How One B2B Company Grew Organic Traffic by 120% in 5 Months

B2B software company Text Request took 4 steps to grow organic traffic, a key component of any content marketing strategy.

We content marketers are always keeping an eye on organic traffic. It’s an indicator of success (though by no means the only one). Basically it lets you know how many of your website’s visitors found you by using a search engine. If you’re consistently publishing quality content that has value to your prospective customers, you should see a steady rise in organic traffic to your website.

But many B2B companies struggle with generating organic traffic to their websites. In fact, 61% of companies list generating traffic as their biggest marketing challenge in the 2017 State of Inbound Report. Over half (55%) list growing traffic to their website as a top priority in the next 12 months.

So how did Text Request, a B2B texting software company, grow organic traffic by 120% in 5 months? Marketing Director Kenneth Burke outlines the four simple steps the team took to drive this growth.

4 steps to growing organic traffic

1. Start with simple changes.

Text Request started with very basic steps to begin driving more traffic to its website. These changes included technical updates to their website, increased site speed, and a new content strategy. The updates to their website made the site more appealing to viewers, and the increased site speed led to a lower bounce rate. Of course, a documented content strategy should be a priority for any company hoping to grow its digital footprint.

2. Create 10x content.

The term ‘10x content’ was coined by Moz founder Rand Fishkin. Essentially, you create content that is ten times better than that which appears in the top search results for that subject. Sounds overwhelming. But think about it in terms of three specific audiences:

Me: If you wouldn’t consider the content you’re creating valuable, then it most likely won’t add value for others.
Targets: In order to add value and answer questions and/or inform prospects on a topic, understand what your target audience is lacking and fill that need.
Competitors: By creating content that is better than the competition, you validate yourself as an industry leader.

3. Revamp existing content.

Content published months or even years ago doesn’t have to fade out. Updating older content gives these posts a renewed value. This is an important part of our content strategy here at Fronetics.

As part of his mission to increase organic traffic, Burke dug through older content to find posts he could revamp, updating as many as 60 posts in 5 months. That may seem like a lot. But, oftentimes, updating older content is easier than starting from scratch — especially if the topics are still relevant and just need updated statistics and research. By revising outdated material, Burke is “confident that they made a huge impact on our organic search traffic.”

4. Strive for backlinks.

Backlinks are incoming links to pages on your website from other websites. If the websites linking to your content are of high quality, search engines will start to consider your website more valuable — otherwise, why would these quality sites link to you? Thus, backlinks are an important component of a search engine optimization strategy.

Understanding their importance in driving organic traffic, Burke worked to improve the amount of backlinks to Text Request’s website. “From December to May, we grew our total number of backlinks by about 60%, which, in addition to driving referral traffic, boosted our standing with search engines.”

Most of the backlinks came from three specific places: HARO, guest posts, and earned links. Most important to earning backlinks was the research Text Request published in its content, which other companies found valuable — valuable enough to cite and link to in their content. These links were validation that the 10x content strategy was paying off for Text Request.

Results

With these four simple steps, Text Request saw a 120% growth in organic traffic to its website. The company more than doubled traffic in five months. More traffic = increased brand awareness = more prospective customers and leads = more sales.

While Burke was able to get pretty dramatic results very quickly, it’s important to note that improvements to your website’s search engine optimization do, most often, take some time to unfold. But, over time, results of your work will continue to amplify