We embarked on a content marketing experiment because we were dissatisfied with the results from our SEO company. We took charge and launched a content marketing blitz on our blog.
Our objective was straightforward: produce 150 highly relevant, useful, fresh blog posts in 50 days, averaging 3 posts daily. This was a significant increase from our previous 2-3 blogs per week. We anticipated traffic growth, though we weren’t sure by how much.
And it worked.
If you haven’t read our initial results published three weeks ago, here’s a recap:
- In 50 weekdays (10 weeks), organic traffic to our site increased by 69%.
- Organic traffic to the blog surged by 514%.
- Referral traffic skyrocketed by 901%.
During this period, we decided to part ways with our SEO company. It was evident that their 9 months of work had not yielded the same results as our few weeks of content marketing. This SEO firm had clearly not embraced content. Many other SEO companies have, and those that do stand apart from their competition.
The Reaction
Once we published our results after 50 and 150 blog posts, the response was overwhelming.
The article went viral.
Marketers everywhere shared it as proof that content marketing is crucial. We received thousands of comments, tweets, and emails. Most people were excited about our experiment, complimenting us on producing great content consistently.
But not everyone was thrilled.
Some questioned our methods and the long-term sustainability of our strategy. A few seemed genuinely upset that our experiment had worked.
Why were they so mad?
After reviewing the feedback, we’ve identified the top 3 reasons some people were upset:
1) They’re ‘old-school’ SEO people
Announcing that we fired our SEO firm upset some, particularly those practicing traditional SEO. Many couldn’t accept that producing quality content consistently actually works, despite Google’s emphasis on it for years.
2) They couldn’t believe a company of our size could produce that much content
One woman emailed, claiming, “The only way you could have produced that much content is if the content was bad.” When asked if she read our blogs, she admitted she had only read one—the one discussing the 150 posts.
While not every blog is Pulitzer-worthy, our content is undoubtedly useful, fresh, and unique, attracting a growing audience daily. Producing a lot of quality content is possible with the right plan and expertise. Future articles will delve into creating and executing a content plan.
3) They said that eventually, this content strategy would hurt us
This was surprising to us. Several people warned that our strategy would backfire, with Google penalizing us as a content farm. In response, we reference a quote from a Hubspot executive published by Forbes:
“The key is multiple blogs a week, or better yet, per day. We initially aimed for 3-4 blog articles a month. Two years ago, we tested higher frequencies. As we increased to 1 article per day, then 5 articles per day, comments, links, and views consistently rose. We learned that both quality and quantity matter.”
And it seems to be working well for them.
Why Do We Care About Content Marketing?
We’re not a content marketing company, SEO, or CMS. We’re a call tracking company, yet we can assert that content marketing is the new SEO. It works, and we’re committed to continuing this approach.
