- SEO is a Long-Term Game: Achieving high rankings and sustained traffic is a gradual process that requires consistent effort, high-quality content, and strategic optimizations. Expect to see short-term fluctuations in your site’s performance due to algorithm updates, competitive changes, and seasonal trends.
- Solid SEO Strategy and Original Content: Having a robust SEO strategy and creating original, high-quality content are essential to enduring short-term fluctuations in search engine rankings ensuring your website remains resilient against algorithm changes, competitive shifts, and seasonal trends.
- Key Takeaways: Website speed is critical for SEO success, original content is essential, and sticking to a proven SEO strategy requires patience and persistence.
It’s without argument that SEO takes time. In fact, for long-term SEO growth to happen, you must be willing to weather the short-term fluctuations.
Just like a good retirment account – individual stocks fluctuate daily, mutual funds fluctuate monthly, but the overall goal is long-term steady growth.
Two client websites just experienced this first-hand.
With the recent Google algorithm updates, along with holiday season changes, we experienced drops in short-term (28 day) traffic.
Am I worried?
No.
The Reason: We have a solid SEO strategy and we’re not outsourcing our work to cheap AI-driven content generators.
Let’s talk about the details.
In This Case Study
Top Stats and Results from this Case Study
Organic Traffic Growth: Decrease in search volume, but still netting a 31% growth in traffic month over month.
6-Month Trend: Coming of an October spike in traffic, we still gained 36% long-term SEO growth.
90 Day Traffic Value: $2,222
Website A: Automotive Repair Services
Short-Term (28 Day) Traffic Change = 8.6% Decrease
Long-Term (6 Month) Traffic Change = 36% Growth
In the short term, our SEO work achieved mixed results:
- 8.6% Decrease in total clicks
- 11.9% Increase in search impressions
We know that there are many variables that impact the short-term SEO growth of a website.
However, the data for Website A provides a clear direction of our next steps. Here’s how we interpret a decrease in short-term clicks with an increase in impressions.
Increased Competition: More impressions with fewer clicks could indicate increased competition for the keywords you are targeting. If other results are more attractive or relevant to users, they may be clicking on those instead of yours.
Ranking Changes: The site might be ranking lower on the first page or even on the second page for the increased impressions, leading to visibility but fewer clicks.
The average position change from 21.5 to 23.4 is indicative of this.
Specific variables impacting short-term growth:
- Some claim ad spend does not impact SEO growth, but we know otherwise.
- We boosted ad spend in October creating a large spike in traffic.
- We decreased ad spend in November creating a decrease in organic and paid traffic.
How Does Ad Spend Impact Organic Traffic?
- When a search user sees your ad at the top of search results but doesn’t click, you’ve earned a brand impression.
- When that same user scrolls down the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), and sees the organic listed of your brand, that’s a 2nd brand impression.
- More brand impressions = more likelihood that user will click the organic listing.
- In this way, the ad listing creates brand authority, leading to more trust from the search user.
Long-Term SEO Growth for Website A
While short-term fluctuations can cause red flags and concern. We zoom out a bit and take a look at the larger picture to see how our long-term SEO growth is trending.
This is the true measure of SEO success (or lack of it).
6-Month View of SEO
For the six month period ending on December 2024, website A had:
- Largest growth in organic keyword rankings.
- 36% growth in organic traffic.
- Peak in traffic was October 2024, but the overall trend is upward.
- Competitors during this same period saw stagnant growth, increases in traffic, and decreases in traffic, so no industry-wide trend is present.
Website B: Healthcare Services in Canada
Short-Term (28 Day) Traffic Change = 35% Increase
Long-Term (6 Month) Traffic Change = 36% Growth
This scenario is different from Website A. We found an industry-wide trend that impacted organic traffic.
Search volume for this niche of healtcare services across the board is down for the holiday season.
That said, we still squeezed out growth for Website B.
Website B is a website that represents a specific niche within the healthcare industry.
The website is new (less than 5 months old) and making steady gains.
In fact, we’re now the 3rd most traffic out of the competition.
What’s more, Website B is a local business competiting against larger international websites doing business in the local area.
The Long-Term Organic Traffic Strategy
Our SEO Strategy is the same for both websites, but there are a few differences.
- Localized content on the blog including updates in the area
- Highlighting other local businesses that have a symbiotic relationship with the clients’ businesses.
- Developing well-organized content clusters around a strategic set of keywords.
- Providing monthly updates on Google Maps about the business.
Differences in Types of Content
In Website A, we utilize product listings on Google Merchant Account. In Website B, we’re still building out core landing pages on the website.
By focusing on localized webpage speed, we tell Google that we know that user experience is important to us. In turn, Google grants us more SERP impressions.
Differences in Website Performance
In Website A, we inherited an outdated website theme that needs to be overhauled. But the client is not ready to tackle this work.
See Also: SEO Challenges for Established or Older Websites
So we make monthly redesigns to the landing pages erase all remnants of the old theme and build the webpages on newers updated code. The focus is page loading times.
In Website B, we designed the new website.
So the website is blazing fast. That’s just how we do it, 😉 When designing content and landing pages we continute to build with speed as the priority.
Speed is king.
We know that and design everything on the website around that pillar. In turn, Google grants solid search impressions.
Value of Traffic = $2,222
To calculate the estimated value of organic traffic, we used industry PPC averages which tell us how much the traffic would have cost if earn via Google Ads. Then we sclaed that value based on the average sales price on the website.
For example, Website B is in the healthcare industry.
See Also: Content Challenges for Healthcare-Related Websites
We know healthcare PPC traffic costs $3-5 per click (see industry averages for PPC).
However, Website B is in a niche that offers services that are 30-50% less than typical healthcare services. So we estimate the organic traffic to be worth $2.30 per click.
Traffic Value Estimations:
160 * 2.3 = $368 Healthcare Services
757 * 2.45 = $1854 Automotive Services
Conclusion
This case study is a reminder that SEO results are achievable. In fact, with long-term SEO growth as the guiding aim, we can weather the short-term dips and trust that our SEO strategy will work.
If you’re reading this case study and want to learn more, I recommend digging into our blog resources or contact me on Fiverr through my marketing mananagement package or send me a message right here with my Grow Now Quote Request.
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