Case Study: Organic Search Traffic Increase Follows From Targeted Content Campaign
The shoemaker’s children finally have shoes! We recently organized our internal marketing sprints into content-focused campaigns. In March of 2015, the Philly Marketing Labs website had a limited eCommerce content presence of just a few pages and very little organic traffic. Beginning in April, the PML Marketing Circle embarked on a content campaign to improve our visibility for eCommerce related topics.
The results were impressive!
Impressions grew 180% in just 3 months to nearly 2500 monthly impressions for eCommerce related queries. Clicks grew 400% to 10. The TrueRank™ indicator from the PML Query Hive™ platform moved up 29.4% to 57.96. Combined with the growth in queries (up 218%), impressions and clicks, this TrueRank™ value represents a significant strengthening of PML’s position in the eCommerce organic search eco-system. In addition, the PML Sales Circle reports at least three new inbound sales leads related to eCommerce projects during the campaign period (April-June, 2015).
How’d we do it? An eCommerce Content Calendar
We created a content calendar after a strategy conversation about which aspects of eCommerce made the most sense given our experience and the needs of the marketplace. For three months, April through June, we emphasized eCommerce in our content, social media and meetups. We didn’t do this to the exclusion of other topics, but it definitely dominated our publishing schedule. Our eCommerce content campaign included:
- Six quality blog posts focused on eCommerce include a 3 Part Series that provided a detailed case study of building an eCommerce site, SEO Tips for an eCommerce site and more.
- Over 70 eCommerce-related tweets on @PhillyMktgLabs
- Ten eCommerce-related PML LinkedIn posts
- Our Mainline Digital Marketing Meetup, which was held near the middle of the campaign on May 28, focused on an eCommerce Fireside Chat with PML co-founder Bechara Jaoudeh
- An updated eCommerce services page
To get a better idea of how this activity moved the dial, we compare the March eCommerce bucket (before the campagin) with the June eCommerce bucket (month 3 of the campaign). The screenshot below comes from PML’s Search Explorer platform. The summary statistics are highlighted in red near the top of the graphic. These summaries were used in the table at the top of this blog post. The three columns below give us a view into the ebb and flow of the eCommerce keyword sea – standing queries showing the core, unchanged part of the sea, the gained queries showing those queries which are present now but were not present in the prior period, the lost queries are those which were once present but are no longer showing up.
Before and After eCommerce Content Campaign. Source: SearchExplorer.com Platform
The effect of the new blog posts are clearly demonstrated with the red arrows in the Gained Queries bucket. This is an important pillar in any serious inbound marketing initiative. These new visitors represent prospects that may be earlier in the buying cycle, but who can be educated on your brand and capabilities and then nurtured into a sales prospect as their needs mature.
What does the future hold? To Query Hive™ and Beyond!
We fully expect the eCommerce-related results to continue to grow over time and to build on the base created during this campaign. For now, we’re moved on to a new sprint with content that focuses on Search Console (formerly known as Webmaster Tools) and our new platform (reports highlighted in this post) called Query Hive™.
