How Sure Oak Increased Organic Traffic 171% and Supported a Transition During the Pandemic

171%

Increase in Organic Sessions

59%

Increase in Total Keywords Ranking

325%

Increase in Conversions

“Given the moment we’re in with the pandemic, the team has been incredibly flexible, shifting the scope of their work.”

Who is Throughline Group

Throughline group is a public speaking and media training firm in New York City. Their core service offerings include public speaking training, media training, and presentation training for professionals at all stages of their careers, including executives. Throughline Group also coaches subject matter experts who require assistance with articulating their knowledge and improving their public speaking skills.

Throughline Group not only aims to deliver high-quality training. The company focuses on building relationships beyond its workshops to create long-term partnerships with clients that will benefit from ongoing guidance related to public speaking, media communication, and presentation delivery.

Challenges

Growing Organic Visibility in a Competitive Market

The first challenge was to identify the best organic search opportunities in what is a very competitive market. The online landscape for corporate public speaking and media training is dominated by companies with an established presence in organic search and brand recognition.

Although Throughline Group had an established client list, the company needed to invest in its online presence in order to keep pace with the marketing efforts of competitors. And since they’re based in New York City – and because their engagement with Sure Oak started before the coronavirus pandemic – the goal was to increase visibility locally to reach prospects who could attend workshops in person.

But, not long after our partnership began, we had to significantly adjust our strategy to account for the pandemic and gain visibility outside the New York City area in order to capitalize on virtual workshops.

Pivoting Strategies Due to the Pandemic

COVID-19 caused many businesses to pivot to a more digitally focused form of products and services. Throughline Group actively pursued a restructure of their business to transform in-person classes into virtual workshops to meet the rising demand of a socially distanced population.

This transition required a huge pivot from our original locally-focused SEO strategy to expand the site’s keyword portfolio outside of terms specific to New York City. Most important was earning keyword rankings related to virtual and online offerings — even in the public speaking and media training space.

That meant competing with businesses that were already established nationwide as well as every other business that was attempting to do the same thing at that time. Sure Oak guided Throughline Group through the transition quickly and successfully. And they remained a client kong after the transition.

Solution

Throughline Group and Sure Oak worked collaboratively to execute a comprehensive and authoritative content strategy that included new service pages, a resource hub, and blog posts.

This content strategy was designed to target high-value, conversion-focused keywords and highlight their topical expertise. In addition, the content Sure Oak recommended added value for thousands of email subscribers, as well as potential candidates for their workshop. This “give first” mentality in regards to helpful information and resources deepened their authority with search engines, built trust with their readership, and assisted in bringing significantly more organic traffic to the website.

The execution of creating excellent content benefited from a collaborative approach between their internal content writers and Sure Oaks’s team of SEO experts to ensure that each page was optimized and implemented in line with SEO best practices. In tandem, Sure Oak executed a link building campaign focused on improving the page authority of high-value pages, in addition to the overall authority of the site, while ensuring the site maintained a natural and diverse organic backlink portfolio.

As the impact of the pandemic reverberated through the businesses across the country, Sure Oak remained a steadfast partner with Throughline Group, pivoting and adapting to meet the increasing needs of their online presence and transition to focusing heavily on virtual and online services.

Results

The increase in organic sessions, keywords ranking, and conversions, are best highlighted by comparing results over multiple years and year over year.

Organic Sessions

When comparing the second quarter of year one to the second quarter of year three of our engagement, organic sessions to the Throughline Group website increased by 171%.

Keywords Ranking

When comparing the same month over a two-year period, the total number of keywords ranking on the Throughline Group website improved by 59%

Below are examples of keywords that improved from month 19 to month 25:

Online Conversions

WWhen comparing the second quarter of year one to the second quarter of year three, online conversions increased by a total of 325 percent — four in the second quarter of year one, 12 in the second quarter of year two, and 17 in the second quarter of year three.

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