Search Engine Optimization covers a huge range of tactics - all of which can bring direct benefit to a website. In this post, I've shared examples of different tactics used at different websites, and the effects that have been seen. If you're considering an SEO campaign for your site, or are trying to persuade someone else to invest in internet marketing, I hope this post will help demonstrate the potential of internet marketing.
The post includes real screen shots from Google Analytics (click any of them to enlarge) but the sites and data have been anonymized.
Target Your Target Terms
Remember that post about building a page with perfect keyword targeting? SEOmoz wasn't kidding around.
A website that sells homewares had issues with site structure and on-page targeting. Their category level pages were at subdomains such as
- https://kitchenequipment.sitename.com
or
- https://livingrooms.sitename.com
whilst each sub-category was back on the main subdomain at:
- www.sitename.com/find_product2.asp?url1=living+room&url2=rugs+and+carpets
Category and sub-category pages had a distinct lack of semantic HTML or term targeting.
Getting appropriate H1 tags onto each page was a quick job, improving title tag structure took a bit longer, clean & friendly URLs and internal links with appropriate anchor text were also added.
The site saw ranking improvements across the board, which brought new traffic through head, mid and long tail terms. Can you guess when the changes were made? ;-)
Getting sorted in Google Local
Before getting into the nitty-gritty of ranking factors for Local Search, dead simple tactics, etc, it's important to get the basics right. A large chain of restaurants created a 'bulk upload' file with the correct data for each one of their locations. After uploading the file, they applied for it to be reviewed and 'whitelisted'. Local data that's been uploaded by the business owner and whitelisted is treated as authoritatively as locations that have been manually verified by postcard.
Despite various issues (Google's best practice guidelines still aren't quite the best solution in some cases) the traffic generated by visibility in Local Search has been significant and valuable. (The uploads were verified in late November when the traffic begins its steady rise.)
Architecture of Change
A current affairs magazine wanted to get more from their website. Because of falling advertising revenue, the publication was at risk of being closed down. They'd seen some growth from SEO already, but wanted to prove that the website had greater value.
Although the site had a good brand and some great content, it suffered from similar problems to many news-type websites, including badly archived content, duplicate issues and a CMS that hampered keyword targeting or promoting individual articles. Recommendations were made to improve the site's architecture and migrate to the new structure.
The effect of the changes was immediate growth which took the organic traffic to 257% in three months. A month later, the magazine's owner explained that the falling revenue from print advertising meant that they couldn't continue to lose money publishing the mag, and closed it down.
Hook, Line, Sinker
An office cleaning company wanted to improve the profile of their site through SEO. Amongst other tactics, a member of staff spent a day writing a 'linkbait' post to publish on their blog. This generated huge amounts of traffic from social media sites (dwarfing their regular daily visitors) and was subsequently linked to from dozens of sites. This post, along with other content published on the site to attract links, helped the site grow in strength and authority, and it now ranks position 3 for 'office cleaning' in their country.
Paid In Full
This is SEOmoz, but I'd like to share a graph from a PPC colleague working on a site that sells scooters. They were initially bidding on very broad terms (scooter, scooters, buy a scooter, etc) but the campaign was adjusted to target more long tail terms, including descriptions, specifications, etc.
Over a period of around six weeks, the cost per click was reduced by 30% and the more targeted traffic converted increasingly well - this allowed the site owners to increase their ad budget and generated more sales than their paid search campaign ever had before.
If you're new to SEOmoz and this post has inspired you to get involved in search marketing for your site, do browse the site for the PRO & free SEO guides and the SEO blog. If you're a regular, do share any stories you're particularly proud of in the comments.
Love posts like this, Rob. It's the stories that really sell people on SEO. I'm still a huge fan of the story I heard about Jeff Bezos at Amazon finally deciding to do SEO after he saw a family member using Google to find books instead of navigating straight to Amazon (which he thought was how everyone used the web). Not sure if that's urban legend, but my source was reliable enough (and the story compelling enough) that I refer to it regularly.
Amazon and SEO? Great user journey, but I would not say that they had the best SEO platform.
It happens to me as well. I just can't remember the last time I typed anything in the address bar on my Firefox haha..
Whilst this is a nice post I am going to play devils advocate. Without the actual numbers on the graphs the value of them is somewhat limited. (I appreciate the need to hide them).
If the numbers to start with were small, then even tiny improvements can show big rises when compared like for like.
That said, its a good post and even if the actual physical numbers are quite small it still highlights the value of SEO.
Thanks for sharing
I'll double check, but the visitor numbers that have been hidden were all in a range from around 30,000 - 450,000.
Thanks Rob, good to know!
I really love these success stories. I hope we get to hear more of them :)
Even with what BenRush said (Graphics without actual numbers), I think these real-life examples gives great motivation...
And I must say that on my side, numbers like 30000 to 450000 maybe a bit unrealistic in SEO projects I usually manage. I think SEO is not just about getting several thousands of visits in a short timeframe; In real life, you also get projects such as the local welding shop which gets 200 visits each month - And increasing this number to 900 is still a victory for me... Having them rank way ahead their competitors is still awesome, and even if it's not paying as much as a big project would do, my clients are still really satisfied when they see these results!
I tought I'd just mention this for those who are overrun by these heavy SEO numbers, just like me!
Anyway, great post Rob! :)
ptech, I agree, increasing the numbers of visitors for a website for 2x, even if that means "only" a couple hundred visitors more, that can be enough. I work in the same conditions. Still, its good to see such articles...
Yeah, this is definitely true!
Most websites I deal with are within that range of visits as well (50-300 visitors). And it can definitely be quite daunting when you hear of websites with those kind of large figures. But once again, like Ptech said, each compant/client has their own realistic target and we can't always get those kind of high traffic. We need to look at the big picture, when it comes to SEO, not just big numbers...
Thanks for your feedback guys! It's much appreciated!
Nice post - now if you could just knock me up a quick formula for showing the ROI on technical consultancy, I'll buy you a pint.
Innovation = diffusion of technology/commercialization/invention
I=d/c/i
Where is my PINT - :)
It is always great to see real results like this that you can measure, graph and show to the client. Its always great to see success stories too.
Great post, these stories actually helped selling my case to one of my clients this morning!
One question though: if I would change the site architecture (ie directories vs. subdomains, static urls) would it be necessary to 301 redirect all current url's to the new optimized ones? Or would Google naturally pick up and index the new structure / url's?
Keep it coming :)
@Expandonline: Make sure all your old URLs are 301'd. Not only can it take a while for Google to deep index your new pages and reference your old pages (which holds the risk of duplicate content) in its search results. 301 redirects assure that your inbound link juice will flow onto your new pages.
Love these stories! They're really inspirational :)
Also a fan of posts like this, easy to follow for us non-pro's while presenting data that is both robust and novel.
Would like to add that Local Search for business listings can be so much more than the Google listings. Consider supplementing with ask.com, bing local business center, local.com, yahoo local and yelp.
It's great to her the story behind the results, thanks for sharing!
I would like this post more if actual specifics changes were listed.
Each of the examples given would definitely have made good posts individually.
Have a great time in the US - what was your new job title again, Vice-President of Seattle or something?
Great post! Thank you :-)
Great Post. I love to see success stories in SEO business. These stories shine SEOmoz's success as well :)
Rob thanks for sharing that information. I have seen great results when applying good SEO practices like you mentioned above for sites in low competitive industries. In highly competitive industries there´s a whole lot more to do than that.
Love the case studies, they're great to read about and prove the benefits of SEO to anybody clearly, allowing industries that may normally not be interested to see that it really cna make a difference.
Thanks Rob, and also, Thank you Julia1 (Spammer) for a good laugh.
I always love posts with real life examples......for some reason it makes it more tangible for me.
Tony ;~)
Great Post Rob.
I can definitely relate to the last section, "Paid in Full". I had recently worked on a website which wasn't great, but wasn't bad either. But wasn't ranking anywhere for the more competitive keywords. But once I adjusted the keywords to a long tail one, it worked wonders, was ranking #3 on google for one of those keywords.
I usually always tell start up websites to follow this trend. Start with long tailed keywords quite specific to your niche. Once you've gotten in the ranking for those words, you can then go for the bigger guns...
Definitely works for me... well said.
Great post. Those kind of post are definitely good examples to show when potential clients are still hesitating when coming to SEO.
Concerning the Google Local inclusion, I always had a question that I could not get to answer:
If we imagine a company in Paris, France that wants to be included in the Google local listing for Paris but that has a website that target a worldwide audience or worldwide clients.
Is it possible that the inclusion in Google Local would reduce the chance of that website/domain to be visible on Google.com with an US IP address or Google.co.uk with a british IP address?
Really helpful information thats for sharing
Rob,
Very nice article. In "Getting sorted in Google Local" you imply that one can track the inbound traffic that comes from Local Search, i.e. the 7-pack. I have tried to do just that without success. I once tried to add three utm_ params to the link of a Google Local Business Listing, but the listing would never come out of "flagged" state. It was fine prior to the change. So I had to change it back.
If there is a way to track this type traffic distinctly from organic listings I would be very grateful for the secret.
Mark Regan
Great post. Thanks for all the info!!
Thanks Rob. You've had a great string of excellent posts.
Like the others above me, I could eat more posts like this up no problem. I find it both educational and inspirational to read about good case studies.
thank you very much for the quality of your articles are always fascinating.