30 Best SEO Case Studies: Real Examples & Results That Work

How would you like to read the best SEO case studies ever published?

More importantly, how would you like to copy the best practices in search engine optimization that are based on real-world examples and not just theory?

Below, you’ll find a list of the top 30 SEO case study examples along with the results and key findings. By studying these SEO case studies and applying the lessons learned on your own site, you can hopefully achieve similar results for your SEO campaigns.

Best SEO Case Studies

How i increased my organic traffic 652% in 7 days  – backlinko seo case study, seo investment – google search central case study.

Find out how an investment in SEO and implementing applicable structured data can improve user experience and increase organic traffic on Google Search.

How to Create a Squeeze Page That Converts at 74.5%  – Gotch SEO Case Study

See how Nathan Gotch used 9-step approach to create a squeeze page that converts at 74.5%. The tactics revealed in this case study also boosted another one of the pages by 69%, so you know it’s a proven method that works.

From 126 to 121,883 Unique Visitors in Under 6 Months – Ahrefs SEO Case Study

This SEO case study example focuses on Northmill, a Fintech company founded in Stockholm. It reveals how you can analyze your business competitors to develop higher-quality content that will gain a huge amount of traffic and convert those readers into customers. Read it to find out exactly what Northmill did during an SEO campaign to go from 126 unique visitors to 121,883 in under 6 months.

Ranking in 24 Hours in the Competitive SEO Niche – SEO Chatter Case Study

This case study was a partnership between SEO Chatter and Keyword Chef. It shows you how much organic traffic and money was earned by publishing 45 blog posts based on keywords found with the Keyword Chef tool. You’ll also discover the steps taken to get those posts to rank in the top 10 positions on Google within 24 hours or less after publishing.

From 0 to 75,000 Visits A Year – Ryan Darani Case Study

Find out complete details on the challenges, limits, budgets, and timeframes for a client that went from 0 clicks per day to now 300-400 on average with only 60 pieces of content on the site.

How We 4x’d Traffic and Doubled Revenue in E-Commerce – Diggity Marketing SEO Case Study

Diggity Marketing is also featured on my SEO secrets page and is a good resource for more SEO success case studies.

6-Step Process That Generated 150,732 Visits  – Robbie Richards SEO Case Study

In this SEO case study, you’ll learn a repeatable 6-step process that one SEO marketer used to get his client to #1 in Google. This strategy helped him outrank big name brands like Mashable, and increase organic traffic by 11,065% in just 6 months.

Scaling an Outdoor Niche Site to a $175K Exit – The Website Flip SEO Case Study

Get a complete month-by-month breakdown of how one business bought a website on Flippa and scaled it for a $175,000 exit. You’ll learn every step they took with SEO and site improvements from day one of the purchase at $23,000 and the sale 22 months later, all while making $100,938 revenue on top of the final sales price.

How Long Does It Take to Rank for A Keyword  – Bloggers Passion SEO Case Study

Find out how long it really takes for a keyword to hit the first page of Google in this case study. SEO for a new post can take some time to kick in before the page generates thousands of visitors from search. But how long do you have to wait? Is it one week, 30 days, or longer? Read this data-packed example to find out as well as get actionable steps you can take to speed up the ranking process.

Traffic Improves SEO and Affects Google Rankings – Cognitive SEO Case Study

This company tracked a strong correlation between a spike in traffic from a Reddit post to an increase in Google rankings for an ultra-competitive keyword. Find out how they experienced a boost from the 74th position to the 8th in Google search results in just one day.

$780 Revenue In Month 1 with An Aged Domain – Stream SEO Case Study

This is an ongoing case study of a website built on an aged domain. In this first post, you’ll learn how the aged domain was resurrected and what SEO steps were taken in the first month to generate $780.

Large Images In Google Search – Google Search Central Case Study

How i increased seo traffic by 600% in 24 months  – wordstream seo case study.

The author of this case study took a site from 20,000 monthly visitors to over 150,000 (a 600% increase) with mostly on-page SEO updates and internal linking methods. He even unpublished 90% of the content on the blog. Learn the four SEO techniques that he used in the right way to explode the search traffic.

A Case Study of Winning in Local SEO  – SEMrush Blog SEO Case Study

How to 4x organic traffic in 6-months using pure seo basics – authority builders seo case study.

This is an interesting case study on SEO because the site that was studied had increased organically from 7,000 visitors per month to about 68,000 between January to April. The site owner was doing a lot of things right but many simple things were also being done wrong. Find out here how you don’t need fancy SEO tricks to get high rankings and traffic to your blog or website. Once the author performed a technical SEO audit and put into place some off-page optimization strategies like link velocity, anchor text ratios, and relevance, the site’s traffic quadrupled in the next 6 months.

How to Rank in the First 2 Results on Google – Leanne Wong SEO Case Study

How to 14x search traffic in 8 months – matthew woodward seo case study.

Matthew Woodward is an expert in search engine optimization and he publishes a lot of SEO case study examples. This one in particular is worth the read because it shows you how SEO doesn’t have to be complicated to get exponential results. Inside, you’ll learn how to create a strong plan of action based on 7 steps. Using these same strategies in this case study, the author We increased traffic on an affiliate website from 2,732 visitors per month to 38,420 in just 8 months (14x higher or 1,306% to be exact).

Data-Informed Strategy Delivers Results – Rise Interactive SEO Case Study

This is an SEO case study for the American Egg Board (AEB), a U.S. The AEB is best known for its long-running slogan, “The Incredible, Edible Egg”, and the Just Mayo scandal. The AEB relies heavily on organic traffic to drive awareness; however, it was experiencing a steady decline in traffic and organic visibility, year-over-year. Learn how the Rise Interactive agency used an integrated site-wide keyword strategy, an SEO-first approach on the site structure, and ways to capitalize existing SEO equity to generate an 87% increase in mobile traffic and 22% improvement in desktop traffic.

How an Integrated, Keyword-Driven Blog Strategy Increased Organic Traffic to a Leading Analytical Laboratory’s Blog by 58% – TopRank Marketing SEO Case Study

Organic visitors increased by 87%, located in target local cities – wastecycle seo case study.

The client behind this case study is Wastecycle, a sustainable waste management company that provides a recycling and waste management service. Wastecyle wanted to get more business by reaching customers looking for local skip hire and Hallam digital marketing agency provided local SEO strategies to achieve this goal. Read the SEO case study to find out how the agency generated an 87% increase in organic visitors in local cities, 150% increase in clicks for the targeted term “skip hire”, and 297 varied phrases achieving page one rankings on Google.

How We Ranked on the First Page of Google for 4 Competitive Keywords in Just 8 Months – OutreachMama SEO Case Study

Design modo penalty removal boosts organic traffic by 61.79% – reposition seo case study.

This is a good SEO success case study to read because it focuses on Google penalty removals. You can skim through in less than one minute too. Design Modo, a resource for digital designers and developers, had an apparent partial penalty that had gradually decreased its organic traffic month on month. Reposition SEO agency got involved and found out that the root of the penalty was due to Design Modo’s outbound links rather than the usual inbound links. After a few tweaks and a reconsideration request to Google, the organic traffic increased 61.79% along with an 86% improvement in all keyword rankings.

An Increased In Total Organic Users By 555% – Victorious SEO Case Study

This case study follows the journey of Oji Vape, a wholesale vaping supplied company, that initially got burned by an agency that used outdated SEO tactics that no longer applied to Google’s constantly evolving algorithms. After switching to Victorious SEO agency, Oji Vape experienced a 555% increase in organic visitors within 8 months. This has translated to a 745% improvement in goal completions that took into account sales inquiries by phone and online form submissions. Find out what Victorious did to achieve these amazing results.

Content Strategy for a B2B Furniture Supplier – Web Talent Marketing SEO Case Study

313% more organic traffic with real examples – from the future seo case study.

This case study examines the SEO results from 3 different websites, in 3 totally different niches, that all have different conversion metrics for “success.” Learn what steps were taken to run an SEO campaign for each website to meet the key goals for success.

How We Got a 32% Organic Traffic Boost from 4 On-Page SEO Changes – Moz SEO Case Study

A 48% boost in year-on-year organic traffic – brand new copy seo case study.

This case study focuses on Field & Lawn, a marquee hire company that operates throughout the UK. As a result of the hired agency’s efforts, Field & Lawn saw a 48% increase in Year-on-Year traffic, a 5% reduction in bounce rate, and a significant ranking improvement for almost all 42 targeted keywords. Find out what methods were used to gain these increases in visibility and how you can copy them for your own success.

How I Ranked 1800+ Keywords on Page 1 of Google in Just 6 Months – Shane Barker SEO Case Study

7 steps to 197,514 monthly traffic – apollo digital seo case study.

In this SEO case study, you’ll discover the step-by-step formula of the entire search engine optimization process that Apollo Digital uses to rank its clients’ websites. This study in particle focuses on a SaaS business process management software and how it went from around 8,000 monthly visitors to about 200,000 in less than 2 years. You’ll get everything explained in detail like the content writing process, interlinking strategies, visual improvements, headline tweaking, and of course, SEO tactics.

Read More Case Study Examples

I also have more digital marketing case studies with real results from other industry experts that you can study and use to improve your online marketing campaigns:

What Is an SEO Case Study?

An SEO case study is an in-depth study of search engine optimization in a real-world context. It can focus on one SEO tactic or a group of SEO strategies to find out what works in search engine optimization to improve traffic and organic visibility.

Are Case Studies Good for SEO?

Case studies are good for SEO because you can learn about how to do search engine optimization in an effective way. Instead of just studying the theory of SEO, you can learn from real examples that applied SEO methods to achieve success.

Summary for the Best SEO Case Studies

I hope you enjoyed this list of the best SEO case studies that are based on real-world results and not just theory.

As you discovered, the SEO case study examples above demonstrated many different ways to perform well in search engines. By studying the key findings from these examples, and applying the methods learned to your own site, you can hopefully achieve the same positive outcome. New SEO success case studies are being published every month and I’ll continue to update this list as they become available. So keep checking back to read the current sources of information on search engine optimization.

SEO Chatter is dedicated to teaching the fundamentals of search engine marketing to help marketers understand how to increase organic website traffic and improve search engine rankings.

  • PPC Management Services PPC perfected
  • Social Media Marketing Spark conversations, grow your audience
  • SEM Services Success through search
  • SEO Services Race up the rankings
  • Conversion Rate Optimization Don’t just drive traffic, drive conversions
  • Google Ads Services Powerful platform, powerful results
  • Content Marketing Services Content that converts
  • Remarketing Turn curiosity into customers

By Campaign Type

  • Ecommerce See your sales soar
  • Lead Generation Turn leads into revenue
  • Local Increase revenue: online & in-person
  • Enterprise Scale and Dominate

By Industry

  • Real Estate
  • Cybersecurity
  • Improve Conversion Rate
  • Improve Quality Score
  • Improve Lead Quality
  • Reduce CPCs
  • Lower Acquistion Costs
  • Increase Sales
  • Rank Higher on the SERP
  • 11 Google Ads Scripts to Run
  • Conversion Tracking Issues
  • Scale Campaigns
  • Recent Peformance Drops
  • Google Ads & GA4 Not Matching
  • Organic Traffic Flucuations
  • Google Ads Overspending
  • Losing to Competitors
  • Website Architecture for SEO
  • What's a Good ROAS
  • What's a Good Conversion Rate
  • PMax Campaigns: Full Guide
  • Create PPC Analytics Reports
  • Build Topic Clusters for SEO
  • How to Best Split Your Budget
  • How to do a Website Migration
  • Do SKAGs Really Work?
  • Content Marketing
  • Social Media
  • Best Audit Tools to Use
  • Ecommerce Brand Drives 50% Higher AOV
  • SaaS Brand Doubles Demo Requests
  • University Achieves Enrollment Goals
  • Social Media Drives a 60% Revenue Increase
  • PPC Management
  • SEO Marketing
  • Google Ads Management
  • Ecommerce Marketing
  • Saas Marketing
  • PPC Pricing: How Much Should You Pay?
  • SEO Pricing: How Much Does SEO Cost?
  • How to Optimize Google Ads
  • Google SGE: Full Guide
  • What is an SEO Consultant?
  • Meet the Team
  • Free Consultation

14 SEO Case Studies: Challenges, Solutions & Results

Christina Lyon

Patience Hurlburt-Lawton

Content Editor

Approved By

Caroline Cox

Senior Content Manager

These SEO case studies illustrate that marketing tactics like content optimization, local SEO, and strategic keyword targeting are likely to set your brand up for search engine success. Find out what obstacles they overcame, what methods they leveraged, and how they achieved major ROI.

Here, you’ll find a handpicked roster of 14 inspiring case studies:

  • Moneta Group
  • Escape the Room
  • DesktopReady
  • Honda Motor Co.
  • Career Group Companies
  • Happy Ears Hearing Center
  • Mommy’s Bliss
  • Forks Over Knives

Constant keyword research, consistent content writing , user-friendly web design, backlinking … so much goes into a solid, in-depth search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.

What’s more, you might invest a ton of effort into all these tactics but still struggle to get anywhere near the top of search results.

Two pieces of good news: You’re not alone, and there are ways to get your rankings where they ought to be.

Reading over real-world examples in a good SEO case study can help inspire new strategies and show you what’s possible with the right plan in place.

To give you a head start, we’ll cover dynamic SEO success stories from HawkSEM as well as other agencies. We’ll share some of the best SEO case studies, complete with tactics, common challenges to overcome, and results to support your marketing efforts.

Get ready to ramp up your SEO.

14 SEO case studies for top-ranking inspiration

Thousands of monthly traffic hits, 2X conversion boosts, and pumped-up keyword rankings are just a few of the incredible results our clients have experienced with the right SEO services.

But you’ll notice each brand comes with a unique challenge that informs the right SEO strategy for them.

(Image: Adobe Stock)

1. Moneta Group catches local leads with triple-boosted keyword portfolio

Moneta Group has over two decades of experience in the wealth management space. Still, competition increased over time, so we needed to study those competitors and their keywords closely.

While Moneta wanted to improve national keyword rankings overall, their top priority was to stand out in four local markets. If you’re also looking to boost visibility in your area, then check out the strategies used in this local SEO case study.

Strategies:

  • Local SEO – We built geo-specific web content to capture potential wealth management clients in the four areas Moneta Group was interested in. On top of that, our beefed-up citation profiles for each office helped solidify independent local ranking signals.
  • Competitive analysis to fill keyword gaps – Moneta still wanted nationwide keyword rankings, so we had to review their competitors to see what was missing. We identified keywords with the lowest competitive metrics and organized them into a brimming content calendar to rank for each one.
  • Content optimization – Moneta had a ton of great content on its website, but it needed a revamp for Google and new audiences. We conducted ongoing, on-page optimization, including backlinking and keyword development.
  • 326% increase in net organic keyword portfolio
  • 164% increase in organic keywords in positions 1-3
  • Over 23% increase in Google Analytics goal completions

2. Escape the Room makes a real impression — 4 million, to be exact

With locations across 18 cities and 10 years of industry expertise, Escape the Room is a leader in the live game and entertainment industry.

With all those locations to manage, their marketing initiatives fell behind. They had a substantial base but needed strategic input to work with the algorithm and maintain a strong digital footprint.

  • Metadata revamp – Escape the Room had 16 different locations, and not every website contained optimized metadata. But crawlers dive into these details, so they deserve some attention. That’s why we added new SEO elements like title tags and meta descriptions to keep Google happy.
  • Speedy load time – Slow site speed can send your audience packing after just a few seconds. We dove into each website’s assets to remove anything clunky and decrease load time. This also improved mobile responsiveness.
  • Quality content creation – From team-building ideas for company staff to escape room tips and tricks, there was no shortage of relevant content to create for Escape the Room. We paired new pieces of content with fresh, snazzy website designs to attract information-seeking readers, planting the seeds for conversion later on.
  • Achieved an account-wide peak of 62% impression share
  • Hit a record number 4 million monthly impressions
  • Reached an all-time-high account-wide ad position of 1.1 for the brand

3. DesktopReady waves hello from the top of the SERPs

A new website launch caused DesktopReady to experience a traffic slump, despite being a leader in their industry with over 1 million users on their desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) solution.

How could they maintain their leading position in this space with endless competition and minimal organic traffic? We knew what we had to do.

  • Technical SEO audit – New website launches sometimes miss the mark with SEO. We conducted a full audit to catch all issues affecting the site’s appeal to SERPs.
  • Content all around – We optimized old content with new targeted key terms and created new content to target more qualified leads and foster website traffic.
  • SEO support for social media profiles and YouTube – Believe it or not, your social profiles matter, too. So, we optimized DesktopReady’s social media to complement its strong web content and backlink profile.
  • Increased users by 409%
  • Grew backlinks from 822 to 1,340
  • Jumped from 4 to 468 terms in SERP rankings

Keyword revamps, backlink strategies, and content creation are not the simplest tasks to complete on a marketer’s endless to-do list. Luckily, an SEO agency can check all those boxes for you.

4. Honda doubles traffic and reaches 30 million people

Honda Motor Co. wanted to promote their new Civic hatchback and Accord models to South American audiences. The problem? They were competing for keywords with their dealership partners.

On top of that, Honda just wasn’t reaching their target demographic with their existing content.

  • New and improved keyword targets – We needed to get Honda and its dealers on the same page. So, we looked at the digital marketing goals for all parties and created new keyword targets for each to follow.
  • Audience research – Honda had a target demographic, but SEO campaigns just weren’t reaching them. We sat down to discuss the brand’s unique selling points and linked them to their customers’ needs via tailored SEO content and keyword research.
  • 30% decrease in CPC (cost per conversion)
  • 40% increase in dealer inquiries
  • 200% increase in traffic

5. Zephyr sees massive gains in lead volume and market share

When leading SaaS company Zephyr came to us, their digital marketing strategy was overly broad and lacked cohesion. With campaigns and goals in place, they needed help reigning everything into a sharp message and aligned approach.

With so many team members and initiatives at play, everyone was hamster-wheeling and struggling to stay caught up.

This lapse in cohesion created a hodgepodge of mixed messaging, and, not surprisingly, they weren’t bringing in as many qualified leads as they desired.

  • Big-picture strategy: The first thing we did was get everyone on board about how to organize each and every initiative to work together cohesively. With an aligned, collaborative vision, we created a more unified strategy for all digital marketing campaigns.
  • Landing page redesign and optimization: We tackled creative from the get-go and redesigned a landing page that was working against Zephyr by not engaging its visitors. Plus, the lead form was long and convoluted. With an engaging, dynamic new landing page design and a more efficient lead form, Zephyr saw immediate results–we’re talking double the lead volume than the original landing page.
  • 100% increase in Zephyr’s lead volume with the new landing page
  • $250 decrease in CPA

(Image: Career Group Companies)

6. Career Group Companies boosts job applications with keyword revamp

Imagine you’re an employer with a ton of job listings, and you aren’t receiving any applications. Career Group Companies , a staffing agency, faced this problem. The culprit? Less-than-stellar SEO was hiding their listings from prospective candidates.

We got to work with tried-and-true SEO tactics to improve the brand’s connection with its audience, drive more traffic, and improve application volume.

  • Keyword portfolio expansion – We needed to understand why people looking for certain jobs weren’t landing on Career Group Companies’ listings. The answer was a few adjustments to their keyword portfolio, including long-tail variations and keyword phrases that included specific job titles and industries.
  • Data-driven strategy – Our proprietary tech, ConversionIQ ™, helps us decrypt all the data to reveal the whole picture of your SEO and content marketing campaigns. We used our platform to gather sophisticated data across multiple channels and identify qualified and unqualified leads to inform a greater SEO strategy.
  • New content assets – Career Group Companies wanted to highlight diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts and channel company-wide goals in their content. Naturally, we created new content assets to accommodate these goals and optimized existing content as well.
  • 43% increase in job listing page views from organic traffic
  • 71% increase in entrances from organic searches directly to job listing pages
  • Significant growth in the candidate pipeline

7. Content, colors, and CTAs bring Happy Ears Hearing Center a nearly 4X traffic increase

Happy Ears Hearing Center is a Phoenix-based audiology office that offers specialized ear healthcare services to clients.

The company had two SEO goals: one, to capture the local audience that would best benefit from their services. And two? Establish their brand as a national industry expert on hearing issues.

We tackled a wider net of keywords and user experience improvements to garner more conversions.

Strategies :

  • User experience enhancement – Don’t you hate clicking on a web page only to be met with a long, boring block of text? We spiced things up on Happy Ears’ website with colors, digestible headers, and engaging calls to action (CTAs). This led to more local conversions and appointments.
  • Expanded keyword targets – Happy Ears wants to be an online go-to for all things hearing. So, we had to research what its audience was plugging into Google and expand that across the whole country.
  • 245% increase in total organic keyword rankings
  • 396% increase in organic traffic
  • 44% increase in local conversions

Happy Ears had its audiology services on point. With added focus on the online user experience, readers benefited from their knowledge and expertise.

8. More visuals and updated keywords help DILO recover lost rankings

DILO is a gas-handling product and service provider with decades of experience, but even its longstanding SEO wasn’t immune to a website redesign in 2019.

We’ve seen it before: lost traffic and dropped keyword rankings from a new launch or migration. And in DILO’s case, those lost rankings were high-value keywords that it really needed to get back in order to re-establish its place in the industry.

  • On-page optimization – We always conduct a technical SEO audit after a redesign. This time, we fixed a few speed and navigation issues. Next step? Content optimization with updated target keywords and meta tags.
  • Visual content – The gas industry isn’t the easiest to grasp, even with an organized, comprehensive article. We introduced more infographics and charts into DILO’s content to improve organic traffic and the user experience.
  • 36% increase in organic clicks within 6 months
  • 24% increase in Google clicks for high-value keywords within 3 months
  • 46% increase in Google impressions within 3 months

9. Easly hits the SEO ground running with 70 new pieces of optimized content

Easly is a Canada-based platform that provides capital advances on SR&ED grants to innovative new brands.

The company was new to the digital marketing world and came to HawkSEM with a brand-new website. It was our job to get it off the SEO ground with relevant content and authority to appeal to their audiences.

  • New content to the max – We had to start from scratch, and 70 new pieces of content did the trick. Of course, we had to ensure the information was flawless and accurate to capture niche audiences for this brand. And we wrote for every potential customer in the funnel, from curious onlookers to conversion-ripe audiences.
  • Domain authority – Easly was still fresh to Google’s eyes. They didn’t have enough external or internal links to channel credibility and thought leadership. We focused on creating linkable content that naturally brought backlinks from other reputable industry players.
  • Technical tidbits – New websites always have a few snags. We enhanced site speed and adjusted some web elements to improve the mobile experience.
  • 2,500% increase in referring domains
  • 40+ featured snippet results on Google
  • 1,500% increase in the brand’s keyword portfolio

People love reassurance, especially before making a purchase. A content library brimming with industry knowledge and helpful tips delivers that assurance to both readers and search engine crawlers.

10. Wind River triples CTR with PPC and SEO management

Wind River is a global SaaS brand that helps companies with digital transformation for vital intelligence systems in the aerospace, medical, automotive, and defense spaces.

They originally came to us for PPC services , but every cohesive marketing strategy leverages SEO, too.

  • Internal linking – We improved site navigation and organic rankings by finding relevant placements for internal links across Wind River’s content.
  • Content research – Tech niches are abundant with potential content, but you really need to ensure audience relevance before you start writing. We conducted competitive analysis and keyword research to inform our content calendar.
  • Technical and on-page SEO – We covered our technical bases by cleaning up metadata and title tags. On top of that, we ensured logical formatting for web content with H1s and H2s, as well as updated all pieces of content with relevant keyword targets.
  • 20% decrease in ad spend
  • 294% increase in clickthrough rate (CTR)
  • 39% increase in users

11. Samanage reaps organic traffic with a poppin’ content calendar

Asset management and service-desk SaaS brand Samanage operates across 50 different countries. Despite their global presence, they still had trouble ranking in the SERPs.

A custom-coded WordPress template impeded them from making technical SEO changes to appeal to Google’s crawlers. Plus, their blog wasn’t aligned with a cohesive SEO strategy, so they enlisted marketing agency Tinuiti to help them get on track.

  • Robust content strategy – Tinuiti published over 65 pieces of content for Samanage across various types. They started with keyword-targeted blog posts and expanded to whitepapers, landing pages, and more evergreen content to improve web visibility.
  • Blog redesign – Brainstorming ways to improve conversion rate optimization? Take a page from Tinuiti’s playbook and optimize your blog’s design elements with overall website A/B testing.
  • 42.14% increase in organic traffic YoY
  • High rankings for non-branded keywords

12. Mommy’s Bliss builds trust with new audiences via link-building

When you’re a mom-and-pop shop, marketing might be as easy as a Facebook ad or physical sign. But when you start expanding, things get more hectic.

Mommy’s Bliss sells high-quality baby products and experienced immense growth that spurred an entire website redesign. Those two events can seriously throw your SEO strategy off-course.

Luckily, help from HawkSEM made all the difference, as showcased in this ecommerce SEO case study.

  • Backlinking for credibility – Mommy’s Bliss expanded its audience, so new visitors might not have been aware of the company’s strong values and credentials. That’s why we needed to launch a backlinking strategy to establish E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness). Think about it: parents need to feel 100% confident in a brand before purchasing a product for their kids.
  • Daily SEO management – HawkSEM offers all clients a dedicated manager to oversee progress, strategize improvements, and catch any snags before they develop into bigger problems. We handled all the SEO oversight so Mommy’s Bliss could focus on creating new products for its booming audience.
  • Over 65% increase in organic sessions year over year
  • 79% increase in total keyword rankings
  • Doubled goal completions

13. Forks Over Knives leverages search data to recover lost traffic during COVID

The pandemic kept people at home and away from Forks Over Knives’ website. The health lifestyle brand noticed a slump in organic search traffic, along with a decrease in search volume for their target keywords.

But the problem wasn’t their rankings. They still held top spots for their target keywords, people just weren’t typing them into Google anymore. Search intent had changed, and marketing agency Wpromote knew the keywords needed to change, too.

  • Trend research – Wpromote used Google Trends data to understand how people were shifting their search queries and which keywords were replacing the old ones.
  • Content strategy shift – When life gives you new keywords, you make new recipes (at least, that’s what Forks Over Knives did during the pandemic). Everyone was looking for recipes, so Wpromote used trend data to predict the most highly searched recipes to create content for.
  • 278,000 organic sessions for their “banana recipes” pages
  • 41% increase in total organic sessions month over month (MoM)
  • #1 trafficked all-channel landing page since publishing

People adapt with the times, and your SEO strategy should, too.

14. Vimeo takes technical SEO to the next level for better visibility

Even enterprise-level SaaS businesses like Vimeo need to stay sharp on their SEO . With over 260 million users uploading hundreds of thousands of videos daily, it’s not surprising that indexing and structure data issues arose.

Customers struggled to conduct basic SEO tasks to optimize their videos, like indexing APIs, adding structured data to their sites, submitting sitemaps, and beyond. Meaning? They weren’t getting as many eyes on their video content.

The solution? Vimeo got on board with Google’s SEO best practices to improve visibility and searchability for their active customers.

  • Allowing customers to index videos at scale – Vimeo streamlined the indexing process to allow embedded videos to show up on Google’s SERPs. By using iframe embeds and noindex in tandem, embedded Vimeo videos from customer websites’ could be indexed and thus, provide more visibility to their own web page without the mess of adding individual markups for each video.
  • Making Key Moments searchable – Ever searched for how to boil an egg and had to skip past the first three minutes to get to the instructions? Annoying, right? Fortunately, you won’t have this problem anymore because time-stamped segments of Vimeo’s video content now show up in Google Search. By adding Clip markup to all video pages and rolling out Seek markup (auto-generated Chapters that Google identifies as Key Moments), Vimeo customers can now attract more organic traffic to specific segments within each video.

When it comes to visibility and video content, Google and Vimeo go together like PB&J.

What is an SEO case study?

An SEO case study highlights how a consultant or agency partnered with a specific client to drive significant, notable SEO results.

When brands want to beef up their SEO strategy, they often partner with an SEO agency or professional to help them achieve desired outcomes.

A case study helps paint a clear picture of how a brand went from point A to B on the search engine results page, or SERP — with “B” being results like skyrocketed organic traffic, greater conversion rates, and high keyword rankings.

But SEO isn’t the same for every brand. Sure, there are overarching categories like content and keywords. But different niches, budgets, and goals distinguish SEO tactics and results across the board.

Reviewing an SEO case study helps you identify success markers and the strategies used to achieve that success.

With these insights, you can glean tips and tactics to apply to your brand’s SEO strategy.

The takeaway

Whether you’re running a small business or a giant ecommerce operation, SEO success is vital for a modern online marketing strategy.

Each of these SEO case studies shows key takeaways and tactics you can apply to create the most effective strategy for your business goals.

And if you still need a hand? HawkSEM’s SEO experts have over a decade of experience helping clients like you improve conversion rates, boost traffic, and smash any other SEO goals on your roster.

Our clients enjoy an average of 4.5x ROI after working with us. So, let’s turn your SEO into one of our success stories. Book a call today .

This post has been updated and was originally published in August 2023.

Privacy Overview

CookieDurationDescription
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional11 monthsThe cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy11 monthsThe cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

case study for seo

  • Google Search Central
  • Español – América Latina
  • Português – Brasil
  • Tiếng Việt
  • Case studies
  • Search Central

Learn how Google Search can help you reach more people with your website

Browse SEO case studies and success stories to see first-hand how Google Search can help you reach more people with your website.

99 SEO Case Studies, Examples and Success Stories

Capturing a significant share of voice (+39.7%) & share of search (+92.8%) for a leading college in malaysia.

Can your institution dominate the digital landscape? Gaining a significant Share of Voice (SOV) in the market is critical in today’s competitive environment. SOV measures

How the 80/20 Rule Grew Clicks by 211% and 232% Impressions

In a fiercely competitive electronics market, standing out in search results can be a game-changer. In June 2024, we partnered with a leading eCommerce retailer

9 Months, 443K Impressions, 35.8K Clicks and Tons of Leads: The Power of Targeted SEO

Wondering why you should invest in SEO? Read this case study to learn how implementing the right strategies and SEO-structured content created a compounding effect

How We Revived a Penalized Website to Gain 58% Click Growth in 6 Months!

It’s been more than a year since we took on the challenge of reviving the website of a Singapore-based used car dealer that had been

How Building Topical Authority With Quality Content Skyrocketed Revenue by 384% for an eCommerce Jewellery Brand

Can a new eCommerce store achieve phenomenal growth in just one year? This is the story of our journey with a jewellery client who launched

How We Captured a Huge Market Share in a Declining Market

While search demand for your target keywords is an important factor, you don’t have to wait for it to grow to see your business thrive!

Revenue Growth of 53.3% for a Manufacturing Client, After Just 1 month.

This client from China, primarily targeting the global market, had a well-established website but lacked a proper SEO strategy. Despite the potential, they were not

Growing Impressions, Clicks and Patient Inquiries for a Plastic Surgery Clinic

Have you ever wondered how healthcare providers can dramatically increase their online visibility and patient inquiries with just a few strategic changes to their website

How Google’s Algo Update Rewarded our Orthopedic Client’s Traffic by 71.69% for SEO Done Right

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, the only constant is change. We started working for this client (an orthopedic clinic) in January 2024. Our

A 96.52% Organic Growth For An Online Home Decor Store

Our client, a rising star in the decor and home interior eCommerce sector approached us in December 2023. Our mission was clear: to ensure that

A 108% Boost in Organic Traffic: Strategies That Grew a Health Food Empire

Our client, a burgeoning online health food store, found themselves in this exact predicament. Despite offering a wide range of high-quality, nutritious products, their online

Skyrocketing a brand new website from 0 to 49.6K impressions in 3 months

In the competitive digital landscape, launching a new website and carving out a significant presence is a formidable challenge. In early 2023, we partnered up

Can your institution dominate the digital landscape? Gaining a significant Share of Voice (SOV) in the market is critical in today’s competitive environment. SOV measures the

In a fiercely competitive electronics market, standing out in search results can be a game-changer. In June 2024, we partnered with a leading eCommerce retailer in

Wondering why you should invest in SEO? Read this case study to learn how implementing the right strategies and SEO-structured content created a compounding effect that

It’s been more than a year since we took on the challenge of reviving the website of a Singapore-based used car dealer that had been severely

Can a new eCommerce store achieve phenomenal growth in just one year? This is the story of our journey with a jewellery client who launched their

While search demand for your target keywords is an important factor, you don’t have to wait for it to grow to see your business thrive! Here’s

This client from China, primarily targeting the global market, had a well-established website but lacked a proper SEO strategy. Despite the potential, they were not leveraging

Have you ever wondered how healthcare providers can dramatically increase their online visibility and patient inquiries with just a few strategic changes to their website content?

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, the only constant is change. We started working for this client (an orthopedic clinic) in January 2024. Our goal

Our client, a rising star in the decor and home interior eCommerce sector approached us in December 2023. Our mission was clear: to ensure that when

Our client, a burgeoning online health food store, found themselves in this exact predicament. Despite offering a wide range of high-quality, nutritious products, their online visibility

In the competitive digital landscape, launching a new website and carving out a significant presence is a formidable challenge. In early 2023, we partnered up with

10 of Our Best Case Studies

1. how an ecommerce company totally dominates its target market with seo.

We recently discussed a case study for one of our Malaysian clients that runs a website for alcoholic beverages. Here are some numbers to show how …

2. Strategies to Overcome Traffic Stagnation and Trigger SEO Growth Momentum

This report is an update to our previous case study for a Singapore-based ecommerce site selling baby shoes. We started working with them in November 2021 …

3. How We Rank Keywords That Generate Enrolments Worth Lots of $$$ for a College.

Our client is an educational institute in Malaysia offering graduate and postgraduate level courses. Education in itself is a highly competitive market, with universities jostling for …

4. Strategies to Win Valuable Organic Traffic in a Hyper-Competitive Industry

Our client is a site that provides services in the finance niche- accounting, taxation, corporate secretariat consultancy, etc. Since they are based in Singapore, the world’s …

5. Strategies to get stubborn & highly competitive keywords indexed/ranked in Google fast.

This is a quick extension of our previous case study for our client, which offers consulting services in the VR technology niche. The client had originally …

6. Impressions increased by 4.8M since the last post 3 months back!

This is an update to one of our previous case studies (Click here to read). As mentioned earlier, we started working for an online pet food ...

7. SEO Case Study: How we increased the impressions by 300% in less than 3 months

Our client is a site that provides services in the female fertility niche in Singapore. This niche is a highly-targeted sector with low monthly search volumes ...

8. How we managed to increase our client’s organic traffic by over 80%

The client is an e-commerce site selling baby shoes in Singapore. Compared to various industry giants, the client’s site is relatively new with much lower domain ...

9. An increase in impressions by about 800% is achievable!

We own an app development platform/website that offers services on building native and hybrid mobile apps to feature on App Store. With a global target market ...

10. How we grew our site impressions from 2k to 4k+ in three months!

We own an informational site that talks about solar panels and other solar products. Since we’ve been targeting global readership and competing against industry giants for ...

At Growth Pro , we’ve learnt from both- failures and success.

Over the years, we’ve developed proven SEO strategies that include keyword research, competitor analysis, SEO content creation, on-page optimization, internal linking structures, local SEO, recovering from Google penalties, ranking for keywords, website redesigning, etc.

Check out how we applied SEO best practices for organizations in various niches to reach their goals and how your business can benefit from these!

Insightful SEO case studies that depict how we took over complex SEO projects and worked with clients to understand and resolve their pain points.

  • E-commerce SEO case studies
  • B2B SEO case studies
  • Shopify SEO case studies
  • International SEO case studies
  • Local SEO case studies/ Small business SEO case studies
  • SAAS SEO case studies

Follow these successful SEO case studies and learn the exact steps, tools and tactics we used to improve page rankings, grow organic traffic and drive conversions.

Get a feel of how your business can grow the same way!

Check out our range of services for SEO Malaysia , Global SEO , SEO website design and development , Whitelabel SEO , and SEO content writing services .

If you want to aggressively GROW your online presence, we need to talk ASAP!

202001011280 (1367600-U)

  • Case Studies
  • Our Portfolio
  • Our Online Assets
  • 60 Persiaran Midlands, 10250 Penang, Malaysia
  • Phone: +6012 472-6233
  • WhatsApp: +6012 472-6233
  • All agencies in USA
  • Los Angeles
  • San Francisco
  • Philadelphia
  • All services in USA
  • AI Marketing
  • Digital Marketing
  • Social Media Marketing
  • Email Marketing
  • Content Marketing
  • All industries in USA
  • Travel & Tourism
  • Real Estate
  • Fashion & Retail
  • Media & Entertainment
  • Food & Beverage
  • Agency of the Month

the-charles-digital-agency

  • All agencies in the UK
  • Bournemouth
  • All services in the UK
  • All industries in the UK

favoured-digital-agency

  • All agencies in Canada
  • All services in Canada
  • Influencer Marketing
  • All industries in Canada
  • Travel Tourism

case study for seo

  • All agencies in Australia
  • All services in Australia
  • PPC Marketing
  • All industries in Australia
  • Beauty & Cosmetics
  • Hospitality

devotion-digital-agency

  • All agencies in Europe
  • All services in Europe
  • Web Development
  • All industries in Europe
  • IT & Technology

case study for seo

  • All agencies in Asia
  • All services in Asia
  • B2B Marketing
  • All industries in Asia

digital-business-lab

  • Agency News
  • Marketing Resources
  • Industry News

crowd-gazes-into-the-future-top-marketing-predictions-for-2024

  • Digital Ad Campaigns
  • Case Studies
  • Social Media Campaigns

best-brand-sustainability-ad-campaigns-by-companies-and-digital-agencies

  • Marketing Blog
  • Advertising
  • Ecommerce Marketing

top-15-most-important-kpis-for-a-digital-marketing-agency-track-your-success

  • Industrial Blog
  • Fashion Marketing
  • Sports Marketing
  • Luxury Marketing
  • Legal Marketing
  • Healthcare Marketing

dont-lose-your-clients-build-customer-satisfaction-for-digital-agencies

  • Digital Marketing Tools
  • Marketing Reporting Tools
  • Digital Marketing Analytics Tools
  • Email Marketing Tools
  • Other Tools
  • Social Media Management Tools
  • Social Media Marketing Tools
  • Social Media Analytics Tools
  • Social Media Monitoring Tools
  • Influencer Marketing Platforms
  • Web Design Tools
  • Landing Page Builders
  • UI / UX Design Tools
  • Website Builder Software
  • Front End Development Tools
  • Team Management Softw...
  • Project Management Tools
  • Agency Management Software
  • Productivity Management Software
  • Time Tracking Tools
  • Sales Tools
  • Customer Data Platforms
  • Product Feed Management Tools
  • Accounting Software
  • AI Design Tools
  • AI Content Tools
  • AI Analytics Tools
  • AI Marketing Tools

Market your SaaS Tools and reach digital agencies & marketing professionals worldwide.

  • All Categories in USA
  • Artificial Intelligence Events
  • Design & Development Events
  • Digital Marketing Conferences
  • Social Media Events

2024-the-agency-growth-summit

The Agency Growth Summit 2024

channable-the-impact-cube-2024

The Impact Cube 2024

Submit your exclusive marketing event today.

Submit your event to reach a wider audience! Whether it's digital marketing, AI, or any related theme, we would love to help spread the word out!

  • All Categories in UK
  • All Categories in Canada
  • All Categories in Australia
  • All Categories in Europe
  • All Categories in Asia
  • Digital Agency Jobs

cremarc agency jobs

Looking for Your Next Job?

Get discovered by leading agencies searching for new talents. Submit your CV and take the next step in your career.

how-these-successful-seo-case-studies-transformed-online-visibility

How These 7 Successful SEO Case Studies Transformed Online Visibility

By analyzing and diving deep into numerous SEO case studies, you can understand how the top SEO agencies did it before and how you can overshine them.  

From solving technical puzzles to creative content innovations, we’ll share 7 examples in detail to prove the strength and potential of dedicated search engine optimization efforts.

Before diving deep, here are some key insights for your review so you can grasp more!

  • The case studies page is the second most visited one, according to Fractl’s data.
  • In-depth case studies attract new clients by letting the results speak for themselves .
  • As Content Marketing Institute highlights, case studies rank among the top three content types for converting leads .
  • Case studies provide inspiration and actionable SEO strategies.
  • Case studies must be enhanced with images, videos, data, and text , making them more appealing to potential clients.

Table of Contents

  • Taktical x Artsy
  • Smartsites x AGA Parts
  • Nifty Marketing Australia x Acer
  • Major Tom x Criteo
  • Seoplus x Trellis
  • Ignite Visibility x Fame and Partners
  • Major Tom x Orkin

Why Are SEO Case Studies Important?

7 successful seo case studies with proven results.

SEO case studies can be your golden key to showcasing the direct impact of search optimization strategies. They demonstrate real-world examples supported by numeric information, which is a great eye-catcher!

Potential clients always check the previous work of the agencies they are considering. For example, Fractl shares on HubSpot that their case study page is the second most visited on their site ! (This shows that their case studies significantly influence lead conversion.)

You can gather extremely valuable insights into effective strategies while learning how to share your own success stories in SEO. When you explore these 7 search engine optimization case studies by top agencies, you’ll learn how to transform mere data into actionable insights and a story to drive more leads. 

Learn from these SEO experts to tell your very own stories of success and demonstrate how you can overcome the challenges.

1. Taktical x Artsy

Challenges:

  • Artsy’s site did not appear in Google search results because it was built using JavaScript, which Google couldn’t read effectively.
  • Taktical Digital collaborated closely with Artsy’s developers to create a custom solution that involved converting screenshots of the site into hard-coded HTML.
  • The site was broken down into sections to evaluate commercial keyword value.
  • Artist and artwork pages were identified as key SEO targets.
  • The website design was optimized for conversions, and a robust link-building plan was implemented.

taktical-artsy-seo-case-study

  • 2000% increase in monthly visitors
  • 636.69% increase in conversions
  • 258% increase in conversion rate

2. Smartsites x AGA Parts

smartsites-seo-case-study

  • AGA Parts needed to optimize a complex site for international markets and specific part numbers.
  • The approach involved conducting extensive market research and prioritizing keywords for optimal results.
  • The website design was tailored to target international clients and translated into four languages.
  • A strategic link-building campaign was implemented to enhance online visibility and authority.
  • Significant increases in conversions and click-through rates, along with a reduction in cost per click

3. Nifty Marketing Australia x Acer

nifty-seo-case-study

  • Acer’s website was outdated and lacked the necessary eCommerce functionality and effective marketing tools.
  • It hindered the ability to engage customers and drive online sales.
  • The project included a complete website overhaul, incorporating advanced eCommerce features to enhance the user experience and sales capabilities.
  • A comprehensive SEO strategy was deployed to improve search engine rankings and drive organic traffic.
  • Highly targeted Google Ads and social media campaigns were launched to maximize reach and engagement with the target audience besides SEO strategies.

nifty-seo-case-study-

  • 163% growth in online sales
  • over 300% increase in orders within the first month post-launch
  • significant improvement in Acer Australia’s digital presence and overall sales performance

4. Major Tom x Criteo

  • Criteo needed an external partner to create a robust digital strategy aligned with complex B2B needs.
  • They wanted to improve conversion rates and enhance the value of content.
  • A B2B-specific digital strategy was crafted to effectively target business clients and enhance overall market presence.
  • A content hub was developed, and marketing automation was implemented to streamline processes and improve lead generation.
  • YouTube content was optimized by leveraging existing assets, driving increased engagement and conversions.

major-tom-criteo-seo-case-study

  • 200% increase in organic SEO traffic
  • 78% rise in website conversions

5. Seoplus x Trellis

seoplus-trellis-seo-case-study

  • Trellis had limited content marketing and SEO efforts in a highly competitive industry.
  • They struggled to gain market share and improve online visibility and needed to attract more targeted traffic to their website.
  • A comprehensive strategy was implemented, focusing on content creation, technical SEO enhancements, and strategic link-building.
  • The goal was to increase site traffic, improve search visibility, and enhance keyword rankings across targeted search terms.
  • 132% increase in overall site traffic
  • 164% rise in search clicks
  • substantial growth in keyword rankings, positioning Trellis as a stronger competitor in their market

6. Ignite Visibility x Fame and Partners

ignite-visibility-seo-case-study

  • Ignite Visibility aimed to enhance online visibility and increase sales conversions.
  • Fame and Partners operates in a highly competitive fashion market.
  • A dual strategy was developed, focusing on both SEO and email marketing to maximize overall digital effectiveness.
  • Existing content was optimized, and targeted email campaigns were implemented to drive more organic traffic and improve conversion rates.
  • Significant increase in organic search traffic
  • Noticeable boost in sales conversion rates

7. Major Tom x Orkin

  • Orkin had a large website, causing user confusion despite strong SEO results and a negative impact on the user experience and conversions.
  • The website was redesigned with a mobile-first, user-friendly approach to enhance accessibility and the user experience across all devices.
  • A hyperlocal digital ad strategy was implemented to streamline user interactions and improve lead generation in targeted areas.

major-tom-seo-case-study-orkin

  • 50% year-over-year increase in leads
  • 29% decrease in cost-per-lead
  • 54% increase in overall company revenue

When you learn more about SEO case studies, you immediately discover the paths that lead to success and the pitfalls to avoid. 

Let’s look at why they’re invaluable for both agencies and their clients, as they:

  • Show how SEO impacts business performance,
  • Provide proof of an agency’s ability to deliver measurable results,
  • Guide future SEO investments with practical examples,
  • Illustrate how different SEO challenges are successfully addressed,
  • Allow businesses to compare their performance with industry standards,
  • Enhance client trust in an agency’s capabilities when choosing an SEO company ,
  • Help attract new clients by showcasing successful past projects.

For the agencies themselves, these case studies are:

  • Their success stories told in vibrant detail,
  • Recounting how strategic thinking transforms SEO challenges into measurable gains,
  • Painting a picture of a journey from problem to solution to success .

And clients get more than just a glimpse of possible outcomes. They get:

  • A detailed view of what to expect when they embark on their own SEO journey,
  • Information about specific tactics that have worked ,
  • Insights about the outcomes that were realized.

And beyond the basics, these case studies reveal the creativity and innovation that set some campaigns apart from the rest. They show how the best SEO agencies in the US can think outside the box to deliver exceptional results, whether it’s through unique content strategies, advanced technical optimizations, or strategic link-building initiatives. 

Final Thoughts

As we close the book on our deep dive into 7 standout SEO success stories, it’s clear that digital marketing is as intricate as it is thrilling.

These real-world SEO examples show just how much flexibility and creativity it takes to stand out online. Each story sheds light on how the right SEO strategies can dramatically boost a business’s visibility and growth. 

What we see isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution but rather a collection of smart, personalized approaches that bring together the best of expertise, innovation, and teamwork. 

Whether you’re just starting out or running a large company, these insights encourage you to think creatively, act decisively, and adapt swiftly to seize opportunities!

Share this post

case study for seo

Related Posts

big data and seo

Subscribe to keep up with fresh news and exciting updates. We promise not to spam you!

This website uses cookies. Continued use of this website indicates that you have read and agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy .

Wittypen Blog

Level Up Your Technical Content Writing Game: Advanced Tips and Tricks

Technical Content writing

How to use AI tools for Content Writing

How to use AI for content writing

What Is SEO Content? A Guide to Creating Content for SEO

What is SEO content

5 Best SaaS SEO Agencies

SaaS SEO agency

13 Real-World SEO Examples: How Brands Optimise Their Websites 

SEO Examples

Last updated on June 20th, 2024

  • Introduction

To enhance your website’s visibility and drive more organic traffic, leveraging Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential.

SEO optimizes your website’s performance, improving its ranking on search engine results pages. This strategy encompasses various techniques, including keyword research, content optimization, link building, and improving user experience. It also involves local search optimization, regular content production, and the development of a strong online presence.

Implementing an effective SEO strategy can significantly boost your website’s visibility, increase organic traffic, and enhance customer trust.

Let’s dive into some SEO examples to illustrate how these strategies can advance your business.

Table of Contents

1. monday.com , 2. freshworks , 4. airtable , 5. wordstream, 6. belden brick company, 9. bankbazaar , 10. venngage , 11. rei , 12. sweetwater, 13. beauty bay , conclusion , top 10+ best seo examples and case studies to inspire from.

Read on to gain insights from the best SEO examples to inspire you to create your SEO campaigns. From leveraging keywords to creating content that meets customer needs, discover the 10+ search engine optimization examples that have achieved tangible results.

case study for seo

Monday.com is one of the best SEO writing examples. The organization had explored the paid or non-organic channels of marketing and customer acquisition and was yet to unlock the exponential growth that SEO could deliver.

With the help of Semrush’s keyword research tools and a bunch of other SEO tools, scaled content creation by ideating content and creating content briefs, all of which targeted and prioritized keywords centered around their brand.

The keywords were chosen based on a scoring system that took into account three things: volume, keyword difficulty, and user intent. This step then helped the team of writers and editors to optimize content based on the scores and optimize accordingly. 

By implementing these SEO strategies, monday.com was able to increase rankings of  49%  of their content pieces, of which 38% feature in the first pages of the SERPs. 

case study for seo

Freshworks, Inc., is the parent company of Freshsales, a customer relationship management (CRM) platform designed to help businesses manage and nurture their customer relationships. Freshsales used SEO to generate quality leads by targeting keywords focused on users’ search intent and maintaining a keyword density that would push them to the top of the SERPs.

They used tools like Ahrefs to understand the related searches by users around their target keyword and create a long-form content piece based on that. Finer details were also touched upon, including the URL, page title, and meta description.

Freshsales also strengthened their backlinking game. Backlinking or inbound linking, the second most important step after content creation, is the process by which your content gains acknowledgment by other websites, which in turn informs search engines of the credibility of your site, recommending it to more and more users. 

As a part of their B2B lead generation processes, Freshsales also directed their attention towards interlinking that captivates readers’ interest and increases their knowledge pool, which further moves them towards conversion.

As a result, Freshsales witnessed an average increase in leads by  9.7% every month, and in ten months, 61% of the total leads were through organic channels. 

case study for seo

When it comes to a company that is one of the best search engine marketing examples, Canva tops the list. Their enormous content marketing empire earned them a community of more than 100 million people across 190 countries – more than half of their customers being Fortune brands. 

Canva has focused on understanding the intent of the searcher, developing parent and child landing pages, implementing scalable landing page structures, and investing in backlink outreach. 

The $40 billion design juggernaut has created an impressive backlink empire that helped it build domain authority for itself and increase ranking on the SERPs. Further, Canva’s landing page templates, designed to target different use cases and long tail keywords, enabled it to achieve scalability and rankings.

Essentially, Canva’s success is attributed to multiple inbound marketing strategies such as content marketing, search engine optimization, and backlink building.

case study for seo

Airtable is an incredibly popular cloud-based database and collaboration platform, and it has gained significant traction in the world of search engine optimization (SEO).

By making it easier for users to store and access their data, Airtable has quickly become a go-to resource for businesses looking to supercharge their SEO efforts and make it to the list of best SEO website examples.

Airtable allows users to customize their database structure, making organizing data and finding the information they need easier. This helps businesses keep track of important SEO metrics like page impressions, keyword rankings, and conversions. 

Additionally, Airtable provides an easy-to-use dashboard for tracking search engine performance, making it easier for businesses to evaluate their SEO success quickly. 

Overall, Airtable is quickly becoming a popular tool for businesses looking to increase their SEO performance.

case study for seo

In a recent case study, Wordstream, an online advertising platform, sheds light on the SEO strategies that helped its client increase website traffic by 600% . 

  • Firstly, Wordstream analyzed content that attracted traffic to the website and unpublished the rest. Some of the unpublished content was either revamped, optimized, and republished, or for the ones with negligible or zero SEO potential, a redirect to the homepage or another relevant content asset was set up.
  • Secondly, the company offered value to websites that had content on a similar topic or had earlier linked to similar content. This helped increase conversion rates.
  • Thirdly, content that was not only valuable but was optimized with the right keywords was produced regularly.
  • Lastly, internal links and anchor texts were updated to boost traffic. 

The four techniques used to achieve this massive traffic growth were an in-depth content audit, link-building outreach, regular SEO-focused content, and the implementation of an internal link-building strategy.

case study for seo

Belden Brick needed to increase its online presence to better compete in their market. To do so, they recruited digital professionals and online marketing strategists at TKG SEO, an SEO firm, to create a comprehensive SEO strategy. 

The strategists started by building a worldwide header and footer for the website. This allowed them to keep the website updated whenever they launched new products.

A new lead-generating campaign was also created, which also happens to be one of the greatest SEO campaign examples. This involved streamlining the code and content of the website, as well as improving the overall usability.

The results of the SEO strategy were soon visible, with traffic increasing by more than  85%  within a year. TKG’s efforts to adapt the web marketing approach for 

Belden Brick also led to more repeat visits and improved the quality of leads. The strategy proved successful, and Belden Brick was able to compete better in its market.

case study for seo

Walmart’s SEO strategy is focused on two main pillars: creating content that is useful to consumers and optimizing search engine algorithms. 

To achieve these goals, Walmart has implemented a range of tactics, including creating content that educates consumers, such as

  • how-to guides, 
  • product reviews, 
  • video tutorials,
  • optimizing their website for mobile devices, 
  • building out their social media presence, and,
  • leveraging internal linking to improve user experience and visibility.

Walmart has implemented an effective SEO strategy that has helped them to generate  $43 billion  in online sales in 2021. This strategy includes the use of a parent-child structure for product pages, which helps pages to rank for different keywords. 

Additionally, Walmart.com is ranked #19 in the US with  854.9 million  visits in December 2022, with desktop being the main source of traffic (56.14%). 

This indicates that Walmart is a popular website for its audience and that its competitors, such as Amazon, eBay, and Target, are also receiving traffic from this audience – making Walmart a good example of search engine optimization.

case study for seo

According to Ahrefs, by 2022, their organic traffic had increased by a significant  190% , while their organic search ranking had increased by an average of  8.2% . This was further corroborated by their impressive  18.6%  click-through rate, indicating that Zapier’s content was both engaging and relevant to their target audience.

To create content, Zapier identified keywords and topics that were relevant to their target audience. They then created content around these topics and updated the website regularly, ensuring that content was continuously fresh and engaging.

Additionally, they optimized page titles, meta descriptions, and URLs to ensure maximum visibility on search engines. 

Lastly, Zapier implemented structured data to their website, allowing them to be more visible on SERPs and to stand out from the competition. They used structured data to indicate the product’s features and attributes, which helped them to better inform potential customers.

case study for seo

BankBazaar is an online marketplace for banking and financial services in India. Their SEO strategy has been incredibly successful and one of the best SEO examples, resulting in 22.6 million  monthly organic visits, as well as increased brand visibility and loyalty. 

The bank’s approach to SEO is centered around creating high-quality, relevant, and engaging content that offers value to users and answers their questions. This content is then optimized for search engine visibility and optimized for user experience so that visitors stay on the website longer. 

BankBazaar also has an active social media presence, and they use social signals to drive traffic to their website. They run a lot of campaigns and PR initiatives and use search engine advertising to gain visibility and drive more traffic.

Finally, the bank has a comprehensive link-building strategy, which involves creating backlinks from authoritative websites, creating infographics and videos, social sharing and bookmarking, and building relationships with bloggers and journalists. 

case study for seo

Venngage, an online visual design platform, implemented an effective SEO strategy focused on understanding their customers, optimizing content to reach the right audiences, and leveraging quality backlinks. 

The company first conducted extensive market research to understand what its customers were searching for. This helped them create relevant content tailored to their customers’ needs.

They then optimized their content by utilizing relevant keywords and phrases, along with the right meta tags and page titles. 

To further improve their rankings, Venngage sought out high-quality backlinks. They accomplished this by forming partnerships with other websites and building relationships with industry influencers. 

By leveraging backlinks from these authoritative sites, Venngage was able to boost its rankings and visibility. 

It is one of those search engine examples that show outstanding results.

Over time, Venngage began to rank for high-volume, low-intent searches and lower-volume, high-intent searches. This enabled the company to gain significant brand visibility and drive product sign-ups. 

As of August 2022, Venngage has  150,000  new user registrations month on month.

case study for seo

Google has indicated that site speed (and, as a result, page speed) is one of the signals used by its algorithm to rank pages. A slow page speed indicates that search engines can crawl fewer pages with their crawl budget, which could negatively affect indexation.

Rei is amongst the best SEO examples that prioritize fast loading times.

To achieve this goal, Rei has adopted a comprehensive SEO strategy that involves leveraging various tactics to improve visibility and ranking on search engine results pages. The website implements keyword optimization, internal linking, and other strategies to maximize its organic reach.

Additionally, Rei employs various technical SEO tactics to improve page speed and optimize its code for search engine crawlers. These include caching, compression of media files, and enabling browser caching.

case study for seo

Sweetwater.com has implemented an impressive SEO strategy to increase organic search traffic and drive sales. By first looking into their BrightEdge Data Cube and Ignite Analysis, Sweetwater.com identified potential concepts that could be optimized and organized for better search engine visibility. 

Sweetwater.com has also used StoryBuilder and ContentIQ to track the success of its SEO strategy over some time and stands as a good on page SEO

By leveraging BrightEdge’s objective reporting capabilities, Sweetwater.com has seen a  63%  increase in page 1 ranked organic keywords, a  39%  increase in overall ranked organic keywords, a 38% increase in organic-assisted transactions, and a  20%  increase in new organic sessions.

By creating a unique and personalized experience for customers, driving organic search traffic, increasing profits, and ultimately reaching more potential customers, Sweetwater.com has become one of the good on page SEO examples.

case study for seo

In December 2002, Beauty Bay had 2.8 million  visits to its website, with an average duration of more than 7 minutes.

Beauty Bay has mastered its SEO strategy to help it rank highly in the competitive beauty industry by targeting relevant keywords and optimizing its website content for better search engine visibility. They also ensure their website is mobile-friendly and has an optimized layout for an ideal user experience. 

Their link-building strategy- a good search engine optimization example, includes a combination of outreach efforts, guest blogging, and strategic partnerships to generate backlinks from highly respected websites.

In addition, they use relevant anchor text and keep their link profile diverse by using a variety of websites.

Finally, Beauty Bay takes advantage of different marketing channels, such as social media and pay-per-click ads, to drive targeted traffic to its website. They also have an active presence on multiple channels to keep their customers engaged and informed.

By leveraging all these SEO strategies, Beauty Bay could stay at the top of search engine rankings.

Optimizing a website for SEO involves a holistic approach that is both technical and creative. It can range from improving the structure of a website’s content to creating social media campaigns to link back to the site. 

The examples of SEO businesses mentioned above are a mix of content creation that meets their customer’s needs through efficient keyword use, utilizing the right formatting techniques, creating meta tags and titles, utilizing internal and external linking, and using features like rich snippets to improve visibility.

At Wittypen, we provide professional SEO content writing services , to enhance SEO and content efforts.

Leverage these strategies and make it to the top of the SERPs now!

  • content creation
  • content marketing
  • Importance of content in Digital Marketing
  • search engine optimization

Share this article

' src=

24 Top Content Writing Tools for SEO To Scale Up Your Growth

Top 10 platforms to outsource content writing, what are lsi keywords and how can they impact your blog.

What are LSI Keywords

SEO in the Last Decade: Important takeaways for Organic Traffic

Key takeaways for SEO over the past decade

How to Smartly Insert Keywords in a Blog Post – A Complete Guide

case study for seo

8 Ways to Do Google My Business Optimization [Infographic]

Google My Business Optimization

  • Content Advisor
  • Daily Pulse
  • Integrations
  • Intent Signal
  • Keyword Reporting
  • Market Insights
  • Opportunity Forecasting
  • Page Reporting
  • Recommendations
  • Share of Voice
  • Site Report
  • StoryBuilder
  • B2B Solutions
  • Keyword Research
  • Connect Content and SEO
  • Succeed with BrightEdge
  • ENTERPRISE SEO
  • Case Studies
  • White Papers and POVs
  • Research Reports
  • Customer Stories
  • ROI Calculator
  • SEO Glossary
  • Press Releases
  • Agency Info
  • Office Locations

SEO Case Studies

Learn how organizations in virtually every industry find organic search marketing success with BrightEdge. Learn the SEO best practices of more than 3 dozen companies through these insightful SEO case studies.

case study for seo

American Licorice Company Enjoys Sweet Success with BrightEdge

Discover how the eCommerce team at American Licorice Company increase page 1 keywords, traffic and revenue using the...

case study for seo

Stanley Steemer Accelerates Business with SEO

After pivoting to a professional services company, Stanley Steemer was in search of ways to connect with customers and...

case study for seo

Meta Doubles Monthly Search Traffic with Help from Non-Branded Keyword Research

Meta was successfully ranking for branded keywords, but when it came to non-branded terms they lacked visibility. By...

case study for seo

National Tyres Drives Traffic to Retail Stores with SEO

Discover how National Tyres and Autocare worked to identify and quantify the opportunities for both local SEO and content...

case study for seo

Teradata Elevates SEO with 723% Increase in Traffic to Key Content

Discover how the SEO team at Teradata increased traffic and tracked growth by implementing BrightEdge

case study for seo

Crayola Drives Engagement with Creative, Fun Experiences

BrightEdge helps Crayola draw up winning marketing strategies.

case study for seo

Shades of Light Builds Topical Authority, Drives Revenue with SEO

BrightEdge customer builds awareness, and improves the expertise, authority, and trust of their site.

case study for seo

Beauty Retailer Triples Traffic and Revenue for Key Ecommerce Pages with BrightEdge...

See how BrightEdge client saw rapid SEO results

Windsor uses BrightEdge to drive SEO

Windsor Store Leverages BrightEdge To Drive Image Results And Improve SEO Rank

See how to drive results by monitoring performance and refining strategies based on results

case study for seo

Paycor Leverages Data Cube And Sees 994% Organic Lead Growth

See how 25 hours each week can increase organic traffic

case study for seo

Manulife Singapore improves Organic Visibility with 60% of Priority Keywords Moving...

Learn how they leveraged BrightEdge to increase results on page one

case study for seo

Solomon Colors Increases Organic Rank And Traffic

Solomon Colors SEO Strategy Focused on Image Optimization and SEO Best Practices to Achieve Results

case study for seo

Graco Sees a 718% Increase in People Also Ask Results

Discover how Graco’s team saw an increase in results for Quick Answers and images as well

case study for seo

MYOB Increased Search Channel Trial Sign Ups by 162% and Drives Thousands of New B2B...

Discover how they successfully collected leads using BrightEdge Technology features

case study for seo

CION Investments Increases Position One Keywords 58%

Follow how they avoided competing with their own ranking content using BrightEdge

aga utilized brightedge to redesign their site

AGA Coordinates SEO with Multiple In-House Teams Using BrightEdge

Discover how AGA utilized their Communications, Marketing, and IT teams to build their SEO efforts

case study for seo

CBIZ Captures and Nurtures B2B SEO Leads Sometimes Worth $100,000s Per New Client

CBIZ, Inc. is gaining on their competitors using the BrightEdge platform. Learn how they're capturing and nurturing...

teradata used brightedge contentiq for technical fixes

Teradata Uses ContentIQ for Technical SEO, Triples B2B Leads in Less than 5 Months

Teradata used ContentIQ to find technical fixes to their website.

case study for seo

Orangetheory Fitness Sees a 104% Increase in Traffic and 26.6% Increase in New...

Discover how they used BrightEdge to develop SEO driven results

case study for seo

Travel Nevada Sees 126% Increase in Page 1 Ranked Keywords

Find out how they used BrightEdge to turn their relentless SEO efforts into massive success

case study for seo

Melton Trucking Increases Traffic by 25% Without New Content

Proven SEO success with BrightEdge builds case for SEO program

Jump to navigation

SEO Case Study: How We Grew a Client’s Traffic to 120K/Month

By: Attrock

Updated On: September 29, 2021

Word Count: 3899 words | Est. Reading Time: 26 mins

Did you know that investing in SEO is one of the best ways to grow your brand’s reach, leads, and sales organically?

In this SEO case study, we’ll cover our proven SEO strategy and how it helped us grow the traffic to our client’s website manifold.

But why did we leverage SEO, after all?

One of the biggest reasons behind it was the fact that organic traffic is highly targeted. So, if you’re not ranking well for relevant searches, it’s likely that you’re losing out on many conversion opportunities.

That’s why we choose SEO to grow our client’s website traffic. And it paid off, too. In just six months, we drove over 619K visitors to their website.

Want to find out how?

In this SEO case study, we’ve put in every bit of our strategy so that you too can replicate the same and grow your traffic.

Disclaimer: This content contains some affiliate links for which we will earn a commission (at no additional cost to you). This is to ensure that we can keep creating free content for you.

SEO Case Study: The Objectives

Our main goal was to boost the traffic of our client’s website through organic search. Also, we wanted the client to rank for more competitive keywords.

And that’s not all.

We also wanted to rank them for high CPC keywords that could help the client boost their revenue at a later stage.

SEO Case Study: The Challenges

We had to face several challenges while improving our client’s rankings in the SERPs (search engine results pages). We’ll talk about them in this section of this SEO case study.

Let’s get started.

1. Competitive Niche

Our client’s website is in the digital marketing niche, which is one of the most competitive niches out there.

This meant that we had to compete with some of the top digital marketing experts and companies to increase our client’s visibility in the SERPs.

These competitors that we are talking about are all well-established players in the industry. When compared to them, our client’s website was relatively new, which made the situation even more challenging.

It also meant that our client’s website was ranking low for a lot of keywords that we were targeting.

What further increased the competition was the rise in interest in “digital marketing” after the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Numerous brands turned towards online media to promote themselves and boost their sales.

See how the popularity of digital marketing rose in 2021.

Google Trends

Image via Google Trends

2. Low Traffic (Relatively)

When we started out for this case study, our client’s monthly traffic was a little less than 100K. Sure, that’s quite a lot of traffic, but we were looking for ways to take it to the next level.

Prominent websites in the digital marketing niche have traffic that goes well into a few hundred thousand per month.

Low Traffic

However, growing traffic in such a competitive niche was a challenge in itself. And that’s where our SEO strategy comes in.

Let’s take a look at it in the next section of this case study.

SEO Case Study: The Strategy We Leveraged

To grow our client’s website traffic, we outlined a new SEO strategy, focusing on extensive keyword research, on-page optimization, powerful content planning, and more.

Our idea here was to ensure that we were able to create content that could rank well in Google searches and also give it the right impetus through other SEO techniques.

1. Backlink Audit and Disavowing Bad Links

The first thing we needed to look at was our client’s backlinks. There were hundreds of thousands of backlinks from a few thousand domains.

However, that also meant that we needed to audit the client’s backlink profile well.

There were chances that some of the links were bad links, which were having an adverse impact on their site’s SEO. It was important for us to spot those links and disavow them.

For this, we first got a snapshot of our client’s backlink profile from Semrush . Next, we started going through the list of backlinks to spot bad links.

Backlink Audit

The idea here was to prune their backlink profile such that only high-quality links remained for better SEO.

We analyzed each backlink for a variety of parameters, including:

  • Domain authority (DA)
  • Page authority (PA)
  • Type of link
  • Anchor text
  • Toxic score
  • Link relevance

Once we checked all of the links for each of these parameters, we had a list of potential bad links.

The next step was pretty straightforward — disavow them.

We created a text file with a list of all of the bad links and submitted the same for disavowing.

2. Perfect On-Page Optimization & Timely On-Page Audit

The next step we used for making this SEO case study successful was to check the client’s site for on-page SEO parameters.

Because even the best of content won’t rank well in organic search results if it’s not optimized well.

If the website offers a poor browsing experience due to slow loading speed or not being mobile friendly, it wouldn’t rank well in searches.

The Page Experience update also meant that we had to optimize the website for Core Web Vitals.

To ensure that our client’s website passed all these checks, we conducted timely SEO audits using Semrush . It helped us get a detailed idea of where the site stood in terms of on-page SEO.

Technical SEO audit helped us track the following:

  • Core Web Vitals
  • HTTP errors
  • Structured data errors
  • Page loading speed
  • Internal linking
  • Crawlability
  • JavaScript and CSS issues

We really like Semrush’s Site Audit tool for this purpose. It gave us detailed insights into each of these errors and helped us fix them to boost our client’s on-page SEO performance.

You May Also Like:

  • How to Improve Your Website’s SEO

3. Keyword Research and Competitor Analysis

In this section of this case study, we’ll discuss the next important part of our strategy – keyword research and competitor analysis.

To improve our client’s site ranking in the SERPs, it was important to target the right set of keywords.

While our client’s posts already ranked for over 78K keywords, we wanted to take their SEO performance to the next level through the duration of this case study.

So, we came up with a new strategy for all of the new posts that we were going to publish. It involved both keyword research and competitor analysis.

Keyword Research

Keyword Research

Before we started writing any post, we conducted thorough keyword research for better SEO targeting. We selected keywords that had good search volume, high CPC, and low competition.

We also went after high CPC keywords to open more opportunities for monetizing the client’s website.

Selecting low competition keywords made it relatively easier for us to rank the client’s site higher for those keywords.

Keyword Research 2

And why did we choose to target keywords with high search volume for the client during the tenure of this SEO case study?

Our goal was to drive maximum targeted traffic from the new posts published during the period of this SEO case study. And that is something that high-volume keywords with lower competition could help us achieve.

Competitor Analysis

Along with keyword research, we also conducted in-depth research about the SEO strategies of our client’s direct competitors.

The goal here was to understand how well their competitors ranked for the keywords that we were targeting.

For this, we leveraged the Keyword Gap tool provided by Semrush . It helped us understand where our client stood and what else we needed to help them outrank their competitors.

Competitor Research

To find more keyword ideas, we did an in-depth analysis of the keywords that they were already ranking for.

These were the keywords we could potentially target through our new content and improve our client’s SEO for this case study.

4. Solid Content Planning and Publishing

Content played a central role in the SEO strategy that we devised to grow our client’s traffic.

Once we had found the right set of target keywords for our client, we moved on to the content creation and publishing stages.

In this section of our SEO case study, we’ll delve into how we created content that helped them rank higher in the SERPs.

Strategic Content Creation

Content is at the heart of any SEO strategy and that’s why we decided to create content strategically during the period this case study talks about.

We started brainstorming ideas for our client’s blog posts and infographics based on the selected keywords. The idea was to create content that could rank higher than others and attract backlinks too.

After all, good content means better SEO.

We set out to create valuable resources for our client’s readers in the form of comprehensive blog posts.

Note how we created a detailed content calendar for the same.

Strategic Content Creation

The idea here was to create blog posts that dived deep into each topic and provided more information than any other competing post.

Also, we extensively created infographics, which typically help a lot when it comes to earning backlinks. Distributing the infographics well using their embed code helped us generate backlinks and improve the client site’s SEO.

What’s more?

We also created loads of tools and software review posts to help our client’s readers find the best solutions based on their requirements. These, too, helped boost traffic and contributed to turning this project into a successful SEO case study.

  • How to Build a Powerful Content Marketing Strategy

User Intent-Focused Content

Another important thing that we’re going to talk about in this SEO case study is how we created content focusing on user intent.

We did this as it’d ensure that their content aligns well with the expectations of searchers. As a result, it helped us boost the time readers spent on the client’s website.

For example, note how the post below serves the basic intent behind the search request.

Focus on User Intent

And how did we go about this?

Rather than focusing on creating content for search engines, we decided to focus on the target readers.

We asked questions like:

  • What would the searcher want to read about?
  • What is the prime goal behind the search request?
  • Does the content on our client’s website answer the questions posed by the searcher?

These questions helped us figure out if our client’s content truly helped satisfy the search intent behind the keywords we targeted. In turn, it helped us make our client rank for those keywords.

Content Upgrades

Yet another strategy that we employed was to update the already-published content on the client’s website.

In this section of this SEO case study, we’ll tell you how we updated the existing content on the client’s website to make it relevant to the present day.

We scanned through the few hundred blog posts published on the client’s website and made a list of posts that were ranking on the first or second page of Google.

We then created a plan to update them with new statistics, strategies, and examples. Here’s how we tracked all content upgrades in one place.

Published Content

The idea was to improve their SEO and search rankings so that their posts can reach the top three positions in the SERPs.

So, how did we go about content upgrades?

We mainly did the following:

  • Replaced old statistics with new ones
  • Updated strategies to reflect new advancements
  • Increased the content length to offer more value
  • Replaced old examples with new and relevant ones
  • Optimized content for the target keyword and other related keywords
  • Improved internal linking structure
  • How to Conduct an In-Depth Content Audit

Optimization Using Advanced Tools

Publishing content or updating it wasn’t enough. We decided to take things a step further to make this SEO project successful.

We’ll tell you exactly what tools we used for better content optimization under this section of our SEO case study.

We didn’t just focus on keyword optimization. We also leveraged the TF-IDF (Term Frequency – Inverse Document Frequency) formula to improve the competitiveness of our client’s content on the SERPs.

Basically, we identified the frequency of relevant side words (secondary keywords and long-tail keywords) and optimized the client’s posts for those keywords too.

Internal Links Addition

Internal links are crucial for a variety of reasons. These include:

  • Quicker discovery and indexing of new content
  • Keeping visitors on the website for longer intervals
  • Passing link juice from one page to another

While we already included internal links in every post that we wrote, we doubled down on our internal linking efforts.

Internal Links Addition

Our goal was to add as many internal links as possible to each new post but in a relevant manner. Even while updating old posts, we added more internal links to them.

Experimenting with Content Frequency and Volume

Content frequency matters a lot for both search engines and your readers.

If your regular visitors don’t see new content being published frequently, they may likely think that your website is inactive.

On the other hand, if you publish too much content, they may think that you’re overloading them with content.

But what about search engines?

Search engines crawl your website regularly. If they find that you’re not adding new content, they may reduce the crawling frequency. This may lead to a long delay in indexing your new posts.

So, we experimented with content publishing frequency on our client’s website. This allowed us to get more posts indexed on Google and also helped us retain their readers.

For instance, we published 7 posts on the client’s site in December 2020.

Experiment with Content

On the other hand, we published 13 posts in January 2021.

Experiment with Content 2

5. Brand Mentions and Link Acquisition

The next step in our SEO strategy was to provide a focus on off-page SEO parameters. To achieve this, we had to get the client more brand mentions and backlinks.

We put sufficient impetus into getting branded backlinks too, which would serve a dual purpose of improving brand awareness and SEO.

That’s what we’re going to tell next in this SEO case study.

Along with guest posting, we also leveraged competitor research for link acquisition. This helped us spot websites from which our client’s competitors were getting backlinks.

We created content that could provide value to the readers of the target sites and approached those websites to link to relevant resource pages from our client’s site.

Get More Brand Mentions

The result?

We were able to get backlinks for several important pages on the client's website that were ranking well in the SERPs.

Similarly, to secure brand mentions, we approached several websites and provided quotes and expert answers to them. They added our client’s quotes in their existing content along with a brand mention.

  • Steps to Get on the First Page of Google

6. Content Promotion & Distribution

You’ve probably heard of the strategies we’re discussing in this SEO case study. But one thing that most marketers forget to give more attention to is content promotion and distribution.

These two things are necessary to ensure that the content you create reaches the right audience. For this, we came up with a powerful content distribution strategy for our client.

We’ll tell you how exactly we increased the exposure of their content in this section of this case study.

In our experience, guest posts are one of the most effective ways to distribute content and get backlinks.

We wrote several high-quality guest posts for prominent websites and linked back to our client’s content. This helped us increase exposure to their content and also strengthen their backlink profile.

In addition, we syndicated our client’s blog posts on platforms such as Medium.

Content Promotion

In the case of infographics, we wrote short descriptions for our client’s infographics and shared them on numerous other websites. This not only helped us build our client’s brand awareness but also improved their link profile.

SEO Case Study: The Results

In this case study, now we’ll show you the results that our SEO strategies helped the client achieve. Let’s take a look at how our strategy and efforts paid off.

But before we delve into the results, let’s take a quick look at the period of this case study.

Case Study Duration

We implemented our strategy from 1st October 2020 to 31st March 2021 and tracked results for the same period.

In this case study, we are comparing results to the results from the previous six months – 2nd April 2020 to 30th September 2020.

Let’s now take a look at the results of our SEO efforts.

SEO Results At a Glance

Through our SEO strategy, we were able to:

  • Rank our client’s website for 53K+ keywords on Google in the U.S. and for 150K+ keywords globally (as of April 2021)
  • Rank the client’s site for 3.6K+ keywords on the first page of Google (as of April 2021)
  • Increase their site’s organic traffic by 321% in just one year
  • Increase their inbound leads by 52%
  • Get their blog posts featured in Google’s featured snippets

Increased Number of Clicks and Impressions

The results were pretty good when it came to the number of clicks and impressions we generated for the client. We generated over 877K clicks , which was greater than 794K clicks generated in the preceding period.

And that’s not even the best part.

We nearly doubled the number of impressions generated from 37.8 million to 66.3 million . Even the average keyword ranking positions improved from 35.5 to 34.

Clicks & Impressions

Improved Backlink Profile

Another good result that we would like to highlight in this case study is how our SEO strategy improved our client’s backlink profile.

There was a massive jump in the number of dofollow and nofollow backlinks the client’s site had. The total number of backlinks shot up to 389K from over 7,200 referring domains.

And the best part?

Most of these links (69%) were dofollow links while nofollow backlinks constituted only 32% of all backlinks. These backlinks helped improve their off-page SEO.

Backlink Profile

Increased Organic Traffic and Page Views

Our main goal, of course, was to drive more traffic to our client’s website. Through our powerful SEO strategy, we successfully drove a lot more traffic to their website in the six months of this case study duration than in the preceding period.

We increased the number of visitors to 533,458 visitors between October 2020 and March 2021 from 463,185 visitors between April and September 2020.

This marked a 15.7% increase in the overall organic traffic to our client’s website.

Organic Page Views

And guess what?

The traffic growth was consistent throughout the case study duration. It dramatically shot up between October 2020 and March 2021.

On 1st October 2020, the client’s site received 93,150 visitors per month .

Organic Page Views 2

However, by 31st March 2021, it grew to 128,785 visitors per month .

Organic Page Views 3

This marked a 38.2% increase in traffic within just six months. And as you can see from the graph below, it’s still growing.

The results of our SEO strategy started showing pretty soon too.

The organic search traffic to their website grew by 18.82% between 24 September 2020 to 24 Jan 2021 when compared to the preceding period from 24 May 2020 to 23 Sep 2020.

Organic Page Views 4

Improved Keyword Rankings

One of the biggest tasks we had at hand was increasing the number of organic keywords that our client was ranking for.

And that wasn’t the only task.

We also wanted to ensure that our client’s website reached the top positions of the SERPs for the keywords it was ranking for.

In the duration of this case study, our client’s website started ranking for 7,134 more keywords. Additionally, the number of keywords ranking in the top 3 positions grew by 199.

Keyword Growth

Best Ranking Keywords

In this section of the case study, we’ll disclose the keywords that drove maximum traffic to our client’s website.

It was “how to become an Instagram influencer.”

We created a blog post for our client targeting this keyword and optimized it for relevant phrases and user intent.

Through our SEO efforts, we ranked the post on the top spot for the main keyword. We also ranked it for 1.1K keywords other keyword variations.

Keyword Specific Rankings

Among these 1.1K keywords, the post ranked in the top 50 positions for 589 keywords .

Keyword Specific Rankings 2

Posts Ranked as Featured Snippets

Another significant result we want to talk about in our SEO case study is that we got our client’s post listed in featured snippets results on Google.

The post we wrote on, “how to become an Instagram influencer,” for the client showed up in the featured snippets section of the SERPs for 29 keywords .

Rich Snippets

This helped us drive massive traffic to our client’s website from that one post.

Here’s how the post appeared as a featured snippet for the main target keyword:

Rich Snippets 2

Q1. What is an SEO case study?

A. An SEO case study is a study that documents the challenges a brand or marketer faced, the strategy they used to overcome those challenges, and the final results they achieved.

An SEO case study uses relevant screenshots, figures, and reports that substantiate the strategy and the results.

Q2. How do I write an SEO case study?

A. Here are the steps you should follow to write an SEO case study:

  • Write your goals.
  • Cover the challenges you faced.
  • Write about the strategy you leveraged.
  • Showcase the results your strategy and efforts generated.
  • Include relevant screenshots in the case study.
  • Add data and reports to support your results.

Q3. How do I find case studies on Google?

A. To find a case study on Google, all you’d have to do is search for terms related to it.

For instance, to find this SEO case study, you can search for “SEO case study” on Google.

Similarly, to find a case study related to social media marketing, you can search for “social media case study” on Google.

Q4. Is SEO illegal?

A. No, SEO is a perfectly legal marketing tactic.

In fact, it’s one of the best ways to drive targeted traffic to your website in the long run. All you have to do is ensure that you follow white hat SEO techniques to make the most out of it.

We leveraged SEO tactics to grow our client’s traffic too, as you can see in this case study.

Q5. What is SEO in 2021?

A. SEO is one of the best ways to grow your website traffic in 2021. Using it, you can improve your search presence and reach your target audience.

We did the same for our client, as you can see in our SEO case study.

Ready to Replicate the Strategy Discussed in This SEO Case Study?

While we did face an uphill challenge in boosting our client’s traffic in a highly competitive niche, the efforts paid off very well.

Through a well-planned SEO strategy, we were able to significantly boost the traffic to our client’s website.

And that wasn’t even the best part.

We also helped the client build a solid backlink profile and enhance their online reputation.

If you’d like to replicate this kind of success, you can implement the SEO strategy mentioned in this case study. You can also leverage our SEO services .

case study for seo

About the Author

case study for seo

Featured In

Social Media Today

Our Top Services

  • SEO Services
  • Content Marketing Services
  • Influencer Marketing Services
  • Online PR Services
  • Lead Generation Services
  • Landing Page Optimization Services
  • Affiliate Marketing Services
  • Email Marketing Services
  • Podcast Launch Services

Solid Resources

  • Best Video Editing Software
  • Best Website Builders
  • Project Management Tools
  • Influencer Marketing Platforms
  • Best Online Course Platforms
  • Social Media Analytics Tools
  • Email Marketing Tools
  • Rank Tracker Tools
  • Best AI Chatbots

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Sample Banner

Do you need help?

Our marketing experts and proven strategies can improve your:

  • Website Traffic
  • Leads and Sales
  • Branding (PR)

Other Case Studies

case study for seo

Sign Up Your User Account

Fill all form field to go to next step

What do you need help with?

Select all that apply (multiple options) .

  • Increase Organic Traffic
  • Get More Leads
  • Boost Website Conversion Rate
  • Build an Email List
  • Become a Thought Leader
  • Rank Higher in the SERPs
  • Launch a Podcast
  • Run Influencer Campaigns
  • Boost Brand Awareness
  • Create a Sales Funnel
  • Launch a Product
  • All of the Above

What’s your monthly digital marketing budget?

Even an estimated budget will do!

  • $2501 - $5000
  • $5001 - $10000
  • $10001 - $20000
  • $20001 - $30000

Which digital marketing campaign do you want to launch?

Select the strategy you want to leverage (one option) .

  • Content Marketing
  • Influencer Marketing
  • Lead Generation
  • Landing Page Optimization
  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Email Marketing
  • Podcast Launch
  • I’m Not Sure...

Fill out your contact details.

We’ll get back to you in a while (24-48 hrs) .

Note: We don’t spam and respect your privacy. Submitting incorrect or invalid details will lead to no response.

Our experts will help you do business the right way.

Fill out the form below to start our conversation.

Our experts will conduct a thorough website audit and suggest ways to boost your brand value.

Fill out the form below to request a detailed report.

Interested in Joining Us?

Fill out the application form below!

Build a high converting ecommerce marketing funnel in seconds

Just fill in your contact details to get your free checklist

In accordance with international sanctions, the Semrush platform is no longer accessible to businesses registered or based in Russia. We’re sorry for the inconvenience and if you believe there is a mistake, please send us an email to [email protected] so our team can review.

SEO Setups Logo

4 SEO Case Studies (That Actually Worked!)

Do any of these questions apply to you?

Work in SEO? Need powerful case studies to help sell your own services? Just starting out and want to learn SEO tactics that really work? Need proof that SEO can drive new leads?

If you answer yes to any of these, this post is for you.

I’ve scoured the web to find the best SEO case studies that provide actionable examples of recent SEO strategies that actually moved the needle.

This 3,700+ word post is full of hidden gems and powerful tactics used by today’s top SEO experts. I’ve provided links to all resources as well my own notes to help you reproduce any one of these success stories.

By the end of this post you’ll have a clear vision for how to successfully increase leads with:

  • Next-level content promotion
  • Intuitive lead generation tactics
  • Access to the latest free SEO and testing tools
  • Tips for leveraging on-page SEO & word count for higher rankings

It’s important to keep in mind that none of these success stories would have been possible without first setting up a solid foundation through an effective SEO Setup.

Read more here about how an SEO setup, by itself, has dramatically boosted traffic by 650% for our clients.

After reading this post there will be no more excuses for why your SEO plan isn’t working. Without further ado let’s get started.

SEO Case Study #1: From Zero to 50,000 Visitors in One Month

Author : Rob Powell

Industry : Blogging and affiliate marketing

Summary : Rob analyzed some of the most successful bloggers and affiliate marketers to uncover the exact steps they use to promote their content.

Both bloggers and affiliate marketers tend to rely on their site for income so driving A LOT of traffic is critical to their success. This makes them great subjects for an SEO case study.

What I loved about this case study

What makes this case study so powerful is that it focuses on how they generated traffic during their FIRST MONTH of running a blog. Anyone who has started a new website knows how slow initial traffic can be.

What I hated about this case study

Nothing really. Tell me what you didn't like in the comments below.

What stood out the most about this case study

It dissected the success of multiple bloggers from multiple industries. Proving these are truly reproducible strategies for driving more traffic.

SEO tools, actionable tactics, or secret tricks?

There are some huge takeaways in the post, I encourage all of you to read it . The biggest lessons I found when launching a new site included:

  • Don’t just trust in SEO. A new website has little authority and won’t be driving organic traffic for some time. You have to go out and get the traffic - don’t just wait for it to come to you.
  • Writing everyday and relying on valuable content is NOT enough. People won’t find your content via search for another 6-12 months.
  • Stop wasting time redesigning your blog or tweaking a logo. As long as your site is readable and people can find the answers they’re looking for - they’re happy.
  • Waiting for your traffic to snowball is a bad idea. It takes a lot longer than you think to reach the tipping point for massive traffic.

According to expert blogger, Bill Belew :

It typically takes over 400 posts before REAL traffic comes.

It’s best to hang out in forums and becoming an active commenter on relevant blogs to get the attention of a potential audience. Hang out in forums an hour a day answering questions (and carefully sharing your own content.)

Use tools such as Boardreader  and Omgili  (stands for 'Oh My God I Love It') to find forums with questions relevant to your niche.

You can also search for forum threads on Google. Just type in any one of the following string searches plus your keyword: "Powered by Phbb" your keyword "Powered by vBulletin" your keyword "Powered by SMF" your keyword "powered by IPB" your keyword "powered by PunBB" your keyword Use this template for leaving a forum response:

Hi, I saw your question about __________. I just recently wrote an article that answers your question. You might find it useful: http://www.yourdomain.com/your-content/ Let me know if it helps! All the best, Your name

Experts say, as a rule of thumb that every time you publish a new post to immediately spend four hours promoting it through forums, social media and email .

If you're like  some bloggers  you’ll reach 2,000 unique visitors within the first couple months!

Another outreach method to try is BuzzSumo .

This is how it works:

  • Find a few pieces of content that have performed well in your space.
  • Go to BuzzSumo and enter the URL of the content in the search field (or a keyword related to your content).
  • Click on 'View Sharers' and you'll see a list of influencers who have shared content similar to the content that you did the search on.
  • Now reach out to those influencers to ask if they would like to share your content as well.

In seconds you'll have a results page like this:

Next, use Brian Dean's skyscraper technique (mentioned below) . It's one of the best strategies I’ve found for increasing traffic. To oversimplify it, it works like this:

  • Find existing content that has masses of good quality backlinks
  • Improve on that content
  • Approach the people who have linked to the original content and suggest they might like to link to your improved version

Read more about Brian Dean’s skyscraper technique here .

After you publish a new piece of content reach out via social media or email to any authors or influencers you mentioned in the post and give them a link to the article. Typically, they’ll feel flattered and share your content to a MASSIVE audience. Assuming your content is great!

You should also consider writing for someone else's blog. Guest blogging isn’t dead and will probably be the quickest way for you to boost traffic.

You'll need to have written a decent amount of quality posts on your own blog before being accepted. How to get started guest blogging:

  • Find a few small blogs in your niche or ask someone you already know
  • Email the author 3-4 relevant, stand-out headlines as a pitch for a blog post
  • Be nice, short and concise in your initial e-mail.

-->VIEW THE FULL CASE STUDY HERE<--

SEO Case Study #2: 11,065% More Organic Traffic in 6 Months

Author : Robbie Richards

Summary : Robbie’s 7,000 word case study describes how one of his clients generated over 20K organic pageviews with a single post.

  • It’s highly actionable
  • It’s clearly organized with step-by-step instructions
  • Provides easy-to-use anchor links in a TOC
  • Great use of screenshots from Google Analytics to prove it’s claim
  • A little too salesy. Sounds like a “How I got rich and you can too” pitch.
  • It’s about a super niche industry with little competition - piloting a remote control quadcopter.

It's great help for setting timelines and expectations. For example, it took three months to hit the first page and five months to reach the #1 spot on Google.

By the sixth month organic traffic had generated an impressive 20,314 pageviews!

This case study was a great reminder on the impact of email opt-ins for lead capture as well. The quadcopter post captured 2,335 emails, making it a top four lead generator for the business.

Actionable tactics or secret tricks?

Follow this infographic from Copy Tactics for topic selection and a content marketing process guaranteed to help find your best opportunities:

SEO tools used to execute this plan:

  • Google Keyword Planner
  • Ubersuggest
  • Yoast SEO and other SEO setup plugins

SEO Case Study #3: How I Used a Case Study to Grow My Sales by 185%

Author : Neil Patel

Industry : SEO & Marketing

Summary : Neil Patel is the co-founder of Crazy Egg and Kissmetrics and runs Quicksprout.com and NeilPatel.com. He is a proven expert in SEO and lead generation.

This particular SEO case study is great because it’s a case study of a case study he created for a client (author and ex-hedge fund manager) where SEO helped earn an extra $1.2 million per year. Read that full post here .

The purpose of Neil’s case study was to prove he was capable of successfully helping his clients. As the co-founder of CrazyEgg and Kissmetrics Neil is of course a master at a/b testing his content to squeeze the most out of each post which I found incredibly insightful.

There are fantastic examples for testing word count variation, email follow-ups, and using a/b tests for calls-to-action. If you want to maximize lead generation opportunities this case study is a must-read!

The pop-ups! There were even audible bells ringing at one point - quite annoying.

The original version of this case study was over 2,000 words, but has since been trimmed to just over 600 words and performs better than ever. Neil found that people don’t actually read his case studies so by keeping it tight and utilizing headlines, images and bullets he gained more traction.

Average read time: 2 minutes and 27 seconds: That’s how much time people spent reading the 2,286-word-long case study. When he reduced the word count down to 615 words, people spent 2 minutes and 18 seconds reading it. (Only 9 seconds less than the long version!)

In addition to that, shortening the page increased the number of leads he generated by 39%. That’s not a bad lift for just deleting words.

That wasn’t enough for Neil, so he also tested the following:

  • Added testimonials to the post which boosted leads another 11%.
  • Added a lead generation form at the bottom of the post which increased leads another 8%.
  • Added an exit pop-up that increased leads 64%, but were so low quality he removed it. (Lesson: exit pop-ups generally don’t attract quality leads.)

Actionable tactics or secret tricks I found

Using the case study by itself didn’t increase leads nearly as much as his landing pages, or even homepage, but drastically helped close more leads in the long run.

One strategy in particular was to include links to case studies in a follow-up email after speaking with potential clients. Providing this additional proof of his capabilities built immediate credibility and ultimately more business.

Equally, including these case studies in sales proposals were just as effective. Used together they helped increase close rates by 70%.

SEO Tools they used to reach the #1 ranking

There wasn’t a lot of detail into the tools used for the case study, but I’m fairly certain Crazy Egg heatmaps were involved! CrazyEgg is a great heatmapping and testing tool.

Another option, which I highly recommend, is Hotjar which offers a free version to get you started.

SEO Case Study #4: From 0 to 1 Million Pageviews in 12-Months

Author : Matthew Barby

Industry : SaaS, but applies to all

Summary : This is another long post (48-minute read) that covers tactical details for repeating Matthew’s success.

As with all successful case studies the initial research is a foundational piece. So much so that I’ve summarized what this includes and urge you to read the full case study here . Matthew’s research and strategy can be broken into four areas of focus:

Competitor Analysis

The competitive research is divided into separate areas of focus, which can be used to see how YOU stack up against the competition. These areas include important search metrics and ranking signals that will identify strengths and weaknesses.

I’ve include the best SEO tool to use to find this information in parenthesis.

  • Estimated search traffic (SEMrush)
  • Domain Authority ( Moz )
  • Trust Flow ( Majestic SEO )
  • # of External Links ( Moz , SEMrush, Screaming Frog )
  • # of Linking Domains ( Moz , SEMrush, Ahrefs )
  • Monthly Branded Searches (SEMrush)

Potential Traffic Opportunity

Taking a deep dive into keyword research is going to uncover how much traffic you’re going to be capable of attracting each month. 

Once you have a complete list of potential keywords it’s time to:

  • Categorize - group each keyword into a topic-focus category (Personal note, also tag them as an informational term, or a buying term to help identify user intent)
  • Analyze - understand the monthly search volume and competitiveness for each keyword.
  • Prioritize - Sort your keyword list by terms with the highest number of monthly searches, yet the lowest competition.

Auditing Existing Content

Identify your existing content that tends to drive the most traffic or that you believe holds valuable content. Re-examine it to see if it might benefit from a new keyword focus, more (or different) calls-to-actions, additional word count, etc.

Industry Content Analysis

Use tools like BuzzSumo , Ahrefs , or Moz’s Open Site Explorer to plug in your competitors URLs and keywords that describe your main services or products. These tools provide a broad look at who is talking about similar topics and identify the most popular topics, products, services, etc.

It has great on-page readability. All sections have their own table of contents with anchor links to each specific topic.

There is incredible detail into how others can execute this same strategy, no stone was unturned.

My favorite section was about the traffic generation strategy. There are easy-to-follow instructions to using tactics such as:

  • Guest writing
  • Leverage self-publishing sites like Buzzfeed or Medium
  • Using communities like Product Hunt (especially for the SaaS industry)
  • Influencer outreach by getting noticed by publications such as Forbes, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, etc.
  • Blog strategies that include building an influencer team and effective content planning
  • Using sponsorships
  • Journalist outreach
  • Building a glossary

I didn’t see many direct comparisons to how these tactics influenced his client’s traffic and lead generation. It was great at providing how-to instructions, but lacked in showing the proof.

It was the first time I read such a thorough example for how to utilize Product Hunt for generating new leads.

SEO Tools, actionable tactics, or secret tricks I found

Specific SEO tools used throughout this post include:

  • Majestic SEO
  • Screaming Frog

I read over two-dozen SEO case studies on how to rank a website in preparation for this post and came up overwhelming disappointed. Nearly all case studies were:

  • Not quantifiable
  • Did not provide proof (of any kind)
  • Overly self-promotional
  • Lacking in substance

The case studies shared in this post are the best examples of step-by-step and replicable strategies that we can all implement immediately.

Glaring Opportunities

The lack of depth and transparency for most case studies provides an amazing opportunity for anyone looking to sell SEO services. (Through promotion of your own case study!)

Seriously, you should use the Skyscraper Technique (linked below) and research your industry's case study results - then take advantage of the low hanging fruit. If nothing else, you’ll have highly motivating examples of your work to include in sales proposals and follow-up emails to potential clients.

Additional resources I re-read often when I’m looking for step-by-step tactics and new ideas are below - bookmark all of these!

Matthew Woodward: How I Built a Top 100 Blog in 12 Months Generating Income with a 90-Day Blogging Strategy

Brian Dean: How to Use the Guestographic Technique to Flood Your Traffic How to Use the Skyscraper Technique to Dominate Your Competition

Share this article

Free SEO Training Guides

FREE SEO Training Guides

Shane Barker

Best SEO Case Study: How I Ranked 1800+ Keywords on Page 1 of Google in Just 6 Months

Last Updated On : August 14, 2023

With a lot of people publishing high-quality content every day, it’s tough out there for SEO professionals and content marketers. It is nearly impossible to make your content stand out in the oversaturated market. And winning a top SERP position remains a challenge.

However, strategically ranking for a target keyword is still very much possible.

You need to follow the right process and implement the right SEO strategies.

In this SEO case study, I’m going to share exactly how I ranked 1800+ keywords on the first page of Google search results.

But before I discuss my SEO strategy that is crushing it right now, let’s take a look at the results I achieved using it.

Table of Contents

Results: Boost in Keyword Rankings

I witnessed a significant increase in the number of keywords ranked on the first page of Google search results in just six months (April 2019-September 2019).

Here’s the organic research report of ShaneBarker.com by SEMrush that clearly shows this significant boost in my SERP positions.

semrush free 14 days trial

April 2019: 1640 Keywords Ranked on Page 1 of Google

In April 2019, I had 1640 keywords ranking on the first page of Google search results. Out of these, 495 keywords ranked among the top 3 positions in the SERPs.

In this SEO case study, I’ll show you how these numbers grew in six months.

semrush numbers grew in six months seo keyword case study

Image via SEMrush

September 2019: 3461 Keywords Ranked on Page 1 of Google

By September 2019, my SERP positions improved significantly with 3461 keywords ranked on the first page of Google search results. Out of these, 1027 keywords ranked among the top 3 positions in the SERPs.

total keywords in semrush seo keyword case study

Want to learn how my SERP positions made this jump?

I’ll answer this question and more in this SEO case study.

What Are the SEO Strategies That Helped Me Rank 1800+ More Keywords in 6 Months?

In this SEO case study, I’m going to share the strategies that helped me rank for various keywords.

Let’s take a look at the step-by-step process I followed:

1. Focus on User Intent

One thing you should learn to level up your SEO game is to focus on what your audience wants.

It is more important than ever to create content that addresses users’ search intent and answers their questions. In fact, that’s the easiest way to achieve higher rankings and positions in the SERPs.

Focusing on User Intent + Optimizing for Search Engines = Achieving Higher SERP Rankings

You should remember that Google has been evolving their search algorithms to provide better solutions to users and make them happy.

What does that mean for you?

It means that if you want to boost your SERPs positions, you need to help Google make their users happy by focusing on user intent.

What is user intent?

In simple words, focusing on user intent means that you should publish content that searchers will like to see the most when they search for a relevant keyword or phrase on Google.

For example, if you search for “future of social media marketing,” you’re probably looking for statistics, figures, trends, and strategies that can impact social media marketing in future, right?

And my article on, “ The Future of Social Media Marketing – 11 Trends That will Impact Your Business ,” answers that perfectly.

That’s how it successfully ranked in the top 3 positions in the SERPs.

the future of social media marketing seo keyword case study

Image via Google

This is how optimizing your content for user intent can help you achieve higher search results rankings.

2. Utilize TF-IDF Formula

Have you ever used top-ranking content by other websites to improve your SERP rankings?

No… this isn’t about using the skyscraper technique.

Let’s take a look at how I analyzed the content of top-ranking articles and used it to optimize my content for higher search rankings.

My content successfully outperformed that of my competitors using TF-IDF.

TF-IDF is a combination of two terms that include:

  • Term Frequency (TF) = (Number of times a keyword appears in an article) / (Total word count of the article)
  • Inverse Document Frequency (IDF) = log (Number of articles) / (Number of articles containing that keyword)

In simpler terms, TF-IDF can help you see how frequently the keyword appears in an article compared to the average use frequency of that keyword in other articles on the web.

This SEO technique helped me identify unique terms related to the topic covered in my posts.

I naturally incorporated them into my content to help Google understand which of the users’ questions does my article answer.

As you’ve seen in the results section of this SEO case study, using TF-IDF has helped me achieve remarkable results.

3. Update Already-Published Content

Publishing high-quality, fresh content every day demands a lot of effort.

How do I keep up with my posting frequency?

I write fresh content and I also take the time to update my previously-written content.

Doing content upgrades has not just helped me publish more frequently, it has also helped me ensure that the content on my blog is up-to-date.

You’ll be surprised to know that updating existing content also helped my old posts get indexed again and rank better in the SERPs.

Check out the screenshot below to see how my updated posts ranked on the first page of Google search results.

update already published content seo keyword case study

4. Get More Brand Mentions and Backlinks

Building more backlinks is an effective SEO technique that finds its place in nearly all SEO case studies.

But how do I build backlinks?

I frequently contribute to authoritative websites in my niche such as Forbes , Social Media Today , and 100 more. This helps me reach and engage new audiences and build high-quality backlinks.

Here is a screenshot that shows an increase in the number of backlinks I received between April 2019-September 2019:

semrush backlinks seo keyword case study

Along with guest posting, I also participated in expert roundups, interviews, conferences, webinars, and podcasts to gain more exposure. This strategy helped me get more brand mentions over time.

Here’s a report that showcases my brand mentions over the period of those six months:

brand24 seo keyword case study

Image via Brand24

5. Distribute Content

Publishing great content isn’t enough. You need to ensure that your content reaches the right people.

That’s why I make it a point to syndicate my content on social media platforms and content curation sites such as Medium , Quora , and LinkedIn .

How else can you distribute your content?

In addition to syndicating my own content, I also contribute to other Medium Publications such as Publishous , Better Marketing , and The Writing Cooperative .

6. Experiment with Content Frequency and Volume

As I said earlier in this case study, creating high-quality content isn’t enough. You need to be consistent in your approach.

I already ensured that there was something getting posted every day. But, during this period, I decided to fill my weekly content calendar with more fresh topics and content upgrades.

I published around 13 posts a week on ShaneBarker.com that included:

  • 1 educational blog post
  • 9 content upgrades
  • 3 weekly roundups

Here’s a snippet of how my WordPress dashboard looked like in July 2019 (with a number of posts published/updated back-to-back):

wordpress dashboard seo keyword case study

Image via WordPress

Q1. How do you do SEO keyword research?

A. You can either use SEO tools or conduct keyword research manually. If you use a tool, you can simply type a starting keyword or topic and the tool will give you a list of related keywords.

However, if you want to do keyword research manually, then the best place to start is Google Search. Type a search phrase and then look at the “related searches” or “people also ask” section to find related search terms or keywords.

Q2. What is a keyword in SEO (with example)?

A. When someone searches for something in the search engines, they use a search query to do so. A keyword is basically the most important words or phrases in that search query. In the context of SEO, these keywords are what marketers use in their content to rank for relevant search queries.

For example, let’s pretend that a user searches for, “who are the best digital marketing consultants?” In this case, all relevant content that has used the keywords “best digital marketing consultants” or “digital marketing consultants” will appear in the search results. However, only the best content gets to rank on the first page.

Q3. Where can I get SEO keywords for free?

A. You can use any of the free SEO tools by Google to get SEO keywords, but Google Search Console is one of the best and simplest. If you are looking for question-type keywords, then AnswerThePublic is also a good tool.

Q4. How do I find my competitor's keywords?

A. Most SEO or keyword research tools provide the option to research your competitors. You can enter your competitors’ URLs and these tools will show you all the keywords that their websites are ranking for.

Q5. What is the best keyword search tool?

A. Google Search Console and Google Keyword Planner are two of the best keyword search tools that are available for free. In the case of paid tools, Semrush and Ahrefs are two of the most popular tools for this purpose.

Q6. What is a good keyword difficulty score?

A. There is no definitive guideline on what keyword difficulty score is good as it varies from case to case. In general, a higher keyword difficulty score means that it would be difficult to rank for it and vice versa. So, it really depends on you and how ambitious your goals are.

Ideally, you should try to compete for medium to high difficulty keywords, instead of going for the highest-difficulty keywords.

Q7. What is the easiest way to rank for keywords?

A. There are really only two important things to consider here: relevant content and keyword optimization. First, create high-quality, useful content around your main keyword, keeping the search intent in mind. Second, make sure to use the keyword throughout your content and maintain a good keyword density.

Q8. How long does it take to rank for keywords?

A. There is no definitive answer to this question as it varies on a case-by-case basis. If you target low competition keywords and create high-quality, optimized content, you might rank very quickly. However, in most cases, it takes at least a few months to rank for keywords.

Q9. How do I find SEO keywords for my website?

A. If you want to find out what keywords your web pages are currently ranking for, simply use an SEO tool like Semrush or Ahrefs. You simply need to enter your website’s URL and these tools will analyze your website and show you all the keywords that you rank for.

Q10. How many keywords are good for SEO?

A. Ideally, you should target at least one keyword per page to make sure that all your pages rank for the relevant keywords. You can also target 2-3 related keywords for each page, as long as there is one primary keyword and a few variations of it. Targeting multiple unrelated keywords is not good and can do more harm than good.

Ready to Grow Your Buisness?

These are some of the most effective SEO techniques that have helped me rank in the top 10 SERP positions for 1800+ keywords.

Improved search rankings helped me generate more targeted traffic to my website, build trust, and enhance my credibility in the digital marketing space.

Are you struggling to rank higher in search results?

I’m sure the strategies that I’ve discussed in this SEO case study can help you achieve remarkable results too, just like they’ve helped me.

If you want help improving your search presence, please feel free to take advantage of my SEO services .

shanebarker seo quick wins course

Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in influencer marketing, product launches, sales funnels, targeted traffic, and website conversions. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.

Keep up with the latest news in

Digital marketing.

Sign Up For Our Newsletter

Shane’s Courses

  • All Courses
  • SEO Quick Wins

Let’s Connect!

  • Subscribe to YouTube
  • 255 W Moana Suite 201 Reno. NV. 89509
  • 1-775-830-8002

Important Links

  • Alternatives
  • Write For Us
  • Web Stories
  • Influencer Marketing Directory
  • Resource Links
  • Image Compression Tool
  • Influencer Marketing
  • Instagram Marketing
  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Content Marketing
  • Conversions
  • Digital Marketing
  • Email Marketing
  • Social Media Marketing

shane barker

Marketing Mix by Shane Barker

Join the exclusive circle of savvy marketers with  marketing mix by shane ..

Here’s what awaits you:

We use cookies on this site to enhance your user experience. For a complete overview of the cookies used, see our privacy policy .

case study for seo

  • Case Studies
  • Testimonials

Latest Content

SEO Case Studies

Keyword Research

Content Creation

On Page SEO

Link Building

Penalties & Updates

General SEO

SEO Tools & Reviews

Take The 28 Day SEO Challenge Now

13x Link Building Lessons From The Leak

SEO Checklist: 45x Ways To Increase Your Search Traffic

SEO Checklist: 45x Ways To Increase Your Search Traffic

15 SEO Myths Busted by Leaked Google Data

15 SEO Myths Busted by Leaked Google Data

Download The 100% FREE Link Building Checklist

Download The 100% FREE Link Building Checklist

On-Page SEO Case Study: +2,550% Search Traffic

On-Page SEO Case Study: +2,550% Search Traffic

22 Things We Have Learned From The Google Search Leak

22 Things Learned From The Google Search Leak

Download the Google Leak Link Building Checklist

From Google Penalty To 5x Search Traffic

Growing Revenue $17,122 To $92,119 Per Month

Growing Revenue $17,122 To $92,119 Per Month

How To Triple Ecommerce Revenue

How To Triple Ecommerce Revenue

+73% Search Traffic With These 6 Fixes

+73% Search Traffic With These 6 Fixes

Ecommerce SEO Case Study: 3x Revenue In 90 Days

Ecommerce SEO Case Study: 3x Revenue In 90 Days

How To 14x Search Traffic In 8x months

How To 14x Search Traffic In 8x months

Get The Hardcover Book on Amazon

Download My Intelligent Keyword Research Template Now

These 7x Types Of Keywords Will Increase Your Search Traffic

These 7x Types Of Keywords Will Increase Your Search Traffic

How To Use Buyer Keywords To Boost Your Sales

How To Use Buyer Keywords To Boost Your Sales

Keyword Research: The What, Why & How

Keyword Research: The What, Why & How

The Best Keyword Research Tools (And How To Use Them)

The Best Keyword Research Tools (And How To Use Them)

Google Keyword Planner: How To Use It The Right Way

Google Keyword Planner: How To Use It The Right Way

case study for seo

Take The 28 Day SEO Challenge Now

How To Write Killer Website Content That Attracts People

How To Write Killer Website Content That Attracts People

18 SEO Copywriting Hacks That Get Instant Results

18 SEO Copywriting Hacks That Get Instant Results

How To Write A Listicle That Attracts Traffic & Backlinks

How To Write A Listicle That Attracts Traffic & Backlinks

How To Increase Search Visibility With FAQ Schema

How To Increase Search Visibility With FAQ Schema

What Is On Page SEO? How To Perfectly Optimise Your Page

What Is On Page SEO? How To Perfectly Optimise Your Page

6x Free Ways To Increase Website Speed (and search traffic!)

6x Free Ways To Increase Website Speed (and search traffic!)

The Ultimate On Page SEO Checklist To Increase Rankings

The Ultimate On Page SEO Checklist To Increase Rankings

The Hidden SEO Ranking Factor You’re Probably Deleting

The Hidden SEO Ranking Factor You’re Probably Deleting

3x Ways A Silo Structure Will Boost Your Search Traffic

3x Ways A Silo Structure Will Boost Your Search Traffic

15x Incredible Link Building Strategies

15x Incredible Link Building Strategies

Link Building Services: What You REALLY Need To Know

Link Building Services: What You REALLY Need To Know

Backlink Analysis – The Easiest Ways To Build Links

Backlink Analysis – The Easiest Ways To Build Links

Podcast Jacking For Links, Traffic & Authority

Podcast Jacking For Links, Traffic & Authority

8x Ways To Build Powerful Edu Backlinks

8x Ways To Build Powerful Edu Backlinks

Testimonial Link Building: Powerful Homepage Links

Testimonial Link Building: Powerful Homepage Links

case study for seo

7 Google Penalty Checker Tools

The Step By Step Process To Recover From Any Penalty

The Step By Step Process To Recover From Any Penalty

Google Page Experience Update Checklist

Google Page Experience Update Checklist

Drop In Search Traffic? Watch This Video Now!

Drop In Search Traffic? Watch This Video Now!

How To Get Out Of Google Sandbox As Quickly As Possible

How To Get Out Of Google Sandbox As Quickly As Possible

How To Improve Your Core Web Vitals In 15 Minutes

How To Improve Your Core Web Vitals In 15 Minutes

How To Exclude Words From Google Search Results

How To Exclude Words From Google Search Results

SEO Checklist: 45x Ways To Increase Your Search Traffic

Testing The 12 Fastest WordPress Hosting Providers

Learn How To Find Powerful Expired Domains Step By Step

Learn How To Find Powerful Expired Domains Step By Step

The Fastest & Easiest Way To Get Wikipedia Backlinks

The Fastest & Easiest Way To Get Wikipedia Backlinks

The Ultimate Guide To Search Engine Submission

The Ultimate Guide To Search Engine Submission

SEMRush Review: How To Increase Search Traffic

SEMRush Review: How To Increase Search Traffic

Surfer SEO Review - How I Used It To Win The #1 Position

Surfer SEO Review - How I Used It To Win The #1 Position

NitroPack Review & Case Study

NitroPack Review & Case Study

WPX Hosting Review – Faster Than You Might Think

WPX Hosting Review – Faster Than You Might Think

My Kinsta Hosting Review & Case Study

My Kinsta Hosting Review & Case Study

guest posting services

5 Guest Posting Services You Can Rely On

SEO Case Studies: Strategies That Actually Work!

What’s the fastest way to increase SEO skills? Short answer – Study real-life SEO case studies. Here’s why: Case studies are a great way to get an insight

What’s the fastest way to increase SEO skills?

Short answer – Study real-life SEO case studies.

Here’s why:

Case studies are a great way to get an insight into how successful SEO campaigns are created and executed. You get the whole picture of what it really takes to implement a quality SEO strategy.

  • Different SEO tools & tactics
  • How to overcome specific challenges
  • Best SEO practices in different industries
  • End-to-end SEO campaign strategy

And so much more! Real SEO case studies are one of the best ways to see how SEO pros get the job done. That’s why we are so committed to sharing our results with you!

What You Can Expect To Learn From Our SEO Case Studies

All of our case studies are real.

What does that mean?

We only use real examples of real results from our own clients. It’s like looking through a microscope at our client campaigns to see how our team handles different SEO challenges. You’ll also see exactly what tactics they use in each scenario.

Cool right?

You can literally take these tactics and immediately apply them to your site. And that’s what we want you to do!

But that’s not all…

Each SEO case study is written to explain the “WHY” behind each decision our team makes. So many people are in a rush to implement tactics without understanding what they are really doing.

If you really want to level up your SEO skills, you need to spend time studying and understanding case studies completely. That’s how you will get the most benefit from them.

4x SEO Case Studies You Should Check Out First

Ready to dive into some case studies?

Here are four case studies that we recommend looking at first:

  • From Google Penalty To 5x Search Traffic – See how our team overcame a Google algorithmic penalty and even increased search traffic by over 500%.
  • 5x Ecommerce Revenue: $17,122 to $92,119 Per Month – See what we did to increase our client’s revenue by 500%, even in the competitive health supplements niche.
  • +73% Search Traffic With 6 Technical SEO Fixes – See the 6 technical SEO fixes we executed for our ecommerce clients’ site that increased monthly search traffic from 26,668 to 46,136.
  • Google Core Update Recovery – See how we recovered our client’s site from a big core algorithm update and simultaneously managed to increase revenue by 53% year on year.

Spend time reading through each of these case studies. They will set you up with an excellent base to see how different SEO strategies apply to different situations.

You’ll also learn why you need to look at SEO holistically. Most people (falsely) believe that if they just build more links or write more content, their website search traffic will skyrocket.

That’s not necessarily the case.

All websites are different. You need to understand how to analyse a site properly to know what SEO tactics need to be combined to create a great SEO strategy.

That’s how you get long-term, sustainable SEO results that can completely transform your business!

Read Through All Of Our SEO Case Studies

We spend a lot of time and effort creating our SEO case studies.

Because case studies are one of the best ways to learn. You get to see the real SEO challenges we face and what our team does to overcome them.

Below you’ll find tons of excellent SEO case studies from real clients. Make sure that you check back regularly because we’re always adding new ones!

on page seo case study

In this case study, you'll learn how we helped our client grow by 2,550% by fixing on page SEO issues with content and indexation.

case study for seo

Organic Traffic

case study for seo

Top 10 Positions

content optimisation case study

SEO Content Optimization Case Study: $6.3k to $37.3k Monthly Organic Revenue

In this case study, you'll see how we grew our client's monthly organic revenue by 493% after optimizing key pages.

case study for seo

Monthly Revenue

zero link building case study

Zero Link Building Case Study: 44% Increase In Traffic

Learn how we grew search traffic by 44% in just 12 months without building any new links to the site!

Top 10 Results

saas-migration-case-study

SaaS SEO Case Study: 223% More Traffic After A Site Migration

In this case study, you’ll see how we grew our client’s organic traffic by 288% after implementing a complete site migration.

Top 10 Rankings

gambling case study

Gambling SEO Case Study: +180% Increase in Conversions

In this case study, you’ll see how we more than doubled our gambling client’s monthly sessions from 52k visits to over 77k in just 12 months.

Conversions

casino case study: 8x more traffic

Casino SEO Case Study: +889% Organic Search Traffic

In this case study, you’ll see the exact strategy we used to grow our gambling client’s organic traffic by over 800%.

seo case study finance

SEO Audit Case Study: 1.4M Visitors in 6 Months

These are the 4 steps we followed to drive our clients websites to 1.4M visitors in just six months without building any links!

Organic Visitors

Featured Image - Beat Core Update

How This Site Beat The May 2022 Core Update

This SEO case study shows you how we beat the May 2022 core update to increase search traffic by 111% and revenue by 51% per month.

Organic Revenue

Google Penalty Recovery

SEO Case Study: From Google Penalty To 5x Search Traffic

We'll show you how we recovered our client's coupon websites search traffic after it was destroyed by Google’s May 2020 core algorithm update.

5x Revenue

Ecommerce SEO Case Study: $17,122 To $92,119 Per Month

We'll show you the SEO strategy we used to increase revenue by 438% for an ecommerce health brand, whilst facing heavy competition.

6x Ways To Increase Your Search Traffic

SEO Case Study: +73% Search Traffic With These 6 Fixes

In this SEO case study, see the 6 technical SEO problems we fixed to increase search traffic by 78% and revenue by 28%.

SEO Case Study – A Core Update Recovery

Core updates have the potential to destroy your SEO. We'll show you how we recovered our client's website from a huge Google core algorithm update.

Feature Image - 3x Revenue In 90 Days

Discover how we 3x a client's revenue from organic search in just 90 days by focussing on fixing big SEO issues that were holding the site back.

Featured Image - How To Increase Search Traffic

SEO Case Study: From 920 to 13,503 Visitors Per Month

See how we increased our client's search traffic by 1,367%, including the big challenges we faced & the strategies we used to overcome them.

case study for seo

Monthly Visitors

Case Study How To Triple Revenue

Ecommerce SEO Case Study: How To Triple Revenue During Covid-19

Discover how our team increased monthly sales to £109,377 for our client during COVID & lockdowns despite the fact they're in the sports niche.

Featured Image - How To 6x Your Search Traffic

SEO Case Study: +488% Search Traffic

Learn how we increased monthly search traffic from 5,156 to 30,347 in the highly competitive gambling niche by taking a different approach to SEO.

Daily Visitors

Featured Image - Case Study Top 3 Positions

SEO Case Study: 656 Top 3 Rankings

Learn how we won 656 top 3 rankings with 1,951 keywords listed on the first page with our SEO case study. The result was 498% traffic growth.

Top 3 Rankings

Featured Image - How To 14x Serahc Traffic In 8 Months

SEO Case Study: How To 14x Search Traffic In 8x months

See exactly how we took search traffic from 2,732 visitors per month to 38,420 in just 8x months in this detailed SEO case study.

Featured Image - Competitive SEO

[CASE STUDY] How To Rank In The Most Competitive Niche In SEO

Learn the link building & SEO strategy behind 53,000 visitors per month in one of the most competitive niches.

Featured Image - case study pet store ecommerce

Doubled Search Traffic SEO Case Study

This client runs an ecommerce store that sells pet products and were not ranking for any kind of commercial terms to begin with.

Top 5 Rankings

Featured Image - Case Study Real Estate

How We Tripled Revenue For This Real Estate Agent

This client works in the highly competitive world of real estate and was spending a small fortune every month.

Featured Image - case study tshirt ecommerce

Ecommerce SEO Case Study: Highest Revenue For 2 Years In 6 Months

The site was already established but it had a range of issues and was losing traffic and revenue for over a year before we started working on it.

Featured Image - case study video streaming penaalty recovery

SEO Case Study: How To Remove A Penalty Within A Month

This site was hit with a manual penalty from Google so we had to act fast. We cleaned up the site and had our reconsideration request accepted first time.

Number 1 Rankings

Featured Image: Furniture ecommerce

Ecommerce SEO Case Study: +369% Organic Revenue

Learn how we beat big brand competitors to increase this furniture stores e-commerce revenue by 369%.

Featured Image - Case Study Diet Weight Loss

Ecommerce SEO Case Study: 500,000+ Visitors After Penguin Penalty

Learn how we managed to overcome the Penguin penalty and bring this sites search traffic to record levels.

Any Questions? Read Our FAQ

SEO case studies are real-world examples of successfully executed SEO campaigns. They provide an in-depth overview of the-

Tactics used 

Strategies employed

Results achieved.

The purpose of SEO case studies is to help others learn how different SEO strategies can be applied to their own sites. The SEO world is getting more competitive. SEO case studies can give you an advantage because it is like sitting next to a real SEO pro and learning over their shoulder.

SEO case studies are one of the best ways to learn SEO and increase your skills. They provide you with an unparalleled opportunity to learn from real-world examples. By studying successful campaigns, you can better understand what tactics and strategies are most effective. You will also see how the SEO pros put together comprehensive SEO campaigns.

Remember - The best case studies are practical. That means you can take what you have learned and immediately apply it to your own website.

Increase Your Search Traffic In Just 28 Days...

case study for seo

  • About the Content Factory
  • The Content Factory in the Media
  • SEO & Content Writing
  • Social Media Marketing
  • Google Analytics
  • Website Design and Rebranding
  • Case Studies

How to Build a Killer SEO Case Study (+ FREE TEMPLATE!)

Let me let you in on a secret: half of being “good” at SEO is knowing how to communicate results to your current and future clients.

A lot of folks in the SEO business tend to think that higher-ups in marketing will just innately understand the value they bring to the table. They’ll typically think that showing a bunch of green arrows and big numbers will be enough. They’re wrong.

Building a GOOD SEO case study isn’t just about fancy graphs and arrows reaching toward the sky: it’s also about building a story, showing just what all of those numbers REALLY mean for clients.

What does it practically mean for clients to rank for keywords? What does a 500% increase in traffic really translate into?

If you work in SEO, you’re going to be screaming at your screen right now. “It’s an increase in traffic! What else needs to be said?”

Yeah. No — trust me, we get it. But clients won’t — and if they aren’t getting it, that’s your failure, not theirs. 

So, let’s talk about how to make sure that doesn’t happen. 

Image by tirachardz on Freepik

SEO Case Study Basics: Where to Begin

First, it’s important to understand what the point of a case study really is. Case studies are built to show clients that yes, you do know what you’re talking about — and that you have some experience in your field.

Think of them as brochures showing how your company has helped similar clients in the past.

Case studies (and what they exactly contain) will differ a bit from industry to industry (hence why this is the SEO case study guide and not, say, the marketing case study guide).

If you’re trying to build an SEO case study, you’ll have to do three things:

  • Show the client what’s possible with SEO.
  • Show the client how you are responsible.
  • Show the client how it can work for them.

… and you need to do it all within a quick, easy-to-digest narrative.

Let’s break that down a bit:

Showing Potential Clients What’s Possible

This bit is simple: it’s just showing them what success looks like. While not every client you have will show smooth, linear progress, you’ll generally want to limit your case studies to ones that fit that bill.

You want their success to be easy to follow, because you want your future client to be able to imagine this path for their own company.

This is the part of the case study where you can show off all those fancy numbers. Keep it general, though — there’s no need to get hyper-specific. Talk about how many keywords you helped them rank for. Feel free to shout out any particularly impressive keywords you’ve snagged for them — but only if they don’t require much explanation.

Most importantly, though, you need to tie those numbers to dollars.

Keep this question in mind when writing a case study:

Did the client get a return on investment — and was it significant?

As an example here, we can use a screenshot from one of our clients:

One client paid us to write content for them. We did — and in six months one blog post had made $14,248.00 in revenue . It had brought in 186,751 sessions . And that was just one of many posts that generated thousands in sales.

We charged $2,000 for each of these posts. In total, they were worth $40,959 for this particular six-month period — and keep in mind, that value doesn’t just go away after a few months, either.

(You can get our generic proposal here, if you’d like to know more about our rates.)

This was in a hyper-competitive space and our client was being heavily outspent by competitors. Yet, this is what we were able to achieve in a relatively short amount of time.

Your SEO case study should show that money spent on SEO = an increase in revenue.

Of course, you won’t be able to do this all the time — but you should be able to say something like, “This led to an increase in X% more sales,” or “This led to an X% increase in new leads.”

Showing You’re Responsible

This is where that part two comes in: you’ve got to highlight what you bring to the table that no one else can. 

We can’t tell you what that is, necessary. What is YOUR value proposition? What is your unique angle?

For TCF, it’s our expertise and our writing talent. We put our blog content up front in a lot of cases because we’re confident that our writers are better than… well, just about anyone.

We’re also confident in our expertise. 

We can talk endlessly about how our CEO, Kari DePhillips, was named one of the top 3 women in SEO by Serpstat . Or how we practice what we preach and have driven our entire business through SEO. 

Or how we were ten years ahead of the curve when it came to working remotely .

All of that allows us to weave a simple narrative in our case studies we hand to clients: SEO works, we’re better at it, and we can utilize our specific advantages to do incredible things for your business.

What Data Range Should You Include in Your SEO Case Study? 

As a quick aside, it’s important to point out just what data you’re including. Or, more accurately, what data range you’re including.

The obvious answer is whatever shows your impact in the most dramatic way.

A little less obvious, however, is something standard — something that both shows your impact while being a relatively common metric of success. This is why we typically show year-to-year results in our case studies. When you start breaking things up into smaller units, it can start to look like cherry-picking.

Year-to-year results typically are big — and to marketers and execs in the know, they’re also impressive because they tend to include spin-up time. This means that they tend to be realistic, too — something that can earn you kudos in a space known for being, uh, let’s say a little less than honest.

As far as what data you’re showing, we suggest sticking to the big numbers: sessions or users, conversions, and number of ranking keywords. SEMrush can be useful here — we find their historical data to be the best. (PS: If you want to give SEMrush a try, you can get a free week by using our link. )

Showing It’ll Work For Them

This is a special bit that’s going to require us to go on a bit of a tangent.

At the end of 2019, a client came to us with a unique problem: their customer is a needle in a haystack.

They were convinced that they were different. They were the exception. SEO wouldn’t work for them.

Because they sell luxury doors, windows, and security solutions to some of the richest people on Earth. Basically, if you need a bulletproof panic room for your yacht, we know a guy. 

Could SEO really help them find their target market? Were these hyper-rich folks really looking at Google to find the best security solutions for their home? 

Maybe they weren’t — but someone certainly is.

We convinced our client that high-end architects and interior designers are absolutely Googling this sort of thing. 

They want to know about the latest options and building materials to woo clients over. With the pandemic eliminating the ability to make in-person sales calls or attend conferences. Googling is the easiest and next best option

We were able to tell — thanks to keyword research — that security consultants were looking for options for their clients.

A year later, and surprise:

Before our client signed with us, he was going door-to-door around the United States trying to sell millionaires and billionaires these products.

Now? He gets clients coming to him — clients he otherwise would’ve never reached.

Big clients, with big budgets – even some famous people from Hollywood! Their security and interior design teams Google various terms we’ve optimized our client’s website for, and BAM.

Within six months, our client received so many new leads from SEO he had to hire new salespeople to keep up with demand.

But what does this hyper-specific case study show? How is it relevant to potential new clients?

That’s easy: because it shows we’re competent, and it also shows that we can develop an SEO strategy that works for industries that aren’t typically thought of as “SEO friendly.”

It’s for this reason that we think that any simple story you can tell about a client’s success is good — even if they aren’t in an especially common industry.

Good stories are good stories. It’s as simple as that.

Include a Narrative in Your Case Studies

Marketing is just storytelling. SEO folks tend to be very focused on the data — but the reality is, even good data can’t sell itself. You’ve got to include a narrative.

Why did your client come to you? What did they need? What were they struggling with? How did you solve their problem? How does that relate to the potential client reading the case study?

To make this easy, most of our SEO case studies follow a simple formula:

  • The Problem
  • The Strategy
  • The Results
  • What This Means For Your Brand

Here, the problem refers to the initial dilemma. Why are they coming to you? What do they need? What questions do they have?

The strategy is exactly what it says on the tin — just boiled down into a paragraph or two of easy-to-digest copy.

The results is where most of the three things listed above this section. We talk about the numbers, what they achieved, and what that means for the client.

Finally, the last section translates our past (or current) clients’ success into the potential success of the person reading the case study. We’re careful to point out how the client in the case study is unique, but at the same time, we make sure to point out that the nature of SEO is inherently universal.

That is, SEO can work for all businesses — it might not work in the same way, and it might not have the same results, but there’s a strategy there that CAN work to some extent for YOUR business.

https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/business-desktop-with-office-elements_4702652.htm#page=2&query=notebook%20glasses&position=2&from_view=search&track=sph

What to Avoid When Making an SEO Case Study

Don’t fall into the trap of relying on big names.

Many of the folks on TCF’s staff have had the luxury of sitting on both sides of the table. That means that, in addition to having to pitch businesses before, many of our team members have also had to court agencies.

This means that we are familiar with what some of your pitch decks look like.

And… we have to be honest, we’re a little embarrassed for you.

Far too many big (like, if you work in marketing, you’d know their names) agencies rely on case studies that just name drop Fortune 100 companies, talking about how they “helped” them “achieve results.”

...but if you ask for details?

“Well, everyone said we did a great job!”

If you can’t cite specific details about the project and what you did, then you aren’t writing a case study — you’re just writing copy for your execs to high-five over.

Your case study shouldn’t look like an algebra quiz.

Numbers are good. They’re concrete. 

But we’re marketers, folks. You’ve got to tell a story. 

What problem did you help your client solve? Why did they come to you in the first place? What did you DO for them?

Numbers and graphs can help illustrate these points, but they aren’t the whole story.

Don’t just show green numbers. You’ve got to explain what they mean.

At the same time, you don’t want to go overboard here. Don’t start getting into technical details. 

Your client probably doesn’t need to know the differences between sessions and users. They don’t need to know about algorithm updates, or E-A-T (Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness), or crawl depth.

They just need to know about results — and the general strategy of how you got your client to wherever it was they wanted to go.

Your case study shouldn’t look cherry-picked.

Your data should look honest. If it’s obvious you’ve been trimming down your graphs, or moving around numbers to make your impact look bigger than it is… well, your future client is going to have some uncomfortable questions for you.

It’s okay to only report on pages you had control over — or if you walk away from a client, only focusing on the time you were there (and the direct results that came from your effort).

Just keep in mind — you’re going to have to answer for any discrepancies.

What an SEO Case Study Looks Like (Download our Case Study Template!)

To help you figure out how to put a case study together, we’ve gone ahead and put together a just for this guide.

We’ve commented on it extensively, so you can see precisely why we’ve made the choices we have. 

We’ve done this because — let’s face it — it’s one thing to tell you how to do it, it’s another thing to see it in action. 

By   Guest Contributor

IMAGES

  1. SEO Case Studies: 30 Best SEO Case Study Examples for Success

    case study for seo

  2. Ultimate SEO Case Study Template: Proven Strategies 2023

    case study for seo

  3. 97 SEO Case Studies on How we Win it for our Clients

    case study for seo

  4. 58 Best SEO Case Studies and Tutorials-A Mind Blowing Free Knowledge

    case study for seo

  5. SEO Case Study Examples for Success

    case study for seo

  6. PPT

    case study for seo

VIDEO

  1. Unlock Business Success with the 3x Framework for SEO

  2. SEO Case Study Update

  3. SEO Case Study: 100% AI Local Lead Gen Website Ranking In 2024

  4. SEO Case Study 2023

  5. Local SEO Case Study : Journey to Rank On 3rd Position on Google Business Profile #localseo #seo

  6. The Worst SEO Mistake I've Made

COMMENTS

  1. 30 Best SEO Case Studies: Real Examples & Results That Work

    Best SEO Case Studies: 1. How I Increased My Organic Traffic 652% in 7 Days 2. SEO Investment Google Search Central Case Study 3. How to Create a Squeeze Page That Converts at 74.5% 4. From 126 to 121,883 Unique Visitors in Under 6 Months 5. Ranking in 24 Hours in the Competitive SEO Niche 6. From 0 to 75,000 Visits A Year 7. How We 4x'd Traffic and Doubled Revenue in E-Commerce 8. 6-Step ...

  2. 15 SEO Case Studies You Can Learn From

    15 SEO Case Studies You Can Learn From. Every now and then we publish real-world examples of how brands use SEO to dominate organic search and get more traffic to their websites. Below are the SEO case studies we've published so far. Zapier. Learn how Zapier gets 1.6M monthly search visits from their blog. Wise.

  3. 14 SEO Case Studies: Challenges, Solutions & Results

    10. Wind River triples CTR with PPC and SEO management. Wind River is a global SaaS brand that helps companies with digital transformation for vital intelligence systems in the aerospace, medical, automotive, and defense spaces.. They originally came to us for PPC services, but every cohesive marketing strategy leverages SEO, too.. Strategies: Internal linking - We improved site navigation ...

  4. SEO Case Studies and Success Stories

    Case studies SEO fundamentals Introduction Search Essentials SEO Starter Guide How Google Search Works Do you need an SEO? Crawling and indexing ... Browse SEO case studies and success stories to see first-hand how Google Search can help you reach more people with your website. [{ "type": ...

  5. 98 SEO Case Studies on How we Win it for our Clients

    SEO Case Study: Revenue Growth of 53.3% for a Manufacturing Client, After Just 1 month. June 20, 2024. This client from China, primarily targeting the global market, had a well-established website but lacked a proper SEO strategy. Despite the potential, they were not.

  6. SEO Case Studies: Learn From These 8 Success Stories

    SEO case studies present the various ways you can increase performance on search engines. By studying the key findings for each, you can then apply what you find to your own strategy. Also, case studies give you a unique opportunity to discover things in a practical way , providing examples and results you can easily relate to, making them a ...

  7. Linktree SEO Case Study: The Rise, Fall, & Future

    To do this, I've entered Linktree's domain into the search bar, scrolled down to the overview, and selected "Avg. organic traffic.". We can see the organic traffic rise and fall. Let's look at the rise first. The site had a bump in organic traffic around March-April 2020. The traffic peak was in August 2022, reaching ~6.5 million.

  8. SEO Case Study: How I Increased SEO Traffic by 600% in 24 Months

    SEO Case Study: How I Increased SEO Traffic by 600% in 24 Months. I used to think SEO case studies with titles like this were written by snake oil salesmen. After all, saying you increased someone's organic traffic―especially someone who's a multiple time New York Times best-selling author and already had a bunch of traffic―by 600% can ...

  9. Wise.com SEO Case Study: 5 Reasons Why Their SEO Rocks

    In this one-of-a-kind case study, we'll explore five reasons why Wise's SEO strategy rocks: Landing page templates that can be scaled up. A custom CMS built around their SEO needs. Content optimized for featured snippets. Multiple ways of attracting and acquiring links. Flawlessly migrating millions of pages with a lot of risk.

  10. How These 7 Successful SEO Case Studies Transformed Online Visibility

    When you explore these 7 search engine optimization case studies by top agencies, you'll learn how to transform mere data into actionable insights and a story to drive more leads. Learn from these SEO experts to tell your very own stories of success and demonstrate how you can overcome the challenges. 1. Taktical x Artsy.

  11. 10+ SEO Examples & Case Studies To Inspire Your Strategy

    5. Wordstream. Image Source. In a recent case study, Wordstream, an online advertising platform, sheds light on the SEO strategies that helped its client increase website traffic by 600%. Firstly, Wordstream analyzed content that attracted traffic to the website and unpublished the rest.

  12. SEO Case Studies

    SEO Case Studies. Learn how organizations in virtually every industry find organic search marketing success with BrightEdge. Learn the SEO best practices of more than 3 dozen companies through these insightful SEO case studies.

  13. SEO Case Study: How We Grew a Client's Traffic to 120K/Month

    An SEO case study is a study that documents the challenges a brand or marketer faced, the strategy they used to overcome those challenges, and the final results they achieved. An SEO case study uses relevant screenshots, figures, and reports that substantiate the strategy and the results.

  14. SEO Case Study: How I Increased My Organic Traffic 652% in 7 Days

    There's a SEO strategy that's crushing it right now. ("Skyscraper Technique 2.0") I used this strategy to increase organic traffic to one of my pages by 652.1%: (In 7 days!) This same approach helped my brand new post hit the #1 spot in Google… within weeks: And today's SEO case study I'm going to show you exactly how I did it ...

  15. 6 Things I Love About Zapier's SEO Strategy: A Case Study

    Head over to our list of SEO case studies. 1. Pitching the product through the back door. SEO is generally worth it if one of the following things is true: Potential customers are searching for what you sell or do. Potential customers are searching for solutions to problems your business helps to solve. But there seems to be a third way.

  16. 4 SEO Case Studies (That Actually Worked!)

    SEO Case Study #4: From 0 to 1 Million Pageviews in 12-Months. Author: Matthew Barby. Industry: SaaS, but applies to all. Summary: This is another long post (48-minute read) that covers tactical details for repeating Matthew's success. As with all successful case studies the initial research is a foundational piece.

  17. Best SEO Case Study: How I Ranked 1800+ Keywords on Page 1 of Google in

    Image via SEMrush. 4. Get More Brand Mentions and Backlinks. Building more backlinks is an effective SEO technique that finds its place in nearly all SEO case studies.. But how do I build backlinks? I frequently contribute to authoritative websites in my niche such as Forbes, Social Media Today, and 100 more.This helps me reach and engage new audiences and build high-quality backlinks.

  18. SEO Case Studies: Strategies That Actually Work!

    SEO case studies are one of the best ways to learn SEO and increase your skills. They provide you with an unparalleled opportunity to learn from real-world examples. By studying successful campaigns, you can better understand what tactics and strategies are most effective. You will also see how the SEO pros put together comprehensive SEO campaigns.

  19. How to Build a Killer SEO Case Study (+ FREE TEMPLATE!)

    Case studies (and what they exactly contain) will differ a bit from industry to industry (hence why this is the SEO case study guide and not, say, the marketing case study guide). If you're trying to build an SEO case study, you'll have to do three things: Show the client what's possible with SEO. Show the client how you are responsible.

  20. Examine SEO Case Study: 7 Lessons to 1 Million Monthly Visits

    Create an "about" page and "editorial policy" page showcasing why people should trust you. Lesson 7. Run regular SEO site audits. While Examine never focused on SEO as a main strategy, it wasn't oblivious to it either. It runs twice-a-year SEO audits on its site to ensure it's not missing simple things.

  21. How Pipedrive Increased Organic Sign-Ups by 33% with BOFU Content

    Read the case study to learn how the SaaS firm increased sign-ups by 33%. ... Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company. Case Studies Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success. New Releases Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

  22. How to use podcasts for natural link building

    The included case studies demonstrate that podcasts are effective for boosting SEO, fostering genuine engagement, building brand authority and creating digital communities.

  23. 9 Surprising Takeaways From Analyzing HubSpot's SEO Strategy

    Something you may want to try, too, if you have a large content inventory. 9. With so much free traffic, they still pay for keywords. I've recently collected opinions of 100 markers, SEOs and business owners on the value of SEO, and most of them said this: SEO is money better spent compared to search ads.