There’s no one right way to dominate search results. Every marketer and SEO pro has their own methods and strategies for driving organic visibility, website traffic, and all the benefits that come with them.
So there’s a lot we can learn from how others are racking up SEO wins, especially as the industry and SERPs evolve. To prove it, we’ve rounded up 10 SEO success stories to inspire you, inform your optimization strategies, and help you write your own impressive SEO case study.
1. Tribal Core increased traffic by 30x
Tyler Suchman, Founder of Tribal Core, had an impressive win for a digital marketing solutions company.
Project goals: “We wanted to diversify the website's sources of traffic. They’d been relying almost entirely on a traffic arbitrage model via Google Adwords, and were frustrated that organic traffic hadn't grown to meet their expectations.”
SEO challenge(s):
- Website had 800 million pages, only a fraction of which were indexed
- Website was saddled with a poor directory structure and thin content
SEO strategy: “We architected an entirely new directory structure for Googlebot to crawl, combined with a programmatic overhaul of the content on pages to address the thin content present.”
Results:
- Massive increase in Googlebot activity crawling the website within days of launching a new directory
- Organic traffic grew from 120,000 unique monthly visits to almost 4 million uniques over the next three years
This worked so well that the Tribal Core team used the same model to “launch a second domain with the client that grew from 0 to 20,000 unique daily visitors in the first 30 days.”
Top takeaway(s): “Giant websites are extremely complicated and have a unique set of challenges. You have to be methodical in analyzing site structure, reviewing the architecture of competitor sites, and implementing changes based on knowledge of how Google crawls, indexes, and serves up content in organic search.”
2. Digital Darts took organic keyword rankings from 0 to 7,500
Emily Amor, SEO Strategist at Digital Darts, shared how the company tackled SEO for a local brand that was expanding internationally in the competitive women’s fashion industry.
Project goals: This project involved “generating organic traffic and ranking for highly competitive keywords for the new domain, targeting their second-largest geographic customer base.”
SEO challenge(s):
- Extremely competitive market
- New website with no authority
SEO strategy: “We first had to make sure hreflang tags were working perfectly so search engines were directed to show the correct version of the site based on user location.
A lot of minor tweaks were made to collection and product pages based on different product terminology and location-specific search queries. We also did a massive PR campaign, reaching out to local newspapers and influencers in the fashion space who might have been interested in covering the launch and collaborating.”
Results: By the end of the first year:
- Organic traffic was generating 36% of the store's revenue and they had smashed their revenue goals
- Organic keyword ranking rose to 7,500+
Top takeaway(s): “International SEO isn't just cut and paste. You need to understand local search intent and how even slight variances in keywords can change a whole page's keyword strategy. It requires an adaptive mindset and lots of creativity. You also need a thorough understanding of hreflang tags, as well as language and terminology differences.”
3. Smart Monkey Marketing increased leads from 2% to 15%
Jamie Dinning, Senior Digital Executive at Smart Monkey Marketing, enjoyed a nice win for a local client in the commercial office space sector.
Project goals: The top goals were to “increase local visibility for several buildings located in London and South East UK and to increase leads from organic traffic.”
SEO challenge(s):
- Extremely competitive market, especially in London
- Client had a much lower domain authority and budget than competitors
- COVID-19 reduced organic visibility as people were locked down and no longer working in offices
SEO strategy: “We looked for natural and easy link opportunities to begin with, utilizing our clients' relationships with existing office tenants to increase brand awareness and secure natural link placements.
We created and optimized new content to target less competitive, long-tail keywords the website wasn’t ranking for. We also created extremely detailed long-form guides around the areas we were focusing on to increase search signals and position the website as an authority within those locations.”
Results: Across the seven buildings:
- Local map pack rankings increased to positions 1 or 2 with visibility up by 195%
- Organic traffic increased by 144%
- Direct leads went from 2% to just under 15%
“All in all, Google Search Console reports an organic visibility increase of 32% comparing April, May, and June 2022 to the same three-month period in 2021.”
Top takeaway(s): “It is possible to succeed with SEO for domains up against much stronger digital competitors. Organic SEO is a process that can take time but it is important to build momentum (and trust!) and to focus on creating content that is of good quality for your end-user.”
4. Rockstar Marketing more than doubled organic traffic
Providing great inspiration for brand new sites, Ravi Davda, CEO of Rockstar Marketing, recounted how the team more than doubled its daily organic visits.
Project goals: “For our own website, the goal was to get organic traffic. Once we had more traffic, the goal was to convert these into email subscribers, and eventually sales. Although it's still a work in progress, I couldn't be happier with the last 18 months.”
SEO challenge(s):
- Brand new domain with no content or authority
- Very competitive niche
- Limited time and budget
SEO strategy: The team “builds backlinks through HARO and Twitter, and has hired a writer to write fantastic quality SEO content.” They analyze their results often and tweak the strategy as needed.
Results:
- 50 to 75 visits per weekday (or in the ballpark of 1,100 to 1,650 per month)
- A couple of blog posts ranking in the featured snippets section
- Getting real business inquiries thanks to SEO
Top takeaway(s): “Keep working, even when you don't think the results will come. Because they will. Three or four months ago, we got 30 or so organic visits a day. It's more than doubled since. Trust the journey and focus on building authority and content each day. And stay patient.”
5. Evolving Digital generated $3.5M+ in revenue from organic search
Oliver Caprile, Founder of Evolving Digital, shared a major win for an e-commerce retailer in the luxury fashion space.
Project goals: “The primary objective was to increase organic revenue with the secondary KPI being organic traffic.”
SEO challenge(s):
- No keyword strategy and didn‘t follow SEO practices in general
- Unoptimized website and category pages
- Rapidly expanding product range with no optimization
SEO strategy:
- Optimizing website metadata for brand and category terminology
- Optimizing category pages with keyword-centric copy
- Optimizing 500+ product pages with keyword-centric H1s and H2s, relevant product descriptions, and internal links
- Developing product-specific blog content, internally linking to other products, and sharing it with fashion and lifestyle bloggers and influencers for link acquisition
Results: In the first 12 months:
- Organic traffic rose by 130%
- Purchases from organic increased by 94%
- Organic search generated over $1.5 million in revenue
In the second 12 months:
- Organic traffic rose by 45%
- Purchases from organic increased by 34%
- Organic search generated over $2 million
Top takeaway(s): “Having a strong link profile and investing in native links (eg. PR, social recognition, industry partnerships, and other trust-building exercises in the eyes of search engines) makes all SEO activities significantly easier.
Also, the larger the website, the more basic on-page SEO can move the needle. Make sure you consistently incorporate your target keywords into meta data, image alt text, internal page links, and in the copy on product/service/category pages.”
6. Colorado SEO Pros increased YOY conversions by 282%
Chris Rodgers, Founder and CEO of Colorado SEO Pros, got outstanding outcomes for a crypto and digital asset platform.
Project goals: The goal was to “support the client’s growth as the #1 crypto and digital asset platform for institutions with a tailored strategy and specialized SEO support.”
SEO challenge(s):
- Client was in “an emerging industry that changes at lightning speed”
- Growing marketing team was spread thin and “could not always support the campaign as needed”
SEO strategy: “First, the SEO team focused on helping the client address technical errors and build backlinks to drive up performance on current pages. Then, the team provided detailed optimization recommendations for new and existing services pages that were main drivers of revenue.
We provided technical SEO audit reports with recommendations, content blueprints, and backlink reports outlining off-page strategy.”
Results: In just one year, the company’s:
- First page rankings increased by 230% and its transactional pages' total rankings went up to 855%
- Organic traffic went up by 348%
- Year-over-year conversions for organic traffic went up by 282% and transactional pages up by 643%
- Total clicks went from 8,200 to 240,000 and impressions went from 208,000 to 3,730,000.
Top takeaway(s): “A clear, direct, and specialized SEO strategy combined with digital experts implementing the plan can lead to robust results.”
7. Tandem Buzz produced $10K in revenue in one month
Sebastian Gonzalez, an Organic Search Specialist at Tandem Buzz, helped a moving company increase users, conversions, and revenue through SEO.
Project goals: “My top goals for the project were to increase the conversions and traffic going into the website through search engines.”
SEO challenge(s): “The service area the client operated in was quite competitive as it’s a large metropolitan area in the United States.”
SEO strategy: “Since my goal was to increase their exposure in this service area, I based my content strategy around keywords with less keyword difficulty and search volume. Specifically, I focused on neighborhoods surrounding the larger city that were still populous enough to merit someone moving to them.
While these kinds of keywords are less transited, they’re easier to rank for. And the searchers who use them are more likely to have purchase intent.”
Results:
- 400% increase in users
- 50% increase in conversions
- $10,000 in attributable revenue from organic traffic within one month
Top takeaway(s): “Sometimes, molding your strategy to cater towards lower search volume but higher purchase intent keywords could be extremely beneficial to businesses. Often, large volume keywords are attractive to search engine optimization professionals but garner fewer results thanks to the competitive environment.”
Start writing your own SEO success story
Through these success stories, you’ve seen how all sorts of challenges in all sorts of industries can be overcome with the right optimization tactics. Now, it’s time to start applying some of the lessons learned to strengthen your own SEO. And we’ll bet that content will be part of your strategy, so understanding the ways in which you can use AI for SEO is important. Enter Jasper, our AI writing assistant.
On the Boss Mode plan, Jasper has several features for writing high-quality long-form content quickly. One of the fan favorites is the Surfer integration, which makes it a breeze to include relevant keywords in your content.
Plus, Jasper offers more than 50 templates for writing various content types—several with the option to include keywords for SEO. There’s even a handful specifically for SEO titles and meta descriptions.
Wanna get a little more technical? Try our FAQ schema markup generator.
Why not give Jasper’s templates a try, find out how they can improve your SEO content production workflows, and see how they improve your results?
