An SEO-Content Strategy to Transform Blog into a Lead Generator

THE CHALLENGE

As the global authority on digital marketing, the DMI demonstrates their expertise by writing blog posts on everything digital marketing. However, with over 2,000 blog pages, the team needed help to organise and optimise the content, and increase commercial value from the blog.

In 2021, only 2% of blogs drove more than 10,000 sessions across the year, while 35% of blogs drove less than 1,000 sessions. The DMI also lost over 40% of blog traffic in 2021 vs. 2020 due to some large site structural changes, and leads from the blog were in decline as a result.

OUR STRATEGY

The strategy comprises three parts: A content audit, pivoting DMI’s current strategy, and strategic internal linking optimisation.

Historically, the DMI’s content approach focused on creating new content, relevant to their target audience, but had little data-backed strategy or SEO focus. We knew that in order to recover from the traffic loss, we needed to focus on existing posts with traffic growth potential, rather than writing new posts, which would take time to build traffic volume. While new content was on the cards for the future, right now, we needed to focus on time-efficient growth.

INNOVATION USED

Content Audit Focusing on Relevance and Linking

We performed a content audit in July 2021 which highlighted the need for improved internal linking, and a clear hub and spoke strategy. With this audit, we also made sure each blog post is linked to the most relevant course page.

Pivoting the Strategy via Optimisations to Focus on Growth Potential

We identified DMI’s existing content that had the most potential to grow traffic. We then prioritised content optimisation, focusing on defined primary and secondary keyword targets, through competitor analysis and keyword difficulty scoring.

Strategic Internal Linking

We mapped some of the most important content clusters, and worked to optimise anchor text and internal links pointing to certain blog pages, while creating a more structured internal linking flow that focused on connecting core topics together. This strategy also enabled us to identify content gap opportunities, helping to inform new hub and spoke content pieces.

BUSINESS GROWTH

These optimised posts drove 135% more traffic in December 21 vs. August 21, when we began our strategy. After just one quarter, we’re now back at the traffic levels of March 2021 (before the dip) and blog leads have grown 143%!
Due to better content quality, the DMI’s blog started gaining increased natural backlinks, growing their quarterly backlinks by 121% and helping drive rankings for commercial terms in the USA, their largest market. Thanks to higher non-brand rankings, we’ve seen a 38% YoY increase in overall organic USA leads in Q1 2022.

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Blog leads Q4 vs. Q3

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YoY increase in target market overall leads

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Organic traffic to optimised blogs

What our clients say

Don’t just take
our word for it

"Both the Digital Marketing Institute (DMI) and Wolfgang Digital are experts in their own respective fields so it goes without saying that the DMI website should be representative of the best of digital marketing. We are building our authority on all things digital marketing and that’s what enables us to grow our community. Combining our expertise and experience, both the DMI and Wolfgang Digital team were able to achieve amazing results in record turnaround time!”

SM

Seán McKenna

Digital Marketing Manager, DM

Selected work