While I can't reveal the client's name, I'd like to share the following case study to show you how organic SEO can boost your site's traffic.

Client academic institution came to me to initiate an organic SEO campaign in order to increase site traffic. After reviewing the client's needs, we agreed that I would conduct keyword research and carry out on-page optimization of the main pages within the client's site. No link building or off-site promotion was carried out. After the keyword research was completed, I implemented all SEO changes and uploaded the optimized changes to the client's server on December 12, 2008.

Traffic Baseline

I set up the client's site in Google Analytics to keep tabs on its progress before I began the keyword research. In order to establish monthly baseline traffic levels, Google Analytics was activated for the site more than 30 days before the SEO changes went live. This allowed me to establish (pre-SEO campaign) baseline statistics for the month immediately before taking the optimized version live. The following baseline site analytics were noted:

 

• The site received 1,808 visitors during the baseline month.


• The number of visitors arriving from all search engines was 442, or 24.45% of all traffic. (This is much lower than average, indicating in and of itself potential problems with search engines.)


• The number of visitors arriving from Google search was 401 for the baseline month.

SEO Results

After the SEO changes went live, the client began seeing results in the search engine ranking pages almost immediately. More importantly, traffic began building.


Takeaways

• In the first month, all traffic increased by 5.12% but the number of visitors arriving from the search engines increased by 40.46%. The traffic increase from Google alone was 74.58%.


• Over a two month period, all traffic increased by 24.49% but the number of visitors arriving from the search engines increased by 154.07%. The traffic increase from Google alone was 150.36%. While Google showed almost immediate results, other search engines took longer to respond to the SEO changes.


• Over the 60-day period, the volume of direct traffic (visitors typed in the URL) DROPPED by 36.26%; the volume of traffic coming from referrals (links) DROPPED by 8.72%.

The Value of SEO

Is there any question then, that organic SEO works? Keep in mind, there was NO link campaign, there were no PPC ads in place, and no other promotional activities took place during the period studied.

Clearly, SEO boosted the site's traffic. In fact, when you consider that the traffic from non search engine sources DROPPED during that two-month period, I think you can easily say that if the client hadn't implemented their SEO campaign, their site traffic would have declined over that 60-day period.

In my mind, the other thing this points out that you don't need to go overboard if you want SEO to boost your site traffic. Here, the client just took advantage of keyword research services and on-page organic SEO to keep the project within their budget.

< Prev