Blogging has evolved tremendously since 1994 when the first blog was written. Today around 53% of the marketers rely on content purely to drive traffic to an official blog. The percentage clears all the doubts about the blog being a reliable channel to drive traffic to your website.
Out of 3 billion active websites, 650 million are active blogs that range from official blogs to entertainment blogs. The question that remains unanswered is how many of them are successful and WHY?
You may start a blog for multiple reasons, but the goal remains the same as always.
We witness bloggers developing quality content, adding visual content, posting frequently and what not to drive revenue. There are hundreds of blogs proclaiming to reveal the secret behind successful bloggers. The hard fact is there is no magic potion to make a blog successful; it needs your brain and heart put together to make it work. One thing that comes easy to you in the ecosystem of blogging is learning from the leaders who made it to the top.
Over the last few years, blogging got its share of recognition as a potent marketing tool for the enterprises also. A well and strategically built blog play a pivotal role in any organizations growth today but what is important is to understand the strategy that will work for you. As the blog can be easily propagated over the social media channels, they both share a symbiotic relationship to increase the website traffic. With each company today having a dedicated blog page or using the acronym knowledge, we are seeing blogging going a long way to bring traffic to websites. As a very lost cost incurring channel as compared to the jitter SEO techniques, blogging establishes you as a subject matter expert who imparts knowledge to the visitors. This is a trust developing channel that is far more valuable than just ranking high with nothing to offer.
Learn From These Case Studies
Check out these 10 spot-on case studies, purely backed by stats of how they increased the organic reach of the blog & increase the organic traffic:
#1 – 850% increase in sales leads – Louis E. Page
Louis E. Page blogging success is a perfectly-quoted example of what a blog can do your business with just organic traffic. Louis E. Page did enough of groundwork to understand what his target audience was looking for. This is where many of the bloggers of the year 2018 fail. Most of them run into a rat race trying to copy the competitor’s strategy and staying limited. The best part of blogging is that you are open to unleash your creativity to your audience and that is what Louis E. Page an old-school marketer did.
Source: Louispage.com
Key takeaway:
Louis E. Page remained consistent with developing valuable content like a white-paper on the How to build a horse paddock using Woven-wire fencing that alone received 1500 downloads. It was pure organic traffic that downloaded the Whitepaper because it was an exceptional content that the audience was looking for. What we found unique about his blog page is that there is no skimmed knowledge, each blog is well detailed and offers a small Question and answer section at the end of the page that saves the blog visitors time of hopping to other websites or FAQs page for better understanding. The blog projected the company as a trustworthy source of information in fencing.
#2 – A single blog increased landing page traffic by 59% – Snack Traffic
It may sound unusual because it is. Not because it is not possible but no one does it so perfectly and that is why reaching 59% jump in traffic figure seems unusual. Snack traffic proved that there is no need to stay in the crowd. While the blog page was not bringing any revenues, the SEO team sat down to churn the core of their blogging technique that leads to the facts that they were using keywords where the traffic was very high but the keyword buyers were big fishes who were ranking very high on these keywords.
What they did after that is what everyone must follow. They studied the content their competitors were posting and as was expected it was found that the competitors were purely focusing on ranking high without offering any value in their content. They engaged with the bloggers who wrote for them and with the customers and came up with a blog that had listed the most concrete wellness programs from the actual buyers.
Source: backlinko.com
Key Takeaway:
It may sound like it took one blog to earn 10,000 blog page traffic every month but it took deep competitor analysis, right keyword selection, and engagement with real customers to attain those amazing stats.
#3 – A Whooping 2.7 times increase in website traffic- Kinaxis
Kinaxis had been blogging for quite some time but were not quite sure if their efforts were yielding results. When they planned to move to social media for marketing, hardly did they know that their blogs would help them garner a lot of customer attention. The key remained the same to develop highly customer focused blogs rather than mere promotional content.
This approach of blogging led to 3.2 times increase in their traffic conversion. A unique technique they used to change the landscape of blogging was instead of just Kinaxis employees were blogging on the official page, they opened up gates for leading industry experts to write blogs on their official page.
Source: Kinaxis.com
Key takeaway:
A new approach to traditional blogging where their website took credit of experts putting across their articles on the official blog page leads to a tremendous increase in traffic.
#4 – From 0 to 1.5 million footfall monthly – Buffer
Let us talk realistically. Buffer did not reach this figure overnight. It took them around six years of hard work to achieve consistency in their monthly traffic. They lost and learned over the journey of 6 years and that is how they are now the best content developers in their niche. They kept a record of how each of their posts performed. They tracked down the engagement, stay time, shares, likes and more of each blog that went online. It was derived that long-form educational blogs were bringing in a major share of monthly traffic and Buffer team kept on getting better at it as they learned and adapted quickly.
Source: Bufferapp.com
Key Takeaway
Buffer’s blog is all about keeping up with the trends in their niche and bringing across statements of influential experts in their niche. Working with a highly focused approach, the team optimizes the headline of the post and focuses on updating the old well-performing posts with valuable updates and republishing them
#5 – 15% increase in their traffic – Hinda Incentives
Hinda Incentives plugged in the opportunity of zero availability of informational and conversational blog in its business niche of corporate incentive programs. They began with a purely conversational blog which would help customers make an informed decision in buying incentive programs. They garnered a lot of customer attention by being the first mover in this space and till today they remain the center of all the conversations that happen on the blog.
Key Takeaway
If your services are yet to be on a blogging platform, start one today and be steady with educational blogs that allow the subscribers to talk discuss various aspects so that they are able to take a right decision just like with Hinda Incentives, the monthly website visit is around 1000.
#6 – Built the right content to earn backlinks – The Renegade Pharmacy
Mere blogging the traditional way will not work wonders. A business must evolve with the changing landscape of blogging and that is what Renegade Pharmacy did and earned more than 1,000 organic backlinks. Creating an infographic that went viral 2 months after it was posted on their blog, earned The Renegade Pharmacy its share of glory. The infographic talked about how Coke effects your body.
The infographics earned lots of backlinks for them, coming from authority websites and that led to an increase in the number of keywords for which The Renegade Pharmacist website ranked for.
Source: Ahrefs.com
Key Takeaway
Renegade Pharmacist became a domain authority with a simple infographic that put together what all the audience already knew but the Renegade Pharmacy pulled out a bigger picture out of it that was innovative and thought-provoking. This type of content intrigues the audience and benefits the blog page. One has to be innovative in every 2-3 posts.
#7 – Infographics driven blog page – KISSmetrics
Achieving the ladder rank of 2.5 million visitors and 4,000 backlinks from mere 47 infographics – Is it common?
In less than a year is no child’s play. There is some serious blogging going on KISSmetrics in a unique way. Yes, they do long-form educational and informational blog post but did you notice the difference? They focus a lot on developing infographics offering the readers a clear picture of what is going around in the article.
Their infographics talk about data that is available to them and represent it to its readers in the most simple and digestible form. With the quality of infographics, they go their links from authority websites like Forbes and Huffington Post at the cost of just building the infographic.
Source: QuickSprout.com
Key Takeaway
Visual representation of data is the best way to make your content more presentable and readable. KISSmetrics focused on creating the best infographics that are self-propagated pieces of content.
#8 – A single post received 4,865 views in a view by only organic traffic – Vero
You read it right, the single post led to 953 email signups and 256 free trial signups for Vero. The first look at the page reveals a lot about the hard work that went into the creation of the single post.
It was one of its kinds with the most appropriately priced keywords with right traffic density and an information-wise rich 5000+ word blog led to the amazing success. Easily navigable post that connected so well to the practical world made waves of a sensation among the audience. As per an email marketing organization, the post was shared more than 5,000 times on social media and earned multiple backlinks to the website.
The prime player part of the Vero content strategy is that they focus on developing highly actionable content. They do develop long-form content but they highlight the actions one needs to take very prominently so that if a reader is in a hurry he knows the key points and can act on it immediately. This way they sacrifice the stay time of the blog to earn market credibility as a blogger who intends to make things easier for his readers.
Source: Backlinko.com
Key takeaway
They spent time planning the blog content and extracted the most valuable data to back their blog. It was a beautifully woven content that required a meticulous effort of bloggers, market researches, and graphic designers. Vero’s single post success if a proof of a quality effort with an innovative approach offers 360-degree coverage to the requirements of a viral blog.
#9 – The new blog follows up competitor success – Honorable mention
While we do focus on being innovative and creative, it is important not to lose focus on what your competitor is up to and that is what Honorable mention did to achieve 800 views on a single blog post. It was quite a marketing technique rather than the blogging technique but if it worked for them, it could work for you too. The team Honorable mention piggybacked the success of a competitor blog post.
What they did was, put their thoughts about the competitor blog post in their own blog. They pointed to our few things that could have been better and offered a page to readers to get into a conversation that leads to a grand success.
Source: Socialtriggers.com
Key Takeaway
It is not a strongly recommended strategy but keeping your eyes open to what your competitor is up to and it may do no harm to follow up on their glory and win some leads for your website.
#10 – 70 times higher return on investment – Slidebean
If you ask as to exemplify targeted advertising, it would be Slidebean that is currently at 50,000+ website visitors every month. Slidebean laid a strong emphasis on keeping its blogging roots strong by selecting the right domain name. While they used advertising partly to get traffic to their blog post, they focused on segmented marketing and precise keyword selection that would bring them maximum traffic.
The team kept on improvising its blogging techniques and decided to keep the content real so that the audience would connect with what they are reading. How they achieve it? They choose the topics and competitors rather than just working randomly.
It took them 12 months to reach 70 times more Return on investment by reaching qualified traffic.
Source: Slidebean.com
Key takeaway
You do not always need to buy backlinks and heavy traffic keywords to achieve astounding success. But a well put content strategy and focused effort makes sure your money does not go down the drain. After they strategize the content, its summary and writers persona, they always give it a thorough read to pick out any gaps that could lead to the saturation of the audience.
Bonus Tip for Multiplying the Organic Reach of your Website
Value your content
Cisco, the leader of networking solutions recently has always been active on social media and its blogging channel. They were yet to find its impact in real data so the team decided to launch a new router product and market it only via its content strategy that is to develop simple technical content that is of great value and unparallel. This content was shared only over social media channels and helped Cisco reach the anticipated goals shot by just $100,000 and this campaign grabbed its position in top five launches of the company’s history.
It was pure good quality content that did the job for Cisco.
To Wrap Up
A successful blog is an ideal mix of traditional blogging approach and trending strategies to achieve the success you desire. If you plan to choose content marketing overpaid SEO, the prior requires much less investment but a little more focused effort to yield fantastic results that propagate with the same level of effort.
The factors that drive content marketing is Keyword research, backlink building, developing infographics, long-form non-promotional content and upgrading the existing content. Put a good thought into the headline of your content as it is the face of what lies inside and make sure you post with consistency or your return on investment will drop. Creating a blog and mere publishing will not work; you need to share it along the powerful social media accounts that establish you as a market influencer. If you wish to gain more organic traffic for your blog, your strategy will play the pivotal role.
INFORMATION SOURCE:
- http://www.louispage.com/blog
- https://backlinko.com/white-hat-seo
- https://blog.kinaxis.com/page/6/
- http://blog.hinda.com/
- https://backlinko.com/content-strategy
- https://socialtriggers.com/new-blog-increase-traffic/
- https://slidebean.com/blog/marketing/content-marketing-the-real-cost