B2B SEO Case Study: 87x mehr Traffic in 2 Jahren
Together we look at one
of our ongoing B2B customers, discuss the measures taken
and draw valuable lessons from them. Have fun! My name is Alexander Rus
and SEO is my bread and butter. On this channel we chat
about SEO and content marketing. If you want to learn how you can sustainably acquire
customers through your website, then subscribe to this channel right now. Because recently
a potential customer asked me again whether we also offer B2B content marketing. Regular viewers know that, but very briefly: We are even repeatedly mentioned as a
positive example of B2B content marketing, such as here by
marconomy or here by limesoda. And of course we can do that not only
for ourselves, but also for customers. And that's why we're doing
an SEO case study on B2B SEO today.
It's one of my favorite SEO case studies. Unfortunately I'm not allowed to show the client myself, but it's about a niche headhunter.
This means that the company is looking for suitable
employees for large companies for a very specialized area. They do it really incredibly well and
have a really brilliant business model. But let's get started. They started in March 2020 – of
course there was another big event back then , but that was the starting point and the
development since then is very nice to see here. That means we started somewhere here
and that's the development up to here. Looks funny at first glance now
and looks like things went really badly for the first few years.
But we take a closer look and show that things actually went very
well for the customer very quickly. So. What was the initial situation with the customer? Basically a flawless WordPress website.
The problem with the website was, as is so often the case : not enough commercial entry points for
the really lucrative keyword combinations.
In that case, a lot of, let's say,
local – but not local in the sense of "they 're a local company", but
because people are looking for "(brand) + location". Then: They had no
informative content marketing at all. That means one thing was commercial, and
they didn't have any informative content at all. Then:
Not competitive in terms of domain authority,
or, let's be honest, "nonexistent". And generally, very skeptical about
us doing the content creation for them. And now let's look at the process, namely:
What measures have we implemented for you? As always, phase 1 with a
customer, or the first 12 months: achieve initial goals. And the focus at the very beginning was
to generate more leads and more sales. What did we do for it? And this graph is so deceptive because it
actually worked really well. The first thing we did was
bottom-of-the-funnel content marketing. That means:
optimize for keywords that are already extremely close to conversion. That means,
these are all small keywords, where there is sometimes only 10 search volume – hence the
traffic graph, but that's where the money is buried.
What have we done? Researched commercial keywords and created a
suitable editorial plan and just extreme focus on sales, sales, sales. Then we built
very specific landing pages and very specific local landing pages for those keywords. There's a really cool video on
local landing pages – how to build them, what to look out for, what really needs to
be on that page? And that worked extremely well from the start. That means the traffic didn't explode,
but every single visitor was someone who actually had an interest
in that service. super cool The second thing we did in that
first 12 months was quality link building. So, that looks pretty nice.
From the beginning we did a lot of link building and really
pushed it forward regularly. What were we doing there? Dream 100 research. That means we looked at,
in and around this niche, what are the 100 websites and influencers
that we really want to get links from. Then we built a linkable asset to match those influencers,
websites, and magazines – with the goal of getting them to
link, and then outreach, outreach, outreach.
There is an episode on this where I explain how link building (actually this
digital PR link building) works best. And the result after one year
was a massive increase in leads and multiplication of revenue in the first year. That's actually the first lesson , we'll repeat it again at the end
, but very, very important: Not all traffic is created equal. It's often the case that you want to generate a lot of traffic
because you think that's good, but as I showed in the episode "SEO & Sales": It's all
about optimizing for the right keywords. That means some are trying
to rank for “seo”, which has 35,000 searches a month. And the really
smart ones optimize for “monthly seo support” and “ongoing seo support”
because that’s where the > €50,000 leads are in.
And that's exactly what
we implemented with this customer. That means, although it
doesn't look that exciting now , this was already a point where
things went incredibly well. So. Then came phase 2, and
we always call it the further development phase, that's the next 12 months.
And here was the focus for the customer: We have now only built landing pages and
local landing pages and very many of these pages could almost be
regarded as doorway pages. And if you have too many doorway pages, you may run into
problems at some point. That means the focus was on
increasing brand awareness, expanding expert status, minimizing risks, in context not only
such pages to pick up local keywords, but also really developing content with added value
and the content marketing funnel. What we actually did there, because
it didn't exist on this website yet, was: First we
looked at the user experience and content design areas. We developed mockups for the informational
area. How is it supposed to look like? How can we seriously convey expertise, authority
and trustworthiness? Then we established guidelines
for content design. Exactly, how should the content
look compared to the competition, so that we can of course make it better
and cooler and sexier.
Then, instead of just bottom-of-the-funnel content marketing, also top-
of-the-funnel and mid-funnel content marketing. That means, even for people who
are not yet at this point. What were we looking at? Just the big, important
topics around performance, in which case a headhunter is
really about the jobs themselves. We built guides
and really tried to become the niche library in this
very specific area. And also with the aim of not only
generating traffic, but also increasing the conversion
rate and larger inquiries through serious advice, because really large companies tend to
come to your website for the consulting aspect – so
it's the same with us , and also with their customers. And at the same time, we continued to make sure that we become competitive through high-quality link building
(same process). We are now at a
point where we are competitive. That means the influence of more links
goes down – that means diminishing returns. That's always the case when you have a
competitive link profile. Then the value of more
links naturally tends to decrease. That doesn't mean links are unimportant. That just means it becomes less important.
So
what was the result of this second phase? We continue to work with them. As you can see here, an
extreme increase in traffic. Extreme in a very short time. And the second
thing was, the conversion rate went up, and requests from corporations
for informative content. In other words, they weren't the ones who entered via
the cool landing pages and the local landing pages
, rather they entered the website via the consulting aspect
and then made the request. Very important to understand:
Yes, of course, in the beginning you first build the pages for commercial keywords that are bottom of
the funnel, i.e. that quickly lead to a conversion, but then it is also important to use
the content marketing continue to build funnels. And now:
What do we learn from this project, or rather
what are the key takeaways? Very, very important for anyone doing SEO: low-calorie vs. high-calorie traffic. That means that in the second phase
we obviously have a lot more traffic , but the value…
Even if the
traffic increase was an extreme multiplication, the value of this traffic was the same
as that which we built up in advance . That is, one traffic
was simply higher in calories and the other traffic was lower in calories. And it is very important to understand:
It is not about search volume. You want to rank where there is a good mix, and those are keywords that convert
with a reasonably good search volume. You don't just want search volume.
Because if you don't have those bottom-of-the-funnel pages, then
nothing converts really well anyway. This is also the problem that
many affiliates have, for example. Just fitting: A lot of traffic doesn't help much. It's so dangerous that you
often only look at the traffic value in tools, but that's not always meaningful. You can see it extremely well here. The traffic value here in this context
, in any case, is far too little as a monthly traffic value, i.e.
ridiculously little, and the ratio if you had looked here at what the traffic value was (we can look at that anyway), so
compared to that is out of proportion.
This means that you should really
only see this as a slight indicator, and it also depends extremely
on your business model. Then, as we've said before , always build the content marketing funnel
in SEO from the bottom up. So from close to the conversion to earlier,
earlier, and earlier in the customer journey. Don't build these sites first and
then these sites down here. This means that before we build the "seo" page, we build the "seo support" or
"ongoing support" page – very, very important. Then, B2B is all
about advice and trust and accordingly, because full often
it's like "oh, B2B space and SEO…" I think there's almost no space – I
think online store SEO is cool too – but SEO and content marketing are also
incredibly strong here, because in B2B, as you can see with us, it is
extremely important to build trust and expert status and to advise potential customers well and
honestly, and then the lead comes .
And what can also be learned from the project
, because I find it really exciting. This project started in March 2020, this
person who made this decision was very young and of course comes from
a world where you already know that SEO is very important and that
it is super essential and that it is the most important online -Marketing channel is.
But simply what everyone needs to understand is: the later you start with SEO – the others
do SEO. That means you don't do SEO, they build up a head start – that means the later
you start, the more money you have to invest. For example, in March 2020, now was
n't the time when everyone said, "Yeah, let me invest in SEO." But they did it and it
paid off like crazy. That's it again,
thanks for watching and see you next time. Bye!.
