I have worked for many clients & this case study is based on one of them. The time span of this case study is around 7 months. The client was assigned to me for a short period. This was an ecommerce site designed in Html/CSS (old-school) & it took me around 2 months to convince the client to create and run a blog along with the main domain name.
The main issue I face with clients is that they are not properly educated about what digital marketing is & how it works. There are two cases
1. Lack of Knowledge: Either they have worked with some cheap SEO service provider & have invested a lot of money without getting any benefits.
2. Lack of Patience & Trust: Or they don’t give enough time to the SEO guy to implement the strategyy & wait for it to come to fruition
3. Thinking of themselves as an Expert: This is the third most dangerous category who hire digital marketers to the work but instead they dictate all the tasks or steps to do. They read a few blogs & guides online and think of themselves as an SEO expert.
Anyways, getting back to the case study these are the cold hard facts. I worked on this project 5 times a week for around 2 hours & this is the result I got.
Stats
- Domain Age: 20 Years
- Niche: Education Related Products
- Target Audience: USA
Plugins Used
All plugins used are free. I normally use YoastSEO but I tried Rankmath and found it useful as well.
- AddToAny Share Buttons
- Autoptimize
- Classic Editor
- Easy Table of Contents
- Rank Math SEO
- ShortPixel Image Optimizer
- UpdraftPlus – Backup/Restore
- W3 Total Cache
- The theme used Generatepress with a custom HTML header & footer
- The sidebar is on left & for related post links are added manually
Traffic before starting the blog
Main site traffic was ranging from 1664 to 2202 users/month
The main drawback was that site was designed in HTML/CSS & had no structure, UI/UX to it. Also, I didn’t have permission to make many changes. So, I recreated all the titles & meta descriptions based on keyword research but that didn’t change much.
Traffic Stats of Blog
- First blog published on 10th Oct 2019
- Last blog published on 6th Feb 2020
- Total no of posts: 22
| Month | Posts | Traffic |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 2019 | 3 | 0 |
| Nov 2019 | 6 | 44 |
| Dec 2019 | 1 | 39 |
| Jan 2020 | 10 | 311 |
| Feb 2020 | 2 | 347 |
| March 2020 | 0 | 1358 |
| April 2020 | 0 | 8282 |
| May 2020 | 0 | 67000 |
| June 2020 | 0 | 48397 |
| July 2020 | 0 | 12452 |
| Aug 2020 | 0 | 7401 |
| Sept 2020 | 0 | 7213 |
| Oct 2020 | 0 | 6668 |
| Nov 2020 | 0 | 6143 |
| Dec 2020 | 0 | 7360 |
| Jan 2021 | 0 | 7976 |
| Feb 2021 | 0 | 7854 |
| 22 |
What Did I do? Strategy Followed
- I started a simple blog on WordPress CMS
- Did keyword research & found some low volume keywords to target
- Did competitor analysis to learn how they were creating content
- Also, used Semrush to analyze from what sources, pages & keywords they are getting traffic
- Created informative content. Used keywords in subheadings, made it very easy to read & useful. I tried to answer the query as per search intent. Also, used the Semrush content writing tool for overall better structure.
- Images used were from sites like Unsplash, Pexels, etc.
- Interlinked blog posts when relevant
- For leads added custom-made banners from Canva in between the content. (Sorry, my designers were busy with other p0rojects)
- Did minor social sharing & bookmarking.
- Submitted the sitemap & had patience.
Result: The blog gained traffic & if I had worked on that project consistently, for a long time period with full authority then I could have done much better. (Anyways this is what I think)
Key Takeaways
- Create a blog & create content relevant to your industry
- Keyword research is essential
- Try to nail search intent with each post
- Analyze your competitor & improve their work
- Follow KISS principle: Keep It Simple Stupid
- Stay consistent otherwise, your progress is going to stall & then decrease with time.
Post All This Traffic Stats Range
- Main Website: 1920 to 3165 users a month
- Blog: 0 to 67000 users a month
The client also appreciated later on and said: “Whatever you did with my website or blog worked.”
If you liked this post you may also like to read about my other digital marketing case studies. Or if you have any queries or thoughts please share with me via comments.
