Meet ELM Learning, The people-first eLearning agency. Their journey embodies innovation and progress, and it shows how adopting the right strategies can lead to remarkable achievements.
As a valued partner of Flow agency (formerly: Flow SEO), ELM Learning started a journey of growth and enhancement. Their mission was clear: to harness the power of smart SEO and PPC strategies.
This case study demonstrates how careful planning, dedication, and teamwork can change the direction of a business.
Client Testimonial
“… my SEO/SEM guru. Whether it’s ads, content, technical/page optimization, you name it… As a B2B marketer constantly looking for ways to attract my ideal client, [Flow] has been invaluable in helping me increase web traffic, qualified leads, and conversions.”
Challenge:
Flow agency (formerly: Flow SEO)was hired to address both paid and organic search initiatives, as ELM was not hitting traffic and inbound lead goals with their previous agency.
- Low, Moderate SEO traffic growth, despite weekly content production.
- Unqualified leads from Paid search. ELM Learning target clients are enterprise level companies. Most leads were SMBs or looking for different services.
The Goal:
Improve both quality and quantify of inbound leads
- Scale inbound MQLs via paid and organic search
- Reach ELM’s target customer, enterprise size businesses
The SEO Process:
Phase 1: Research
Flow agency (formerly: Flow SEO) kicks off projects by providing the foundation of SEO success with a full audit of the site and development of a content strategy.
- Content Calendar
- Content Audit
- Technical Audit
Phase 2: Implementation
Once the top opportunities and priorities were identified, we focused on implementing recommendations across both content and technical.
- Content calendar for new search optimized topics
- Update existing content to be keyword optimized.
- One of the key challenges and opportunities for ELM learning is that they had 500+ blog articles – but most with 0 organic sessions. Many were great topics, but they lacked keyword targeting and the proper search intent.
- With minor updates, often adding just a few hundred words of new content, we were able to maximize their return on investment by utilizing existing content instead of needing to write long-form articles from scratch.
- Technical optimization – support during a full site rebuild and migration to ensure that ELM didn’t lose any existing organic traffic and rankings during the migration, even with 100s of URL changes.
Phase 3: Ongoing Opportunities and Organic Growth
Once we have established the technical and content foundations for a strong SEO program, we continue to provide ongoing SEO support unique to ELM’s business and goals.
Additional projects to support ELM’s growth included:
- Service page keyword mapping and optimization to optimize for new high-intent transactional keywords.
- New L&D Hub to capture competitive, high-volume top of funnel search terms.
- Ongoing keyword research, and content strategy development.
- Updating and optimizing historical content to improve organic traffic and keep the site up to date.
The PPC Process:
Flow agency (formerly: Flow SEO) streamlined projects and services where relevant. We make sure that your PPC and SEO strategies don’t live in silos, without feedback between the two strategies.
SEO will support PPC with keyword research and new ideas. PPC provides guidance on A/B testing performance and top converting keywords.
By leveraging insights between the two channels, we’re able to improve the results and strategy of both your PPC and SEO Programs.
Phase 1: Setup
- Conversion tracking setup: ensure we have visibility into MQLs and SQLs so that campaigns. Proper conversion tracking and KPIs are crucial for a successful PPC strategy to
- New campaign structure, focused on highest intent relevant keywords. We uncovered many keywords leading to the unqualified leads, as they were outside of ELM’s target market or irrelevant to services offered. We trimmed down campaigns to focus on the top converting terms and scaled budget where there were wins.
- Excluding audiences that were a mismatch and outside of ELM’s target audience.
Phase 2: Ongoing optimization & testing
- Landing page A/B testing.
- Test new keywords around new service offerings to scale campaigns within new areas of business.
- Testing new ad copy and responsive search ads to improve CTR and quality scores.
Results:
Organic traffic saw steady increases.
Monthly organic increased by 114% in the first year. We’ve continued to maintain steady growth, averaging 20% MoM growth goals in the last 18 months.
Steady keyword growth. 3x increase in keywords in the #1-3 positions.
With optimized content, technically optimized website, and clear content strategy ELM Learning has been able to
For Paid Search, results and improvements in lead quality occurred immediately. In the first 3 months there was a 41% increase in leads at a 25% lower cost per conversion.
