Digital Marketing Case Study: Long-Term SEO Marketing Success

SEO graphics over tablet

How a Multi-National Aircraft Conglomerate’s Organic Traffic and Rankings Improved Over Four Years Of Search Engine Optimization Efforts

In 2022, iFocus Marketing won a Gold AMBIT Award from Kansas City’s Data-Driven Marketing Association (KCDMA) for outstanding search engine optimization (SEO) work for our aircraft conglomerate client.

But now that we’re wrapping up 2024, we thought it’d be an excellent opportunity to review our long-term client’s SEO digital marketing metrics again to see what four years of SEO services did for them.

You’ve probably heard us say things like, “SEO is a long game,” or “SEO requires consistency.” In fact, those are some of our favorite things to say to potential clients as we explain the service to them.

But we also want you to know they’re not just something we say to get you to sign on for the long haul with iFocus. Our aircraft conglomerate client’s success – and brief hiccup – are proof that both are true.

This SEO Marketing Story Starts In the Infamous Year 2020

We remember 2020 for a lot of reasons, but one of the big things we recall is that our aircraft conglomerate client signed on for SEO marketing with us.

We wrote three keyword-rich blogs, carried out technical optimizations, and brokered high-quality backlinks for them each month. When they started with us, they didn’t have a blog page on their website at all, so our copywriter was excited to craft useful content for website visitors that also ranked well in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Before our efforts began, our global client saw an average of 1,121 site users per month, and organic search accounted for just 27% of all traffic. They had just 61 keywords on page one of Google SERPs.

By December 2021, organic website traffic rose to 7,866 users per month. Those users liked what they saw, staying on the site for more than a minute and a half, visiting an average of nearly three pages per session. The session duration benchmark for all industries is just 54 seconds on a single page, so we handily surpassed that metric. That same month, we noted that organic search traffic rose by 405%, to 5,425 page views.

Remember those keyword-rich blogs we mentioned earlier? Thanks to them, our client saw a massive improvement in their organic keyword rankings. By December 2021, they ranked for 404 keywords on page one of the SERPs, with 14 of those in the top three positions.

Even after we won an AMBIT award, we continued supporting our client’s success. With two more years of services behind us, we now have more data to share with you that illustrates our consistent, long-game SEO philosophy.

A Blog Posting Gap Puts a Hitch In Our Client’s SEO Efforts

Our SEO digital marketing services include uploading and technical optimizations for every blog post, with few exceptions for our clients’ personal preferences. Our client initially uploaded the blogs themselves, but had a busy period that affected their upload consistency.

Between July 2021 and May 2022, a lack of new content each month stunted their organic traffic and keyword ranking improvements. Our SEMRush and Search Console data indicates that this began causing a decrease in traffic in August 2021. We showed our client what was happening, and they asked us to take over blog uploads for them.

Unfortunately, just like it takes a few months of SEO to see statistical growth when you begin services, it also takes time to recover from lulls. As a result, our client’s organic traffic slowly declined or held steady until early 2023, even after several months of consistently uploading and optimizing their new blog content.

organic traffic on graph
Organic traffic for the last 10 years. The red lines indicate stunted SEO performance when our client didn’t post the new content iFocus researched and produced.

Then, SEO ramped up again, improving on our past achievements and helping the client outrank – and provide better useful content than – the competition.

A New Era Of SEO Marketing Success Takes Off

After several additional months consistently posting new content and adding new information to existing pillar pages on their website, we watched the line graphs move in the right direction: up.

By December 2023, our client’s website appeared in 135 SERP features. As of December 1, 2024, that number has risen to 923.

organic keyword SERP features footprint on graph
SERP features for the past year
graph of organic site traffic
Organic traffic for the last two years, with an indication of when SERP features began.

Similarly, top three keyword rankings grew 176.6% year over year between December 2023 and December 2024. Keywords in spots four through 10 also increased 101.1% year over year during the same time period.

graph of organic keyword rankings
Organic keyword rankings for the past two years.

We did see a decrease in one area – branded traffic – and it’s actually a good thing! A decrease in branded traffic means your website’s keyword footprint has grown enough to attract searchers based on relevant keywords you rank for.

Data shows an ideal spread of traffic based on search intent, with about 40.3% of searches matching informational keywords (which builds global authority for our client), followed by 37.1% transactional-focused ready-to-shop searchers. Commercial keywords, usually entered by those in their still-deciding phase, made up 16.1% of searches. Our SEO digital marketing agency considers this an ideal spread for clients like this aircraft conglomerate.

bar graph break down of keywords by intent
Keywords by search intent

When looking at data from the last 16 months, our SEO team noted 243,000 total clicks from SERPs, plus 14.8 million impressions, which is the total number of times our client’s website showed up in search results pages. The continual increase in the line graph represents our ongoing content production and technical updates to our client’s website.

graph of clicks and impressions from organic search
Total clicks and impressions on our client’s website for the last 16 months due to organic search.

Your Business Can’t Afford to Not Have an SEO Marketing Company On Your Side

Search engine optimization isn’t sexy and far-reaching like social media ads. It isn’t a guaranteed placement like paid search ads. And it probably won’t hype up your customers or team like a branded video can.

But it works, especially when we put our iFocus spin on it.

Our SEO marketing clients get:

  • A technical SEO strategy tailored to their industry and business.
  • Keyword research that shows how your customers are finding you and where they should be.
  • An in-depth SEO audit of your website, that lists out what is working well and what needs improvement.
  • On-site technical optimizations, including fixing crawling and indexation issues, optimizing images and METAs, revising HTML heading structures, addressing site speed, creating necessary 301 redirects, and more.
  • Monthly content production for blogs or web pages, including topic research and writing by real-life human copywriters, not misinformed, cookie-cutter-loving robots.
  • Monthly Google Business Profile posts, if relevant to your industry or location.

Ready to play the long, consistent game of SEO with our powerhouse SEO digital marketing agency? Send us a message via our website, and one of our business development experts will get back to you soon.

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