A Content Marketing Case Study
Creating content is something all SEO marketers should aspire to do.
For the past few years SEO marketers have focused on building links, and for good reason too. Links are the all important factor in search engine rankings, traffic and everything that follows.
But it seems the more we learn about link building, the more we make assumptions that result in our demise. A black hat linking strategy that works now, may result in a penalty in a few years time.
The point is, all SEO has risks; especially when it comes to link building. What we know for a fact is that Google is trying to focus on content. We’ve always heard content is king, but experience has taught us otherwise. Until now.
Posting lots of high quality targeted content and getting it in front of the right audience always results in engagement, traffic, links & social shares. So I decided to run a little case study of my own. Just to see how much traffic and rankings I could get with content marketing right now.
The only link building I did was content syndication with WP Link Boss. Simply sharing each blog post on about 40 social profiles (social networks/bookmarking sites/blogs) with the plugin and setting it up with Onlywire.
I published 5 posts daily, this is what happened:
It just shows the magical results that can be produced with consistent action. I routinely challenge people to create one video every day for 90 days straight or 1 blog post daily; in the end a good 2 or 3% of participants follow it through.
What was interesting is that I immediately started getting 200 visitors daily to 400 visitors daily within 7 days of publishing articles. This happened so quickly because of the easy keywords I targeted with my blog posts and sheer volume of them.
I started ranking for the keywords right away because of the syndications (which are mostly social shares/signals).
Around the 8th of July I started syndicating my blog posts to more web properties and the traffic jumped up. I also built 15 high Page Rank backlinks over the course of 3 days using this strategy. The 5 posts/day continued until the 15th when I reduced posting to once weekly.
The experiment began on July 1st and lasted just 15 days. The high PR links I built to the blog had a dramatic effect, but the bulk of the results came from the consistency of the content & syndication.
Most marketers who start publishing blog posts never promote them. Now because of that, it can take them months or years before they start seeing results.
When you’re consistent with your blog posts, and you promote them individually through content syndication with WP Link Boss or via Onlywire; you will start getting results.
When you turbo charge your site with authority high Page Rank backlinks the results come even faster. I did this exact same thing when I got started on the Internet with this blog. I blogged daily, I promoted my blog posts and the traffic soon followed.
We’re in a time where link building is uncertain. Google is constantly changing the SERPs, what we do know is that content marketing works. If you consistently create GREAT content that people are looking for; Google and other sites will send traffic your way.
People will share it, they’ll join your list & buy your stuff. Link building get results, but focusing your efforts on ranking a few pages makes little sense. Instead simply spend more time publishing content and less time building links.
It builds site authority, generates traffic from all kinds of sources and spreads any link building penalty risks across hundreds or thousands of pages. When your consistent with your actions (publishing content); you will get results (traffic). It works every time.
In Prosperity,
David Wood
P.S. Leave me your thoughts, comments, and questions below.
Comments
Zara Thompson, June 30 2014, 14:23
Great case study, David! This is incredibly insightful and motivating. Thanks for sharing!
Emilio Clarke, July 2 2014, 10:15
I’ve learned so much from this post. Consistency really is key in content marketing.
Hana Al-Ahmadi, July 5 2014, 17:47
Thanks for the detailed explanation and examples. It’s clear how powerful content marketing can be.
Ravi Gupta, July 8 2014, 09:33
This strategy makes so much sense. I’m inspired to start implementing it immediately. Kudos!
Lena Nguyen, July 10 2014, 21:05
This post is a goldmine of information. Thank you for the actionable tips!
