3 SEO Case Studies
Every day I’m asked ‘what can I expect from my SEO Campaign?’.
Good folks just like you are curious about what results they can expect from their SEO campaign’s. How long will things take, when until they are top 3, and when will the phone start ringing.
Unfortunately these questions are like asking how long a piece of string is’
You see, each website starts in a different situation. Each site has different history, different competition levels, and a different SEO budget or package.’
So where no two sites are the same, and its near impossible to predict what results will be by a specified time frame, below are three case studies of three sites that were all in different situations.
All of these sites are still active clients of ours.
The key lessons that you should take away from this are:
1. The best results from SEO take 2-3 years or compound growth. NOT the common misconception that SEO is something you ‘do’ for 6-12 months.
- A brand new site, takes a long time to see meaningful results in their SEO due to Google Sand-Box and the lack of ‘history’ and age to the site.
- Established and semi-established sites see quicker boosts in traffic than new sites.
- Scaling your SEO budget as you see a strong ROI every 12-months helps maintain a quicker growth level.
- The grow continues for year to come. Our agency site has had over 4-years of SEO done in order to secure the over one hundred #1 rankings we hold today across the nation. You WILL NOT get this sort of outcome from any budget in 6,12 or even 24-months. SEO is a compound game.
Website #1 Established Website: Niche Law Site
This client came to us with the website already established and doing ok. They wanted to kick things into overdrive and get some serious results – which is exactly what we did.
Because they had a foundation, we were able to go deep with their SEO and accelerate their growth. As this client understood Return On Investment very well, every 6-9 months they increased their SEO budget in order to maintain their growth rate.’
This is exactly what we do with our own business, in that, we do more SEO today than we did 2-years ago, not the opposite.
Here are their numbers showing the number of visitors that they received each month from organic traffic.
Starting Point: 1,200/mo
6-Months: 2,200/mo (Increased Budget by 50%)
12-Months: 2,900/mo (Increased Budget by an additional 40%)
18-Months: 3,600/mo
Website #2: Relatively new website: Trade Business.
This client was an established business that launched their website 6-months earlier. They had a strong brand presence which helped them to get initial traffic to their website. Being 6-months old, their website was out of the Google Sand-box which enabled them to get good growth in the first 3 months.
As you can see below, things don’t always consistently go up, with a drop in traffic from months 3 to 6. However, by month 12 this had grown significantly to almost 5X traffic in the first 12-months.
This client has kept their investment the sale for the past 2.5 years, which has resulted in their SEO growth slowing in the last 12-months. The reason this happens is because the higher you grow on the first page of Google, the tougher your competitors are.
This means that the budget that got you to #8 for example, may not be enough to get you to #3, as the businesses at the top of Google all know the Return On Investment that they get from SEO and double-down.
Starting Point: 184/mo
3-Months: 430/mo
6-Months: 320/mo
12-Months: 810/mo
18-Months: 977/mo
24-Months: 1,059/mo
30-Months: 1,294/mo.
Website 3: Brand New Website: Financial Services
This client came to us the day they launched their brand new site on a brand new domain. This is the slowest situation you’ll find in SEO because there is no history, trust or foundation laid for your website’s SEO.
As you can see, they saw no traffic by month 2, and only 5-visitors a month by month 3. However SEO is a long term, month on month growth game, and now, at month 9 they are starting to see leads flow through, and are approximately 3-5 months from breaking even on their campaign.
It’s a slow, tough and mentally draining process launching a SEO campaign on a brand new website. If you are going to go down this path, please be aware that you likely won’t see a Return on Investment in the first 12-months. However once you get past the first 12-months, your ROI grows, and then by the 24-month mark you are generally making a very nice profit.’
Starting Point: 0 – Day site launched.
Month 1: 0 traffic.
Month 2: 0 traffic.
Month 3: 5/mo
Month 6: 44/mo
Month 9: 52/mo
Month 12: TBA
So there you have it three case studies from 3 very different clients, in three different situations.’
Its essential that you plan properly for your SEO campaign, and if you are a brand new business, or a brand new website to set your budgeting and planning to realistic levels as there simply isn’t an effective way to speed this up.
If you are starting out and needs clicks faster, then we recommend looking into Google Adwords. The starting investment is higher, however if you go in with the mentality of cost/lead and cost/acquisition and run your numbers in a way that enables you to effectively manage your ROI, then it can be a fantastic tool for growing your business.
