keywords.
Furthermore, they were doing a great job in making customers to give their testimonies. The implementation of this approach resulted in boosting organic traffic and involved users.
- Lesson Learned: Knowing the public usually returns favorable positions on SEO rankings. Any content that answers customers’ questions is credible.
2. HUBSPOT’S ORGANIC TRAFFIC SURGE
HubSpot is among the infamous digital marketing platforms in the market. Some of the objectives stated as follows:
They aimed at improving the quantity of organic traffic with content marketing. And also well structure your content for SEO.
Characteristic of their approach was the development of new, valuable and topic-oriented blog posts on a daily basis.
Well, they used user intent and long-tail keywords in particular.
The first of them was the research of keywords when choosing band names. Such keywords that were targeted by HubSpot were the keywords that already had heavy traffic but little competition.
Succeeding that, they also focused on their content filtering to those keywords that were selected earlier on.
Some of the elements involved included meta descriptions, headers, links and other internal links.
Thereafter, they posted new content then shared it across the different channels. Email marketing, social platforms and back linking was utilized by HubSpot.
These tactics played a role of unveiling new blog posts to the general public. Eventually, the firms realized that there was a very significant improvement in the organic traffic that they were receiving.
In the period of twelve months, there was an increase in the organic traffic of the company by fifty percent.
- Lesson Learned: CO: Quality content, which is in line with users’ needs, is effective. It is also important to note that regular material posting and advertising increase organic reach quite rapidly.
3. THE NEW YORK TIMES’ EVERGREEN CONTENT STRATEGY
This event led the New York Times to shift their strategy of content development to evergreen content. In other words, evergreen content never gets stale and receives continual traffic.
They made new documents out of it and developed new exhaustive outline guides. This content was aimed at key issues that the readers looked for most of the time.
They made each piece compliant with keywords that are specific and relevant to a user’s search. Also, they put an effective internal linking plan into practice.
In fact, This strategy retained the readers within the site longer enough, thereby lowering the bounce rates.
Google analytics will show your bounce rate report:
And thus they obtained constant growth in the quantity of organic traffic reaching their websites.
- Lesson Learned: SEMrush evergreen content has the potential to produce long-term SEO value. That way, nothing becomes stagnant making sure that traffic is always coming into the website.
4. BRIAN DEAN’S SKYSCRAPER TECHNIQUE SUCCESS
Brian Dean of Backlinko is the one who came up with the Skyscraper Technique.
This is a strategy where you identify the best performing content, optimize the content and then circulate it.
Thus, his target was to get good traffic from the other websites and quality backlinks.
Note*
“ Ahrefs help you to find your top backlinks. Check our backlinks snip down. Don’t misunderstand, Couple of month only we started our blog career “
There was some content which Dean knew was popular in his niche. After that, he made even better quality work with more elaborate information with regard to similar topics.
The new content carried more information utility and was newer in most cases. He provided information in forms of graphics, case examples as well as statistical information.
After this, he sent out mails to the websites that the content was created for. He sold it as something superior to all the existing contents that are available out there.
Moreover, many connected their websites to his content, making him get many referrals. Therefore, his or her page had better ranking in the search engines.
- Lesson Learned: Quality backlink is gotten by creating more value than other competitors. This means that the process of outreach is primary in SEO, as well as cultivating relationships with others.
5. REI’S ADVENTURE TRAVEL SEO CAMPAIGN
REI is an outdoor gear and equipment company which decided to diversify into adventure travel. They concentrated themselves on developing travel guides which are well suited for SEO.
Every guide contained specific information about adventure travel activities and all of them looked quite detailed.
REI focused on location-based keywords and phrases with more emphasis placed on such terms as long tail.
They also made the landing page for the different destinations that had been targeted. Further, to gain credibility they took customer reviews and testimonials of their products.
This showed that they believed in the product to be sold. They were able to achieve this thus resulting in a massive increase in organic traffic.
- Lesson Learned: Still, aiming on location-based keywords is quite effective. Including experiences of other customers is effective in boosting the credibility of the site and the engagement of the visitors.
6. ASANA’S STRATEGIC KEYWORD TARGETING
A successful target of this strategy was Asana – a project management tool – that aimed at occupying as many positions in search results as possible.
They concentrated more on the identification of a specific keyword that would be targeted. Asana determined the keywords that are significant for productivity and project management and at the same time have little competition.
These keywords were incorporated and used to create blog posts, tutorials, and resources. All the pieces of content development we did were good and thorough.
This strategy was useful in enabling them rank high several search keywords. gradually the organic traffic and the conversion rate also started to rise.
- Lesson Learned: Thus, it is important for any SEO to pay special attention to the so-called strategic keyword targeting. The second method is that they try to concentrate on keywords that are not competitive enough which would result in achieving some initial gains.
7. THE CREATIVE LINK-BUILDING STRATEGY OF BUZZFEED
BuzzFeed is a new media outlet which produces and shares content that is viral by nature. They use a wonderful link building method to encourage the site’s visibility.
BuzzFeed came up with posts that could be shared on social media hence gaining popularity among the people.
Consumer generated content was emphasized mainly in quizzes, listicles and fun pieces that readers enjoyed spreading.
This strategy resulted in making a lot of natural backlinks from various sources. For that reason, the content that BuzzFeed produced was always on the top of the search engine ranking.
- Lesson Learned: It is quite logical that creative content will usually hopefully receive good backlinks. Doing that increases traffic whenever people share content they consider engaging.
8. AIRBNB’S LOCALIZED SEO STRATEGY
This is self explanatory by any stretch of the imagination, it just occurs that Airbnb wanted to increase its ranking in several local markets.
They applied a local SEO approach in order to accomplish this aim. Airbnb also designed considerable landing pages which focused on selected cities and regions.
Every page listed attractions, guides and traveler tips to tourists. They used keywords which were localized to each of the destinations.
It also benefited them in improving their ranking with local searches. As a result, they mentioned that they witness organic traffic from various places that they have never witnessed before.
- Lesson Learned: Localized SEO assists companies in getting to focused areas of the market. Maximizing the appeal of content for local audiences can help attract the right set of audiences.
9. REDDIT USER-DRIVEN CONTENT AND SEO STRATEGY
Reddit, an online forum, used the user contributed content for SEO optimization. They particularly emphasized on developing contents that would have value to their users.
Reddit inspired users to engage in discussions, ask questions and share valuable and creative content. This is very effective for picking trending topics.
High quality and relevant content as-delivered by the users is a way of naturally attracting back links for Reddit.
They were also able to secure a number of higher search rankings through this organic approach. It led to a high improvement of organic visibility into the site.
- Lesson Learned: It is known that user-generated content can create natural backlinks. Such practices that involve the encouragement of content that emanates from the community result in enhanced ranking on the search engines.
10. MEDIUM’S AUTHORITATIVE CONTENT AND SEO STRATEGY
Medium is a blogging website that was created to provide and consume high-quality articles. He wanted writers who they would produce researched and comprehensive articles.
By using this strategy it was easier for Medium to rank higher for various topics.
They also created a community for sharing good content. All these were made possible by Medium through the boost in organic traffic and engagement.
It proved that it was a content platform that could keep on growing for quite some time.
- Lesson Learned: Developing a platform for content with high-authority contributes positively to rankings. Building up high quality content helps to gain traffic in a natural and effective way.
11. SLACK’S CONTENT MARKETING AND SEO INTEGRATION
Slack is an application that was adopted for business communication where content marketing was implemented.
They produced content with the purpose of providing solutions to existing issues in businesses.
They used keywords relating to their audience on their blog posts, the cases and guides they wrote.
This means that they incorporated Search Engine Optimization best practices in every content that was produced.
That strategy allowed them to draw organic traffic and channel it as well.
And in terms of the sources of traffic, the number of visitors coming from organic search sources eventually grew appreciable to Slack.
- Lesson Learned: However, I would say that the synergy of SEO with content marketing fosters organic website traffic. Offering informational texts that adhere to the needs and desires of the readers can be beneficial in the sense that people will continue coming to read the texts.
12. ZOOM’S KEYWORD GAP ANALYSIS STRATEGY
Organic search traffic was one of the focus areas that Zoom wanted to improve on by a large margin.
They also performed a keyword gap analysis to discover the potential opportunities that haven’t been explored yet.
They said they found keywords that competitors were ranking for but the former were not.
Zoom then launched relevant and findable content relevant for the identified specific keywords.
It allowed them to reduce the gap with competitors and achieve a number of beneficial aims and objectives.
Consequently, something that was invisible to them such as organic traffic, became highly visible.
- Lesson Learned: Keyword gap analysis then helps to identify other possible SEO opportunities. Knowledge that fills those gaps can help to strengthen competitive positions.
13. TRELLO’S COLLABORATION CONTENT STRATEGY
Specifically, collaboration content in project management tools such as Trello was addressed. It is because they developed guides, tutorials, and use-case articles related to the collaboration of a team.
All the articles chosen focused on some or other issue and its possible solutions that are connected with teamwork.
For specificity and focus, they made these articles as keyword and user intent friendly as possible.
Trello also focused on internal linking as one of the strategies to keep the visitors engaging on the site.
This made it easier to rank organically and make more traffic as compared to the previous approach.
- Lesson Learned: Concentrated content on the key problems that need a solution attract people. Since it is focused on user intent, it is beneficial in improving SEO rankings.
14. SQUARESPACE’S SEO CAMPAIGN TARGETING SMALL BUSINESSES
Small businesses were the target of squarespace and the company made efforts to get business owners to use it.
They posted the content that was relevant for the target audience: small businesses. The specific guides, tutorials, and case studies were all aimed at specific keywords.
They also involved industry experts in guest post writing services on Squarespace as well.
This tactic proved to be effective for them to get high quality backlinks and be authorities in the field. Due to their SEO work, search engine rankings and traffic improved characteristics for this branch.
Lesson Learned: This is because, trying to appeal to the whole market is counterproductive for SEO strategies, which are most effective when aimed at particular customer segments. Industry cooperation is valuable not only for its practical experience but for the concern for credibility and authority.
15. AHREFS’ PRODUCT-LED CONTENT STRATEGY
Notably, a single case study of a product-led content strategy was that of Ahrefs, an SEO tool.
Their target was on traffic generation and subscription base. They emphasized on the production of content that was to help demonstrate the usefulness of the tool they possessed.
This approach was meant to transform readers to users of the tarnished company’s services.
They developed detailed tutorials and instruction manuals on how to use their intended tools. These articles covered articles on users with basic knowledge as well as the most sophisticated users.
This strategy was applied in every article as they all focused on showing how to fix SEO issues specifically with the aid of Ahrefs.
It was painful, but this type of strategy helped Ahrefs to gain the trust and prove the company’s worth.
Ahrefs also used internal links within articles and posts they created since they understand the importance of internal linking.
This practice enabled the readers to access more topics of their interest as they remain on the website.
That way, the organic traffic of the website would increase by 200% in the long run, which results in more conversions.
Lesson Learned: It best applies where one intends to place a product within content or show the value of a product within content. User engagement makes use of educational techniques that go hand in hand with advocacy of product or service virtue to increase the chances of conversion.
16. THE CONTENT UPDATE STRATEGY OF MOZ
Moz – a prominent SEO software vendor – chose a content update approach. This means that their target was to both keep and build on the amount of organic traffic that they were receiving. They found previous content that would require re-writing or revamping.
The Moz team focused on the content that could be found at the second and third positions on the search results page. They just replaced existing information, examples and graphics with new information. In addition, they also fine tuned such aspects as meta tags, headings, as well as images.
In the second stage, they reposted this content across the channels listed above after the content update. This strategy revitalized old content. In fact, within a few months, a huge traffic was recorded on those pages.
Lesson Learned: It is always most rewarding to edit the already published articles and bring into them new data. Keeping content fresh is key in the internet especially when it comes to traffic generation.
17. THE MOBILE OPTIMIZATION STRATEGY BY ZILLOW
Zillow is one of the leading real estate platforms in the United States of America. They aimed at targeting more mobile users or rather generating more leads.
The team of those guys chose mobile optimization as their primary direction.
Their first step was the redesign of the complete website for the mobile users. These redesigns helped to increase loading time, UX, and improve on how easy it is to navigate through the site.
Last but not least, what also contributed to Zillow’s success could be attributed to voice search optimization, especially among mobile users.
These changes led to a twenty percent enhancement of mobile traffic. Still, and more importantly, lead generation especially from mobile users was made significantly easier.
In particular, the mobile optimization approaches of Zillow’s were proved successful.
Lesson Learned: It is essential to make your site mobile friendly in the present world. A fast page loading speed and the enhancement of the UX increases the traffic and the number of leads in the process.
18. CANVA’S VISUAL CONTENT STRATEGY SUCCESS
Canva can also be described as a graphic design that specifically uses a content with visuals approach.
It was the strategy where they wanted to create brand awareness and obtain organic traffic. It was more like the construction of flashy as well as share worthy images and other graphical representations.
Canva came up with design-oriented overviews and checklists as well as full-fledged guides and infographic resources.
They went for related terms, with regard to graphic designing and marketing. These guides were designed to enhance SEO while at the same time being user friendly.
Also, there was an emphasis placed towards maintaining an efficient internal linking structure for a single page view of Canva.
From this strategy, users could advance to other contents of their website in a short span of time. The end product was a marked improvement in the rating of the site organically and level of user activity.
Lesson Learned: Visual content gets more shares and backlink. Internal linking is the key to long user conversations as well as maintaining the users on the website for long.
19. THE AUTHORITY CONTENT STRATEGY BY NERDWALLET
NerdWallet is an online hub that focuses on personal finance with a focus on credit cards and loans.
They went for an authority content approach that allows them to control search results. Their strategy centered on the use of uber authoritative, longer content.
Their team began with extensive keyword research in the finance related niches. Then, they developed content that attempted to provide prime answered user questions.
They also contained information from experts, statistics, and first-hand research that the author either conducted or gathered himself.
In addition, the company worked with such reputable websites as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
In terms of this guide, they were able to attain quality backlinks via outreach and with guest posting.
These measures helped to create credibility for the company and make it a popular source in the sphere of finance.
Lesson Learned: Having authority in your relevant area becomes very essential in the SEO success formula. In conclusion, it can be stated that factors such as quality content, working closely with quality backlinks gives results.
20. NEIL PATEL’S CONTENT CLUSTERS STRATEGY
An SEO expert named Neil Patel adopted the content clusters strategy. His target was to rank high for all the related keywords.
This technique entails developing a primary webpage referred to as the ‘pillar’ page together with other related pages referred to as the ‘cluster’ pages.
The first step Patel took was to explain some central issues in digital marketing. So they went ahead to develop other elaborate and focused pillar pages that covered each topic in detail.
Several cluster pages are made around each pillar page. All of these clusters were focused on related subtopics and were connected to the given pillar.
This approach served him right for ranking for a lot of keywords in the market. His website’s traffic as well as the corresponding engagement also significantly rocketed.
Lesson Learned: This is preferred in creating content clusters as it ensures that there is better organization as well as linkage. They assist the SEs recognize how the content is organized in a specific website.
21. SHOPIFY’S USER-GENERATED CONTENT STRATEGY
Shopify is an excellent example of an e-commerce platform that utilized users’ content. They intended to regain that trust and in the process attract more customers.
It was fully apparent that Shopify wanted customers to comment on their experiences and rate the product.
They included these reviews and testimonials as a key heading of theirs on their site.
This content did not only help to establish credibility but also helped to add new information at a fairly frequent base. As time passed by, their site also increased its organic visibility.
Also, they employed other persuasion techniques particularly social proof to encourage more sales. This strategy benefited their SEO and; conversion rates in a very huge way.
Lesson Learned: Generating content from the users is one way of turning the website into a more trusted site as well as increasing the search engine optimization ratings. Customer engagement results in improved organic click.
22. THE LOCAL SEO STRATEGY BY BRIGHTLOCAL
BrightLocal offers the ability to manage the local SEO campaigns. Their objective was to get a better ranking on local SEO related keywords. To this end, they embraced local SEO strategy.
Their team produced extensive guides and case studies concentrated on local SEO. These pieces were part general knowledge and contained examples, statistics and other informative information.
Note*
“ For local SEO strategy, they also tend to use local SEO keywords that are also called ‘ local SEO guide’. ”
Further, they created local citations and also developed backlinks from the local websites and blogs. Therefore, BrightLocal was able to enhance its search rankings drastically.
Lesson Learned: There is nothing more local than local SEO, which can only be effective if optimized with local content and citations. For example, regular optimization helps in yielding much better results of local search.
23. DRIFT’S CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING STRATEGY
Drift, a conversational marketing platform, is in need of more organic traffic. They have opted to do so by developing content around the ‘conversational marketing’ themes.
It was with an aim of securing that higher position in the ratings so that they would be able to attract only the right kind of leads.
Through their articles, they developed conversational marketing as extensive tutorials and posting topics.
Another form of persuasive appeal that Drift employed include the use of case studies and customer stories as a way of gaining perceived expertise.
They made each of them search engine friendly and easy to click.
Also, they employed social media and email promotion as other ways of advertising their content.
Such attempts brought an increase in the number of organic visits and the overall visitors.
Lesson Learned: When writing content it is more effective to write about specific areas of interest and thus drive relevant traffic. Sustainability increases the frequency of promotion leading to higher visibility and improved content consumption.
24. THE VIDEO SEO STRATEGY BY WISTIA
The company known as Wistia, which offers the platform to host videos, concentrated on video SEO. Their aim was to be desired in the video search engine results.
Some even went further to make sure that their videos were enhanced by good description, tags, and even the transcript section.
They also developed a number of educational videos that covered SEO keywords. All the videos presented useful information on video marketing and SEO.
Wistia also incorporated these videos into the blog posts where they are needed for further exposure.
For instance, they contributed to enhanced positions on the search engines and on YouTube. Wistia visitors, growing interest and interaction came from video materials.
Lesson Learned: The exposure of videos increases when they are made SEO-friendly in order to gain popularity as well. Furthering outcomes are the approbation with the videos’ addition to the written items.
KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM SEO SUCCESS CASE STUDIES
This is why; SEO success case studies should not be underestimated since they hold vital lessons to marketers.
They allow us to find the best approaches towards content generation, configuration, and marketing.
All the above case studies show distinct ways and methods that can be used to attain success. Whether it be in terms of content addition, mobile compatibility or local optimization, success can be made.
It is crucial to bear these ideas in mind as the ideas are applied to one’s own strategy. Knowing what can be done effectively would also work for you as well.
The SEO success case studies will help you better prepare to tackle problems.