Best SEO Case Studies List that Actually Worked

Going through ‘SEO case studies’ is like a soldier getting ready for the war. Before pitching into the battlefield, soldiers will completely examine the rival, their armories, weapons, and so on.

In the same way, before you kickstart the SEO activities for your business, taking a sneak peek into the SEO case studies can greatly help. A complete SEO case study of an organization can serve as your eye-opener to identify what works and what doesn’t for your peers & competitors. Additionally, adding digital marketing services to your SEO arsenal can greatly help to boost your online presence and reach more potential customers.

In this blog, we have curated a few best SEO case studies that will help you devise a master plan for your SEO experiments. Grab a coffee, lock the door, and settle in to give the SEO case studies list a read.

16+ Best SEO Case Studies List to Follow

1. Improve Traffic & Organic Visibility

Source : Rise Interactive

Website Revamp Goals

Industry: Food

  • Create a search-friendly website
  • Maximize visibility
  • Improve user experience
  • Increase visitors website

SEO Strategy

  • Develop an integrated site-wide keyword strategy
  • Uncovering user intent and organizing the site’s content
  • Create URL strategy to take advantage of established value
  • Remove and merge sections of the old website to support keyword strategy
  • Post website launch, SEO monitoring to fix issues

Website Revamp Takeaway – SEO First Approach

SEO Case Studies (SEO First Approach and Website Maintenance) - ColorWhistle
  • SEO-first approach and website maintenance goes hand-in-hand
  • Site architecture and content development is key to improving visitor experience and SEO
  • A URL strategy can help with SEO, user experience, and boost current marketing incentives

Results

87%

INCREASED MOBILE TRAFFIC

22%

INCREASED WEBSITE TRAFFIC

39%

INCREASED RECEIPE SHARING

2. Increase Organic Traffic by 450%

Source : Koozai

Website Improvements Objectives

Industry : Education

  • Improve traffic from organic search
  • Improve ranking for main keywords
  • Increase sign-ups
  • Build global awareness

SEO Strategy

  • Long-tail keyword research
  • Website structure refinement
  • Optimizing the site for mobile

SEO Maintenance Takeaway – Mobile SEO

SEO Case Study (Optimize for Mobile Users) - ColorWhistle
  • Long-tail keywords have amazing benefits including increased search volume, higher click-through-rate, higher conversion rate, easier and quicker ranking
  • We’ve all heard mobile is the ‘next big thing’ and it is here to stay, so it’s no big secret that website owners need to think about mobile users as well
  • Structuring a website is indeed a crucial element of SEO as it helps to generate more traffic and receive more internal links

Results

66%

INCREASE IN ORGANIC TRAFFIC

20

#1 RANKING FOR 20 KEYWORDS

3. Driving Traffic To A Localized Website

Source : Latitude Group

Local SEO Objectives

Industry : Hotel

  • Increase traffic to Arabic language website
  • Convert visits to bookings
  • Organically increase non-brand related traffic

Local SEO Strategy

  • Technical audit to optimize website for non-branded keywords
  • Changes to custom CMS
  • Combined content outreach and social media sharing to increase non-brand traffic
  • Publishing fresh content and sharing it on social media

Local SEO Takeaway – Regular Content Updates

SEO Case Study (Update Content Regularly) - ColorWhistle
  • Performing a technical audit improves the overall growth of a website. It is done to make a website flawless and more search engine friendly
  • Content outreach and social media sharing ensures direct visibility of your content and developing valuable relationship in the process
  • Constant flow of fresh content keeps your community engaged, more indexing, and helps the website to rank well in search engines

Results

218%

INCREASE IN ARABIC VISITS EACH YEAR

45%

OF BOOKING THROUGH ORGANIC SOURCES

70%

OF TOP 10 LANDING PAGES BY YEAR END

4. Organic Traffic Increase Through Blogs

Source : TopRankMarketing

SEO with Blogging

Industry : Laboratory

Create a blog strategy to focus on solving customers pain points to increase qualified traffic

Blogging SEO Strategy

  • Post blogs relating to industry questions
  • Including keywords in content that target audience search
  • Adding call-to-actions(CTA) in each blog
  • Promote across social media platforms

Blogging SEO Takeaway – Use Better CTA’s

SEO Case Study (Improve CTA's) -ColorWhistle
  • If you write blogs that are relevant to your audience, it will give you an opportunity to drive back traffic to your website
  • Quality content is great, but it won’t improve your SEO efforts if relevant keywords are absent
  • CTA’s are so powerful that conversions, revenue, business, and profit rely on it
  • Even though there are many ways to promote content none of them are as good as social media platforms

Results

33%

INCREASE IN TRAFFIC TO PRODUCT PAGES

58%

INCREASE IN ORGANIC TRAFFIC

19%

INCREASE IN PAGE VIEWS

5. Drive Local Inquiries

Source : Hallaminternet

Lead Generation SEO Goals

Industry : Waste management

  • To be found at the time when users want to hire them
  • Increase awareness of their service
  • Focus on the locations they serve

Local SEO Strategy

  • Develop a detailed local SEO campaign
  • Optimizing visibility in ‘Google My Business’
  • Improving on-page local optimization
  • Generating high-quality mentions and links

SEO Maintenance Takeaway – Optimize on-page SEO

SEO Case Study (Optimize for On-page SEO) - ColorWhistle
  • A local SEO strategy is effective for improving customer experience, obtaining a higher SERP position, and pushes you ahead of your competitors
  • Staying on top of ‘Google My Business’ listing is a continuous process but, one that will be worth your effort as it increases your search engine visibility
  • Choose small business SEO services to achieve your goal.
  • On-page SEO not only gives you a better visibility but also helps you run successful internet marketing campaigns

Results

SERVICES WERE FULLY BOOKED FOR THREE WEEKS
INCREASED VISIBILITY IN THREE TARGETED CITIES
INCREASE IN WEBSITE TRAFFIC AND LEADS

6. Rank For 4 Competitive Keywords in Just 32 Weeks?

Source : Outreachmama

Technical SEO Objectives

Industry : Online marketing

To get a first-page ranking for 4 competitive keywords

  • Guest posting
  • Editorial link building
  • Skyscraper blogging and link outreach
  • Blogger outreach for links
SEO Case Study (Build Links) - ColorWhistle
  • While many are still at crossroads on whether guest posting works, doing it within Google’s guidelines is good for SEO
  • Guest posting and editorial link building are different. You can earn a link via guest post but, in editorial link building, you have to earn it naturally. If you somehow find a way to earn one, it is even more effective than guest posting
  • Small to big brands across the industries all swear by the skyscraper tactic to get amazing results
  • Link outreach plays an important role in increasing the awareness and visibility of your brand
  • If you just want to connect with other bloggers or reach out to industry influencers, outreaching for links will amply your brand’s visibility. For that, you have to create truly exceptional content

Results

GENERATED A TOTAL OF 80 CONVERSION
DOUBLED ORGANIC TRAFFIC
113 NEW REFERRING DOMAINS

7. Show Up For Keywords Searches Relevant To Your Service

Source : Simpletiger

Competitive SEO Goals

Industry : Software

Difficulty in showing up for keyword searches relevant to their services and features.

Competitive Technical SEO Strategy

  • A thorough technical, technical optimization, and recurring audits to find out new and existing problems
  • Detailed keyword research
  • Content audit to find out keyword rankings of the content
  • Steady blog publishing
  • Off-site audit to find out noteworthy content to get PR based articles in place to increase domain authority and get a better ranking

Technical SEO Takeaway – Conduct content audits

SEO Case Study (Content Keyword Audit) - ColorWhistle
  • Technical audit- Link building, content creation, content distribution, graphic design, etc is vital to successful SEO. But, all these “front end” SEO tactics won’t work if the “back-end” isn’t optimized. A basic technical audit includes finding broken links, proper usage of H1/H2/H3 tags and bolded words. It also extends into territory of servers, IP addresses, DNS services, web hosting, and all other kinds puzzling hi-tech terms
  • Technical optimization- If there are on-site factors hindering your SEO efforts, technical optimization is a must
  • Recurring audits- It will help you track your progress and whether your efforts are paying off
  • Offsite audit- It is the activities you do on your website to improve your ranking like manual link building, social media marketing, and guest blogging which will get a reference to your website in different places of the web
  • Keyword research is figuring out what the people are looking for in order to be at the right place, at the right time, with the right content. It should always be an ongoing process as the competition and trends keep changing
  • The aim of the content audit is to provide a qualitative analysis of all the content on your website. It will help you to develop an effective marketing strategy. Plus, you can also find out what worked and what hasn’t
  • Search engines love fresh content but you must know how to balance between quality and frequency

98%

ORGANIC TRAFFIC INCREASE BY 5 MONTHS

99%

NEW USERS VIA ORGANIC TRAFFIC BY 5 MONTHS

258%

ORGANIC TRAFFIC INCREASE BY 12 MONTHS

320%

INCREASE IN NEW USERS VIA ORGANIC TRAFFIC BY 12 MONTHS

1909 Keyword ranking increased by 1909 positions for 70 tracked keywords, average improvement of 27 positions per keyword

8. Deliver Leads Through LinkedIn & PPC Advertising

Source: passion digital

SEO with Social Media Objectives

Industry: Education

  • To drive quality leads to their new open programs
    Strategy
  • PPC (Google, Bing), LinkedIn used as advertising mediums
  • LinkedIn ad such as sponsored updates, InMails, and dynamic Ads was tried
  • Advanced data-led approach to target the courses to the right people

SEO with Social Media Takeaway – Run Ad campaigns

SEO Case Study (Paid Ad Campaigns) - ColorWhistle
  • There are many advantages of PPC services advertising via Google and Bing. Some of the major ones are PPC services is measurable and trackable, quick entry, incredible targeting options, provides loads of useful data, and gives quicker results.
  • LinkedIn consists of business people, business owners, students, and teachers. It provides a multitude of options through which you can target the right audience for your product and services.
  • Dynamic LinkedIn ads help deliver messages that can be relevant and customizable according to each member.
  • Data-driven ad campaigns deliver creative messaging and help the targeted people to see the real value. The ads allow you to offer ‘read-value’ to consumers. By exploring more in this area, you’ll get some serious rewards in return.

Results

94%

INCREASE IN BROCHURE DOWNLOADS

744%

LEADS GENERATED TOTALLY OUT OF WHICH 473 FROM LINKEDIN AND 271 FROM PPC

6.39%

AVERAGE CONVERSION FROM LINKEDIN ADS

9. Optimizing Existing Campaigns To Increase Revenue & Reduce Cost

Source: Coast Digital

Conversion Optimized SEO Goals

Industry: Entertainment

Assistance with PPC, and SEO. Plus, wanted to generate more revenue and improve the existing brand campaign.

Conversion Optimized SEO Strategy

  • Auditing their AdWords account to optimize existing campaign
  • Using historical data analysis to determine how people search
  • Structured Adwords campaign around these terms

Conversion SEO Takeaway – Conduct Adword audit

SEO Case Study  (Ad Word Audit) - ColorWhistle
  • An Adword audit is auditing the Adword account to evaluate its effectiveness. It helps to identify issues and improves overall health and performance of the account. Once you’ve done it, you can better focus on your target audience and get the desired outcomes from your PPC efforts.
  • Historical data is nothing but looking for what worked in the past and implementing it. Once you get a hold of it, you’ll be able to start your new campaign with a fresh and confident mindset. By using this method, you can easily predict your future efforts and stop wasting time on areas that don’t work. It’ll help to increase your ROI on each campaign.

Results

58%

COST PER CLICK – 58% DECREASE

138.9%

CLICK-THROUGH RATE – 138.9% INCREASE

10.9%

AVAERAGE ORDER VALUE – 10.9%

92.2%

RETURN ON AD SPEND(ROAS) – 92.2% INCREASE

42.2%

COST PER ACQUISITION(CPA) – 42.2% DECREASE

10. Increase ROI During Holiday Season

Source: 9thCO

Industry: Food

Increase online sales during peak season

Season Special SEO Strategy

  • Comprehensive SEO audit to remove constraints in indexing
  • Improve organic traffic through online promotion
  • PPC search campaign to increase ROI

Innovative SEO Takeaway – Make it Creative + Viral

SEO Case Study (Competitive SEO Audit) - ColorWhistle
  • Typically, a competitive SEO audit includes toxic link analysis, content keyword analysis, backlink competitive analysis, website speed analysis, duplicate content analysis, Javascript test analysis, and content audit. After the audit is done, you can determine SEO weaknesses, identify strengths of your competitors, and improve your SEO strategy.
  • With online promotion, you can reduce cost, measure every activity, increase brand engagement, target specific demographic, get more exposure and hold attention for a longer time.
  • With PPC you can get fast and measurable results, reach the right audience and you needn’t depend on SEO or algorithmic changes.

Results

25%

INCREASE IN ORGANIC SEARCH TRAFFIC

298%

INCREASE IN ROI

550%

DECREASE IN COST PER ACQUISITION

11. Get 25% Of Keywords On Your Homepage Within 60 Days

Source: Arrow Digital

Brand and SEO Visibility Challenges

Industry: Equipment supplier

  • Improve online presence
  • Optimize digital marketing strategy to cover B2B and B2C marketing

Brand and SEO Visibility Strategy

  • Adding keywords to attract the right type of audience
  • Website enhancements and Mailchimp integration was made
  • Social media content was created to engage with audience

Brand SEO Takeaway – Improve UX as Per Trend & Brand

SEO Case Study (Website Redesign Trend) - ColorWhistle
  • You have to know how people are looking for your products or services that you offer. Once you figure it out you will be able to add the right keywords and attract the right audience.
  • Technology and design trends change quickly, so businesses have to stay current to get more online opportunities. Redesigning your website has benefits like more exposure, trust from search engines, faster loading time and improved user experience.
  • Social networks are one of the fastest growing industries in the world. The only way to resonate with people on social media is to add useful content.

Results

25%

AFTER 2 MONTHS 25% OF THE TARGET KEYWORDS WERE ON THE FIRST SEARCH RESULT, AND 50% APPEARED ON THE 2ND PAGE OF THE SEARCH RESULT

15.1%

15.1% TRAFFIC INCREASE WITHIN FIRST 2 MONTHS

568%

568% INCREASE IN SOCIAL MEDIA TRAFFIC

12. How To Remove Penalty?

Source: Seo UK

SEO Reputation Management Challenges

Industry: Information and resource sharing for the online community

Needed to quickly remove a penalty that was causing problems with organic traffic

SEO Reputation Management Workaround

After doing thorough research, root cause of the penalty was found. Issues were due to outbound links and deactivated hyperlinks

SEO Case Study (Broken Link Audit) - ColorWhistle
  • As SEO experts you probably know that links are the foundation of Google’s algorithm. Poor outbound linking practices will hurt your website. Identify the harmful links and remove them.
  • Broken links are a terrible nuisance as it makes it difficult to find information and cause problems for search engine crawlers. So your wordpress website won’t be indexed properly and will affect your SEO efforts.
  • Ensure that the content looks clean and optimized, including the use of proper anchor text. For that to be done he uses a quality tool Linkio that helps pick the right anchor text to use during the link building efforts and content creation. It can also analyze your competitors back links and give you the best percentage to beat their rankings and get to the #1 rank.

Result

ONCE THE PENALTY WAS REVOKED, ORGANIC TRAFFIC WAS INCREASED BY 61.79%

13. How To Renew An E-Commerce Company’s Search Engine Ranking?

Source: Victorious

ECommerce SEO Goals

Industry: Fashion

  • To get a good search engine ranking and increase sales
    Strategy
  • To identify the gaps in the SEO, a six-month execution plan was strategized
  • A new keyword research was followed which is known as ‘Thematic keyword research.’ This technique was used to optimize the website, to let search engines identify new products for long tail keywords, increase website visibility and number of clicks
  • Created strategic internal backlinks from high authoritative pages to increase page authority and domain authority
  • Fixing the endless redirect loop that confused search engines to improve website speed optimization

ECommerce SEO Takeaway – Conduct keyword research

SEO Case Study (Thematic Keyword Research) - ColorWhistle
  • No matter what you’re trying to achieve with SEO, you have to devote a minimum of six months to get results
  • Thematic keyword research is a new concept that lays the foundation for SEO dominance. The process involves mimicking search engines, identifying purchase intent keywords, and selecting the highest value keywords
  • Getting quality backlinks from high authority websites in a natural way will result in the ranking surge, increased referral traffic, get a whole set of new audience, and most of all sales boost!
  • Page redirection affect a visitors browsing experience, especially mobile users. They also cause significant performance and speed issues. So make sure you remove unnecessary redirects to make your pages load super fast

Results

93,823%

INCREASE IN ORGANIC TRAFFIC
NUMBER ONE RANKING FOR HIGH VOLUME, HIGH CONVERTING KEYWORDSIN 120 DAYS

675

NEW KEYWORDS RANKED

3,505

TOTAL TARGETED KEYWORD PLACEMENT GROWTH

14. How To Win In Local SEO?

Source: Semrush

Local SEO and Local Brand Challenges

Industry: Taxi Company  

  • Website not appearing in the local pack for city searches

Local SEO Strategy

  • Do on-site edits (restructuring the navigation especially in mobile view, etc)
  •  Post more location-based content/guides
  •  Provide airport location content/guides
  •  Changing the name, address and phone number (NAP)

Takeaway

SEO Case Study (Find Target Audience)  - ColorWhistle
  • Always try to understand if the business knows its needs. This way you can create a more appropriate plan
  • Content guides which included detailed information for short and long stay was a huge plus. It gave users all the information in one place. This is known as adding value to the user
  • Downloadable Google maps and video content that played inside the cabs was a huge plus
  • Travel content calendar for tourists helped them to target over 60 million people
  • Study your audience and give them the right content. It will be a game changer for your SEO efforts

Results

BUSINESS APPEARED WITHIN THE LOCAL PACK FOR ALL THE MAIN QUERIES WITHIN THE CITY

15. How To Improve On-Page Technical SEO?

Source: Internet Marketing Inc

Organic SEO Challenges

Industry: Software

  • Increase indexation
  • Improve traffic and ranking
  • Strategy
  • Comprehensive technical SEO audit
  • Change on-page SEO elements

Organic SEO Takeaway – Implement On-page SEO Strategies

SEO Case Study (On-Page SEO Strategy) 
- ColorWhistle
  • Conducting a comprehensive technical SEO audit will identify issues that may be preventing your website from getting visibility in search engines. By doing one, this company found gaps and formulated a plan to improve traffic and increase backlink profile. So it is advisable that an audit is conducted every year to find out issues in-order to make changes according to the new SEO trends and updates
  • If you want people to find your website quickly, it is important to form an on-page SEO strategy. It will increase traffic, give more accessibility, and improve page load speed

Results

111 OF 190 TARGET KEYWORDS IMPROVED IN GOOGLE RANKINGS
109 OF THE TARGET KEYWORDS RANK ON THE FIRST PAGE OF GOOGLE US

16. Tips To Recover From Google’s Penguin Penalty

Source: searchenginepeople

White hat SEO Challenges

Industry: Real estate agency

  • Significant decrease in website traffic
  • Loss of organic search
  • Unable to find the reason behind the dramatic ranking drop

Strategy

  • In-depth website audit which included reviewing internal site architecture, content, and link profiles
  • After the website audit, it was found that they were hit by Google’s Penguin Penalty
  • Tactics such as social media and Google Local were followed while waiting to come out of the penalty

Takeaway – Utilize Social Media

SEO Case Study (Social Media Marketing Audit) - ColorWhistle
  • Even though they do not clearly mention the strategy they follow, we can understand the importance of website auditing. Proper website audit will help you find where your website lacks and SEO issues
  • They have mentioned that recovering from Google’s Penguin Penalty takes a lot of patience and hard work. And sometimes you may not recover from the penalty. Go through this detailed article from Search Engine Journal to find out how to recover and avoid this penalty
  • Social media marketing increases inbound traffic and you get to reach more potential customers outside of your loyal customer circle. It serves as an amazing platform to connect with different types of people with varying backgrounds

Results

91%

INCREASED IN ORGANIC TRAFFIC BY 91%
PENALTY WAS LIFTED

400

VISITS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNEL

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Concluding Our Best SEO Case Studies List

In summary, all these SEO case studies show how different business sectors can be improved by the right use of SEO.

Increased numbers of visitors, improvement in organic traffic, growth in total sales, improved rate of conversion are all proof that SEO is an effective business investment. However, you have to get the right professionals to do it for you.

SEO is one of the most misunderstood forms of marketing on the internet. Without having much knowledge of SEO, many companies guarantee a top ranking. Such type of companies will only be after your money and will not be interested to grow your business. You must know how to separate the wheat from the chaff.

If you want right results, you must hire the right people. Before you start your search, check out our blog, Hiring An SEO Company? Ask These Questions, which will help you hire a trustworthy company.

The above case studies are some of the effective SEO case studies we’ve come across. Of course, you’ll have to adjust and tweak the process according to your requirement.

I hope you take these key points from them and apply it to your own strategy.

ColorWhistle’s clientele is both local and global. We are helping small and medium scale businesses ramp up their online presence in line with their business objectives. 

Contact us to discuss your SEO service requirements and get a customized SEO strategy for your business

Anjana
About the Author - Anjana

Anjana is a full-time Copywriter at ColorWhistle managing content-related projects. She writes about website technologies, digital marketing, and industries such as travel. Plus, she has an unhealthy addiction towards online marketing, watching crime shows, and chocolates.

17 Comments

  1. Hello Anjana,

    I read your cast study. It is really excellent one.
    All the seven points which you have covered in this cae study is really awesome especially “7. Show up for keywords searches relevant to your service”.

    I Hope you will keep updating article like this in future.

  2. Nice Blog, Keep sharing your ideas and information.I would like more information about this, because it is very nice…Thanks for sharing.

  3. Hey guys, amazing, btw, are all of these your own case studies or it is something that sites generated with the help of SEO?

  4. I also hold the same opinion with you on many of your views. It is a well-written explanation that holds your interest.

  5. This is really interesting, You’re a very skilled blogger. I have joined your rss feed and look forward to seeking more of your great post. Also, I have shared your web site in my social networks!

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