The 2023 Marketing Mix Report shows that search engine optimization (SEO) is the most implemented B2B marketing strategy. B2B organizations from several industries use this tactic to improve brand awareness, target relevant audiences, and generate leads.
This B2B SEO case study proves that SEO and content marketing can target even the most elusive audiences. If you are wondering whether you can use SEO to target that one particular designation in one specific industry for your B2B company, this case study will answer your question.Here’s an account of how Growfusely turned Mind the Graph into a B2B SEO success story.
About Mind the Graph
Mind the Graph is an online designing tool specifically created for scientific and academic purposes. The platform caters to a very niche audience comprising of scientists, academicians, and students of scientific disciplines.
Mind the Graph wanted to increase its online visibility to attract relevant audience. But, the platform’s target audience was a tricky one. They could not be targetted with general high-volume keywords and would not respond to popular content formats.
Scientists and academicians have a unique approach to research, even when looking for an online designing platform. This audience would only accept information from credible sources with exceptionally high standards.
SEO Challenges
Mind the Graph targeted a very niche audience with a very specific need.
The website’s structure was not organized.
Several users were spamming the website.
The website had many irrelevant backlinks.
The blog pages had thin content and poor keyword targeting.
There were limited credible opportunities to generate backlinks for the niche.
Mind the Graph approached Growfusely to seek help with their SEO and content marketing strategy. The project began in September 2020, and we saw significant results within six months.
SEO Goals
To generate organic traffic for Mind the Graph’s website
To attract scientists, professionals, academicians, and students of scientific disciplines
To get brand mentions from authoritative websites
SEO Strategy for Mind the Graph
We were targeting a unique community for Mind the Graph. That makes this campaign an interesting B2B SEO case study. While the broader aspects of the SEO strategy remained the same, we had to dig deeper at each stage to reach this distinctive audience.
Targeted Keyword Research
We divided keyword research into three phases:
Phase 1: Identifying existing keywords on the website
Phase 2: Identifying short and long-tail keywords for different audience segments
Phase 3: Identifying keywords for individual content pieces
Keyword Research Phase 1:
The first phase was part of the technical SEO audit. We exported a list of keywords and phrases on the website. Then we separated the ones it was already ranking for. Based on this, we searched for relevant keywords and contextually related search terms.
Keyword Research Phase 2:
We used SEO tools to search for keywords to target different audience segments based on the following criteria:
General terms that people used to search for such tools.
Keywords related to challenges faced by users in designing scientific visuals.
Keywords related to various uses of Mind the Graph platform for different purposes.
We listed out a set of keywords to target each group based on these criteria. Most of these were long-tail keywords with relatively low monthly search volumes. But they helped us precisely target our intended audience. Alongside these, we also targeted high-volume keywords that people used to search for such graphic designing tools.
Keyword Research Phase 3:
This phase of keyword research ran alongside content marketing. Each piece of content targets a set of keywords. In this phase, we looked for similar, closely related, and contextually related words/phrases for each targeted keyword.
In each phase, we prioritized the keywords based on relevance, volume, and competition. The first two phases gave us keywords to optimize the on-page optimization and link-building. The third phase gave us keywords for content marketing and building topical authority.
Technical SEO & Website Restructuring
The technical SEO revealed a lot of structural issues with the website. These problems hampered crawling and indexing. Below are some of the biggest technical SEO problems that we identified and fixed:
Unnecessary Scripts
Mind the Graph’s website has several unnecessary scripts that hindered web crawlers. These scripts also hampered the website’s loading speed. We removed all such scripts from the website.
Subdomain Migration
Mind the Graph hosted some important web pages on a sub-domain. We helped them successfully migrate these to their primary domain.
Duplicate Content
Owing to a technical glitch, the search engines were indexing multiple versions of certain web pages. We used 301 redirects on mirror versions to remove duplicate content. This created a single indexable version of the website.
Index Saturation
Some pages were obstructing search engines from indexing important pages. We identified the URL pattern of such pages and used nofollow and noindex commands to fix this problem.
User Spam
Several visitors were spamming the website with irrelevant URLs and blank infographics containing backlinks. This reduced the website’s credibility. We removed all such links from the website. Additionally, we used nofollow and noindex commands for some of the website’s features, which prevented the users from spamming the website.
Low-Quality Backlinks
The website had several backlinks generated through forums and RSS feeds. Many of these backlinks were irrelevant and came from low-quality websites. We disavowed all such links to improve the website’s reputation & topical authority.
Aside from these, there were several minor technical SEO issues we fixed to improve the website’s indexability, loading speed, architecture, core web vitals, and user experience.
Effective Content Strategy
Before initiating a new content strategy, we analyzed the existing content on Mind the Blog’s website. We discovered the website had thin content in blogs and landing pages. While some of these blogs had potential, others were harming the website’s SEO and had to be removed.
Thereafter, we split the content marketing strategy into three operations:
Updating existing content.
Create high-quality blog content for Mind the Graph’s website.
Contribute valuable content to high-authority websites to generate quality backlinks.
Content Operation 1: Updating Existing Content
We turned thin content pages into detailed articles and optimized them for relevant keywords. A majority of these were informative guides on how to create visuals for different scientific disciplines.
Content Operation 2: Creating Blog Content
We created unique content for different audience segments such as students, researchers, PhDs, and so on. We also diversified the content based on the uses of scientific visuals in research papers, dissertations, educational materials, etc.
These articles included user guides, checklists, tips, techniques, and best practices to help the audience design diagrams, infographics, posters, and GIFs. The new content also improved the website’s keyword targeting, internal link structure, and topical authority on relevant subjects.
Content Operation 3: Guest Blogging
We collaborated with high-authority websites to generate valuable content for their audience. For this, we focused on the websites that had topical authority for targeted keywords and the ones that were used by our target audience as a source of information.
Building Backlinks
Mind the Graph has a unique niche, so there were only a few websites with relevant topical authority. So we morphed our approach to get backlinks through these sites.
The backlink-building strategy for this B2B SEO success story focused on three goals:
Establishing Thought Leadership
Promoting Blog Content & Landing Pages
Developing Topical Authority & Domain Authority
Our guest blogging efforts achieved all these goals. They got us a lot of valuable backlinks from high-authority websites as well as reputed scientific websites. We also got citations for our home page, service pages, and template pages through this activity.
The key difference in our backlink strategy for Mind the Graph was the anchor texts. Instead of focusing on just relevance, we used the anchor text to build topical authority on high-volume keywords. This nudged the search engines to consider Mind the Graph’s landing pages to rank for those keywords.
Our strategy got Mind the Graph featured on some renowned platforms. Here are some of the prominent ones:
It was not just Mind the Graph that benefited from our contributions. Many of our guest posts received positive reactions on the host website. Some of these generated over 17,000 reads. So you can use this B2B SEO case study to guide your guest blogging and backlink strategy as well.
A B2B SEO Success Story
The success of an SEO strategy depends on a lot of factors. The Mind the Graph campaign is a great B2B SEO case study because each factor worked perfectly and it is evident in the results.
400% Higher Organic Traffic
We began the SEO campaign in September 2020 and by March 2021, the organic traffic was 400% higher. The below graph shows organic visits per month.
You will notice that there are two major upswings in organic traffic. We can attribute the first one to fixing technical SEO issues. These practices were the foundation for our B2B SEO success story. The second upswing resulted from consistent efforts in content marketing, on-page optimization, and off-page SEO.
100% Rise in Referring Domains
We also saw excellent output from content marketing and backlink-building efforts. The number of referring domains went from 430 to 880 between September 2020 and March 2021 (see the graph below).
420% Rise in Referring Pages
Alongside referring domains, we also saw a 420% rise in the number of referring pages (see the graph below). The rising number of referring domains and pages can be attributed to content marketing and link-building activities.
42.59% Rise in Ranking Keywords
In August 2020, Mind the Graph’s website was ranking for 6,538 keywords. We saw a gradual rise in this number as the campaign progressed (see the graph below). By March 2021, the website was ranking for 9,323 keywords.
It is important to note that these results took time to manifest. Aside from organic traffic, the other metrics began to rise within 3 to 4 months. But, once the strategy showed results, it was definitely a B2B SEO success story. The campaign involved a lot of intricacies that were unique to the website and its target audience.
But you can use B2B SEO case studies as examples to help design your strategy. However, as each business is unique, you will need to alter your approach based on the industry and target audience.If you like, you can get help from Growfusely to design and execute your SEO strategy. You have already seen the results we can achieve in this case study. We can do the same for you and more. Let’s start a conversation.
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