06/26/19

How to Win at Strategic Communications: Optimize Content to Increase Website Traffic

How to increase website traffic? It was our goal for the OBI Creative blog, and the Strength in Numbers campaign, this quarter. 

Specifically, we wanted to optimize our existing posts for organic search traffic. We set out to practice what we preach about content on ourselves. We promised to let you know our results.

Since we’re a full-service ad agency committed to driving results for our clients, it only seemed right to focus on our own results as well. 

As we said at the beginning of the year, we had three goals for our content this year:

• Better optimization of our content for organic search traffic
• Expansion into additional mediums, like podcasts
• Creation of longer, pillar page style content on our website

So, how are we doing?

Hitting Content Goals

As you can see in the charts below, our traffic is up. When we compare this quarter to Q2 2018, here’s what we see:

Traffic is up 34 percent. New contacts are up 75 percent.

What we love about this chart is the connection between increased traffic and new contacts. That’s why we’re doing this, after all. When you create content your target audience wants to read and you optimize that content for key search terms, you should see more new leads coming into your business from your website. 

That’s what we’re seeing at OBI Creative. 

Our blog posts, case studies and web pages are showing up in search queries more often, which is leading to more prospects discovering us and reaching out for potential partnerships. Our new business leads are up, in part at least, because our web traffic is up.

Landing page views are up 393 percent!

We talk about the importance of relevant, optimized content here a lot. Not only does it lead to increased search traffic and leads, but it also has a trickle-down effect. Our landing page views and email opens are up too. 

That’s what happens when you execute an inbound marketing campaign. We connected offers to our posts and followed up readers’ interest with email nurture campaigns. As more visitors check out our content, we’re seeing increased views of our landing page offers, submissions and leads from those offers. 

We’re also seeing better open and click numbers on our email campaigns.

This is exactly what inbound marketing campaigns are designed to do. With all our content working together to engage, convert and delight our readers, numbers are up across the board. 

How to Increase Organic Search Traffic to Your Site

As we said, one of our goals was to better optimize our content for organic search traffic. We did this by performing keyword research. Using paid tools and platforms like SEMRush and Hubspot, as well as free tools like Answer the Public and Ubersuggest, we identified highly searched keyword phrases for each of our posts and optimized them for those terms.

What we looked for (and what you should too):

• Highly searched long tail keyword phrases 
• Low competition 
• Relevant terms audiences are searching for

We realized that while our content was great, no one was searching for the way we wrote it. With search engines controlling the flow of information, it was critical that we use them to figure out what our audiences were typing (and talking) into search queries and make sure the page titles, subheads, alt image tags, slugs and meta descriptions have those terms in them. 

Those efforts helped our posts be found by our ideal audiences more often. They’ll help you, too.

Where Our Traffic Came From

Not surprisingly, our top three sources of traffic were:

1. Organic Search 
2. Direct
3. Social

These were our top three traffic sources in 2018 as well. The difference in this quarter over this time last year is we’re getting more traffic!

The results are the same for our new visitor traffic. Organic search leads the way, followed by direct traffic (people typing in OBI Creative directly) and social (traffic driven to our site by our social channel activity). 

Our Top Blog Posts

If you’re going to fine tune your content, it’s critical to examine which content your audiences are engaging with most often. With the focus of our content this quarter being the PESO model, it’s not surprising that two of our top three blog posts discussed the PESO model for integrated communications and PR campaigns.

Rounding out the top posts were a summary of the importance of market research and an announcement about our business expansion. 

1. An Intro to the PESO Model From Its Creator, Gini Dietrich
2. How to Win at Public Relations
3. 6 Reasons Research Rules
4. OBI Creative Announces Major Des Moines Investment

What About Our Other 2 Goals?

We also had a goal of expanding into podcasts and other content mediums. So, we set up a studio and are staged to produce podcast content going forward. We also started producing more video content on our social channels, driving increased engagement. 

Our first pillar page published at the end of Q1 saw good traffic and continues to generate leads for us. 

Are You Ready To Do This For Yourself?

How are you doing on the content goals you set for yourself?

Now that we’re six months into the year, are you where you want to be?

If you’re feeling overwhelmed at the idea of doing this for yourself, we get it. Creating a winning content strategy and then executing upon it as part of an inbound marketing campaign is a lot of work. Especially when you’re trying to do it on top of all your other marketing duties. We’d love to help you generate results for your business. If you’re ready for content that converts, connect with us now!