From Struggles to Success: SEO Case Studies You Need to See
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a necessary part of promoting your small business online. Sure, it requires a solid strategy, consistent content creation, and smart optimization checklists, but SEO is the slow-and-steady way to dominate search engine results pages (SERPs).
But still, SEO can feel technical, especially if you’re new to it. Seeing how other companies took their traffic from sputtering to thriving is a savvy way to come up with ideas for your own business. That’s why we always recommend reading SEO case studies.
SEO case studies are short and sweet success stories of how a company solved the biggest SEO woes for their clients. Reading SEO case studies makes you feel less alone and gives you new ideas for tackling your business’s biggest challenges.
Check out this guide to learn how to read SEO case studies and a few of Growth Machine’s most compelling case studies for our favorite marketing clients.
How to Read SEO Case Studies
The goal of an SEO case study is to give you the low-down on how a business solved an SEO challenge. For most, that means overcoming issues with low rankings or slow traffic, while others struggle with issues like duplicate content or keyword targeting. You should walk away from reading a case study with new SEO best practices and momentum for improving your own business.
Case studies usually follow this format:
- Quick introduction with context
- In-depth details about the problem
- The company’s strategy for addressing the problem
- The results. The more quantitative the metrics, the better!
Not all SEO case studies will apply to your business, but even then, these quick roadmaps can open your eyes to a world of new SEO possibilities.
Few businesses will publish their own case studies, though; more often than not, marketing agencies will publish case studies about their clients. We have both. If you’re looking to read a repository of SEO case studies, look no further than marketing consultancies like Growth Machine for new ideas.
Growth Machine’s Top SEO Case Studies
Not to brag, but digital marketing is Growth Machine’s bread and butter. We’ve worked with many of the world’s most-loved brands on their most pressing SEO concerns. You’ve read our work — you just don’t know it.
Whether you’re just starting your SEO journey or need new ideas for optimizing an existing website, our best SEO case studies will set you on the path to success.
E-Commerce Pet Site Grows by 11,212%
Growth Machine worked with a dog supplement brand that made treats only from whole-food ingredients. As pet lovers ourselves, we couldn’t turn down an opportunity to work with such a great company. The small business needed to make sales fast but lacked the resources to bolster its SEO growth. That’s where our team came in.
Challenges
After four years in business, the online pet brand brought in just under 3,000 monthly organic sessions. That’s decent, but the site didn’t rank for any keywords, making it tough for this e-commerce pooch brand to make sales.
Paid ads (PPC) were an option, but they were too expensive for this mom-and-pop shop. It needed to grow but lacked a strategic content marketing plan. In fact, the store didn’t have Google Analytics installed, either, making it impossible to know what was working.
Results
Growth Machine optimized the client’s website to address customers’ search intent and created a new SEO content marketing plan. After 10 months of consistent content creation, the website hit 166,853 visitors — that’s an increase of over 11,000%! The brand also ranked number-one on the SERPs for over 1,400 keywords.
It took 10 months of consistently showing up to see measurable results. Remember, SEO is like a snowball rolling down a hill: It takes time to get going, but consistently pushing the ball will lead to game-changing results.
Growth Machine Boosts Our Own Blog Traffic by 65%
Hey, every business needs to optimize for SEO, and Growth Machine is no exception. We got awesome results for our clients’ websites, but we felt too stretched thin with client work to prioritize ourselves. We knew we needed to walk the walk, which is why the Growth Machine team created an ambitious blog overhaul project.
Challenges
As a content marketing agency, we had a lot on our plate. Our brand was on the back burner, and it showed. We got just 2,900 average monthly sessions to our blog, which was okay, but definitely not indicative of our team’s talent.
Results
The Growth Machine team dug deep and recommitted to growing our brand. We started posting consistently, no matter what, targeting rankable keywords in our niche. We put our plan into action in Q3 of 2022. After a few false starts, we saw our rankings tick upward by June 2023. By January 2024, we achieved 5,900 organic sessions. Clicks nearly doubled, from 7,300 to over 15,600, and organic search engagement rates increased by over 55%.
This SEO case study shows no one is immune to the power of SEO. Regardless of how busy you are, you’ve got to prioritize SEO if you want to see meaningful gains in search engine traffic. It takes some elbow grease, but it’s better in the long run than paying for pricey ads!
Sexual Wellness App Grows by 39% in 3 Months
Traffic and keyword rankings are a major concern for our clients, but other issues can crop up, too. Growth Machine worked with a sexual wellness app that struggled to outrank, ahem, X-rated sites. Those are hardly the results you want to show up against when you’re trying to empower potential customers.
Challenges
The brand was a feminist audio erotica app that helped women and non-binary people reconnect with their sexuality in a healthy way. The problem? Google search isn’t exactly eager to show X-rated content. Many of the brand’s topics were on the no-no list, making it tough to connect with new customers.
Results
Growth Machine helped the app create a content plan based on sexual wellness. The goal was to help the app outrank other X-rated sites with robust targeted keyword research and an ambitious plan to post eight blogs a month. And it worked! The app went from just 750 organic weekly sessions to 1,332 weekly sessions in just three months.
If this client can overcome search engines’ hesitance to promote adult content, you can do it, too. Understand algorithm rules and create a savvy content strategy within that framework that boosts traffic — without compromising who you are as a brand.
Sleep App Boosts Traffic to 125,000+ Visits in 10 Months
Sleep hygiene is a surprisingly crowded niche. Growth Machine’s client, a sleep app, wanted to help its users improve sleep habits and overcome sleep debt. The product was amazing, but it just wasn’t getting into users’ hands. To top it off, the client wanted to move away from a business-to-business (B2B) strategy and embrace a direct-to-consumer (D2C) model instead.
Challenges
The sleep app desperately needed new customers but had a hard time standing out. The shift from B2B to D2C essentially meant the business had to start from square one since its audience changed so drastically.
Results
Growth Machine reworked the app’s existing content to a D2C focus, as well as created a more well-rounded content plan. And boy, did it work. The app doubled its organic traffic in just two months. After 10 months, it had over 120,000 monthly organic sessions — that’s more than a 30x improvement!
This SEO case study shows you don’t have to start from scratch to do SEO. You can change your business model, rework your content, and ensure new content fits within the on-page SEO strategy. It’s a time-saving approach that led to fast wins for this client.
FinTech App Grows by 6,000% With Quality Content
Financial technology (FinTech) is a growing software-as-a-skill (SaaS) space, but it’s incredibly competitive. Growth Machine’s FinTech client had an impressive product and helpful tools, but nobody was biting.
Challenges
The FinTech brand wanted to use its blog to bolster growth, but it gained minimal inbound traffic. It got 180 visits per week, tops. Keywords like “credit card debt” generated millions of competing results, making it next to impossible for the company to take up even a sliver of Google real estate.
Results
Growth Machine created a content plan targeting high-volume, low-difficulty keywords. We also created a sales funnel for the client’s blog, writing broader articles that linked to lower-funnel, more conversion-focused copy. This strategic approach led to a 6,000% uplift in blog traffic in just 13 months. The FinTech brand also reached its goal of becoming an authority in the competitive finance space and boosting readers’ time on site.
Look, competition can feel like an SEO killer, but as this SEO case study shows, you can get results with the right approach. Tackling low-hanging fruit will net you some decent upfront wins, while a tailored content funnel will keep more readers around for the long haul.
Become an SEO Success Story
These SEO case studies are just a few real-world examples of SEO tactics in action. Regardless of your business’s audience, products, or model, it pays to invest in high-quality content.
You have the knowledge to dig deep and get these results for your business. But we get that you’re busy managing the user experience and overseeing your business.
Put your organic traffic growth on easy mode with Growth Machine. Our marketing agency specializes in boosting organic search traffic to score meaningful wins for your business. Write your own SEO success story: Contact Growth Machine’s SEO experts today.
