How We Increased Linkflow's Organic Traffic By 243% in 6 Months
When we first started, we believed that link building was the be-all and end-all of SEO. However, we soon realized that backlinks are only part of a successful SEO strategy, especially in more competitive spaces.
Just like we how tell our clients, good SEO starts with a healthy and fast website, is built up with a top-notch content strategy, and finally made even better with backlinks.
We discovered that adding in that content piece was the key to unlocking even better results for our clients. To prove our point, we put our own strategy to the test and the results were shocking.
Leads Generated
32
High Quality Booked Calls
Organic Traffic
243%
Organic traffic increase
Articles Published
18
Articles
Campaign Length
6
Months
Background
We wanted more leads coming through the website, and we wanted them to be qualified leads that turn into booked calls. To do this, we needed more organic traffic. So we worked on our own link building efforts, carefully picking the pages and anchors according to a sound plan that we’d seen work for many clients.
The problem is the B2B marketing arena is notoriously cutthroat when it comes to marketing and SEO – of course it is, we’re the experts – and despite our efforts to build links to critical pages, we weren’t achieving the results we wanted.
That gave us two options: stick to our path and hope something changed, or try something new. We chose the latter route.
While our pages were optimized for search, our blog content and topical authority was lacking.
Our topics were all over the place, ranging from internal linking best practices to explanations of what DR and DA are. Additionally, each piece was a standalone blog without any sort of clustering and internal linking strategy. We didn’t have pillars supported by related content and nothing was working together to build our authority about individual topics.
We were just creating content to create content, believing the old fallacy, “if you build it, they will come.”
Getting Started
To start, we had to revamp the way we approached keyword research.
We had always targeted any keyword that was remotely relevant to SEO. The problem with this is that our ideal customers weren’t necessarily searching for the keywords we were writing about.
For example, someone searching for “Fiverr Backlinks” doesn’t quite fully understand the value of backlinks and therefore probably isn’t a good fit. A similar, but significantly more relevant, keyword for us would be “link building pricing” or perhaps “link building packages.” We rank on page 1 for both of these keywords now, among many others.
Moving forward, we are taking a more strategic approach to selecting our keywords. We also decided to niche down our content strategy around link building and SaaS topics specifically instead of broad SEO topics.
Topical Authority
We created a hub and spoke strategy, also known as a content cluster strategy, around our target commercial keywords.
Each commercial keyword has a set of spoke content that supports it, and the whole cluster is connected with internal links. Not only does this allow us to connect the dots for Google, but we cover topics much more fully. This keeps visitors on our site longer, exploring all the different content in a cluster. Additionally, it demonstrates our experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
We carefully chose our spokes so that they were relevant to our niche and also gave us an opportunity to connect with our ideal customers.
The combination of this and a thoughtful internal linking strategy helps Google see us as experts around each of our chosen topics.
Content Marketing
There can be a big difference between “SEO content” and “quality content”.
We wanted to bridge the gap by optimizing our blog posts not just for search engines but also for humans.
SEOs are constantly trying to trick Google with subpar content and shortcuts. Instead of taking this short-sided approach, we decided to take our content marketing to the next level.
The first thing we did was revamp our blog template and optimize it for user experience.
- We added a table of contents to help users navigate through our content.
- We made sure our content container width was less than 720px wide for readability.
- We added author bios for E-E-A-T so that we could establish trust with our readers.
- We also hired a professional designer to create beautiful graphics that keep readers engaged.
Armed with a great user experience on the design side, we’ve made sure to carry that through with the content itself. All our content is written by subject matter experts so when potential customers land on a post they’re blown by our expertise and can see the benefits of working with us.
Results
Using our system we started to see results in as little as 3 months.
Our competitive commercial keywords are climbing the ranks quickly and our spoke content is driving leads.
- Booked calls through website in the entire previous year: 37
- Booked calls through website in the first 2.5 months of the new year: 15 high quality leads and more than double the previous period
- Organic Traffic increased by 47.8% year-over-year just in the first quarter
- Our gains stalled in April when we paused content creation, but momentum picked up again as soon as we did
This is only the beginning. We are continuing to invest in this strategy and have even increased our rate on content production. By the end of the year, we should be able to double or triple the amount of booked calls generated by our website.
The Takeaways
SEO is a long game. It typically takes anywhere from 6 to 9 months to see results.
Don’t take shortcuts. Instead, focus on having the best page on the internet for a particular keyword.
Commercial pages aren’t everything. You can drive leads with content, and often the best results from SEO are driven by a solid content strategy with links.
How Linkflow Increased Traffic With Content Strategy
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