The Overview
In January 2018, WO Strategies supported a startup client in the education space and was looking to increase their online awareness, traffic, and signups. They also wanted to train their junior in-house staff to support their long-term SEO goals.
The Challenge
They had no previous SEO strategy in place, limited in-house marketing support, and limited ability to add items to the tech queue.
The Solution
Here’s what we executed for them:
1. SEO Audit
We conducted a comprehensive SEO audit to see how the website measured up to SEO best practices and how it performed compared to its online competitors.
Our audits include a presentation and a spreadsheet of issues for the development team. This client moved quickly on a few technical fixes focused on enhancing Google crawling and indexing (along with page speed improvements). Particularly in the first 30 days of our engagement, they were able to fix:
- XML + HTML Sitemaps: This particular company was able to make adjustments to the XML and HTML sitemaps so Google could effectively crawl the site’s pages.
- Faster Homepage load: Google uses page load as a ranking factor, and as highlighted in the audit, this site had a slow loading homepage. Luckily their dev team was able to prioritize a few quick fixes that reduced their homepage page load time by 50%.
2. Staff Training
Getting everyone on the team on the same page was critical for us to drive organic traffic results. It’s easier and more efficient, and the results are more substantial if everyone knows the essential elements that impact SEO. In-house resources produced the content, so training them to create pages that can rank was critical. We gave them a starter list of topics to target and writing guides to optimize a few pages.
3. SEO Software Recommendations
We introduced the team to Buzzstream to organize their promotion and outreach. This software also allowed us to coordinate the link-building brainstorming and opportunities the client reached out to, resulting in link growth and increased online awareness.
The Results
Quick Changes Led to Fast Results
The advice we typically give clients about SEO results is that it can take upwards of six months to see the needle move in the desired direction. In this case, we were able to get impressive results (5K more organic traffic visits) in just three months.
Testimonial
“Katherine came in and made a series of recommendations that had an immediate impact on the organization’s SEO rankings. Long term, she created a plan and training program that would strengthen the organization’s capacity to develop meaningful content and website evolutions. I would fully recommend hiring Katherine if she is available to work with you!“
— Geoff Livingston, former CMO at Legends of Learning
