Many digital marketers misunderstand how blogs work and why you should have one. This digital marketing case study shows how to fix a blog by applying best practices and, as a result, dramatically increase high-quality search traffic and leads along with it.
CASE OVERVIEW:
THE PROBLEM:
We inherited a business; a Toronto recruitment company that focused on hiring salespeople. The previous digital marketing company had a deep philosophical belief in content marketing; they had done tons of blog posts and white papers. They’d drank the content kool-aid.
The problem was our client told us it wasn’t working to get leads. It’s something we hear often from clients. “So and so told us we should have a blog.” But we’ve found that the person recommending it had a more faith-based than fact-based understanding of how blogs work.
So how do blogs work?
Blogs work by increasing the authority of the site by adding pages to it on a regular basis that get viewed & shared a lot because they do a great job of answering questions that are commonly asked.
The previous firm was producing lots of content but it wasn’t answering common questions. They were talking about themselves or what they thought people should hear versus listening first to what questions people had. They were blabbing, not blogging. Hence, the content wasn’t getting read nor shared.
Our Diagnostic Approach Uncovers The Quick Wins
THE FIX:
We listened.
We used deep keyword research and social media listening tools to identify the most common questions asked online about hiring salespeople and getting hired. We supplemented that by asking our client’s customer service and salespeople the top 10 questions they commonly get asked. Then we ran the results through tools like BuzzSumo to see what competitor’s content was not just getting written but viewed and shared (key difference).
We brainstormed.
We then used that data to inspire us and our client to come up with dozens of blog post ideas. We put those in a planning calendar based on different themes.
We optimized.
No sense writing the content unless you’re working equally as hard to get it found. As a digital marketing company focused on results we developed a 17 point blog post checklist to ensure that every post is optimized not only to get found but to be easy to be consumed online (most scan, only 16% read blogs word-by-word).
THE RESULTS:
As views and shares of the blog posts improved, the authority of the site in Google’s eyes rose and so did its search engine rankings for lead-driving keywords.
Site Traffic Since Our Hiring
Organic Search Traffic
Blog Pageviews
227
Total Traffic Increase
342
Search Engine Traffic Increase
53
Average Monthly Leads Increase
What Our Client Has To Say
Want to get results like these?
