B2B SEO Case Study

How We Helped an IT Consulting Firm Supercharge Their Content and Boost Organic Traffic, Rankings and Leads

COMPANY

An IT consulting and integration firm helping information technology leaders to design, use, and manage technology to transform business and improve outcomes.

https://www.burwood.com

HEADQUARTERS

Chicago

INDUSTRY

IT Consulting & Systems Integration

EMPLOYEES

230

KEY SERVICES PROVIDED

Technical SEO
Competitive analysis
Information architecture
Content strategy

The Challenge

Burwood Group is a 20-year-old IT consulting and systems integration company with an ethos of true partnership in every engagement.

A Google Cloud Partner of the Year and Microsoft Gold partner, Burwood Group consistently achieved exceptional results for its clients. But its website was not doing the same for the company.

Most organic traffic was simple brand searches from visitors who were already aware of the company or interested in careers there. This was the case despite an ongoing stream of high-quality content that failed to gain much traction in search results.

Burwood had chosen the Squarespace CMS for its ease of use and cost effectiveness. But technical issues related to the platform had festered unsolved by a previous SEO agency. We were brought in due to our expertise with the platform and our promise of a more hands-on approach to content development.

Burwood was a firm that consistently punched above its weight in the competitive world of IT consulting and technology integration. Their content, and their website, needed to do the same.

A Revamped Content Strategy

Hover to scroll, click to view

Burwood’s marketing team produced high-quality content at a rapid clip with input from their exceptional subject matter experts. But this content rarely managed to achieve significant rankings in Google search results, for a few reasons:

Topics tended to be covered broadly (cloud, devops), but the site lacked the authority to rank for these highly competitive terms.
The rapid pace of content production precluded covering topics comprehensively.
They followed a publication model of producing content as if they were a magazine or blog with strong recurring readership. But that was not actually the case.
The SEO-informed guidance they received was for topic selection, and stopped there. They got no hands-on involvement in content production or editorial input.

We encouraged a shift to a library model for their content strategy that would embrace generating organic traffic from search by producing evergreen content. With this new shift, every piece of content was informed by keyword research, analysis of the SERPs, and our judgment of how much authority the site already had, so we had a good chance of ranking well for chosen topics.

“The quality over quantity mentality for blog production was a real lightbulb moment for me. Focusing on creating quality, longform content vs. a strict publishing schedule felt like a much better use of our time, and yielded measurable results.”

— Colleen Barry, Burwood Group Marketing Director

We generated new ideas for content informed by our research and analysis. We identified old posts that failed to rank but had the potential to do so with effective revision. We took two or more failed posts that covered similar or closely related topics and combined them into comprehensive, long-form articles with well-chosen titles (like Top Benefits of Managed Services — And Questions to Ask) that made it to the first page of Google. And we linked internally among related posts and appropriate expertise and industry pages to support those pages and create silos Google could understand.

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Driving 176% Organic Traffic Growth

The revamped content strategy worked. Every post we were involved with became evergreen content that brought in additional visitors monthly — no more stillborn content. In a virtuous circle, new content generated large numbers of new backlinks and added authority (see the somewhat fictional “domain rating” figures), enabling us to rank for more, and progressively more challenging, topics. (These are excerpts from our monthly reports customized for each client.)

Burwood SEO report June 2019 — In the beginning

Most organic traffic was from brand-related queries or related to careers at the company. In other words, the website was not working to draw new visitors unfamiliar with the company to the site.

Burwood SEO report February 2021 — Crossing the Rubicon

A year and a half later, organic traffic is up massively. Most organic traffic is non-brand related. Referring domains and backlinks have also soared (backlinks have more than doubled).

Going Beyond Top-Line Growth to Conversion-Oriented Queries

An increase in top-line organic traffic is, of course, desirable. But an effective SEO strategy does not just pursue increased traffic for traffic’s sake. We encouraged a pursuit of conversion-oriented keywords that lay farther down the funnel rather than the less focused traffic some broad topics generated, even when the potential for increased organic traffic might be limited.

Take another view. Here’s organic traffic and total keywords on the first page of Google. We began work in July 2019.

Burwood organic traffic — **Organic traffic** for burwood.com. *Source: Ahrefs*. Click to expand.

Burwood first page keywords — **Total keywords in positions 1-3 and 4-10** (i.e., first page) on Google for burwood.com. *Source: Ahrefs*. Click to expand.

It’s hard to quibble with these results. But they’re not enough.

Organic traffic and total keywords aren't the whole story. You also need increased rankings for queries that convert.

The queries below might seem to have little in common (other than ranking in positions 1-3 on the first page of Google) given their very different topics. But look closer. They are likely to be of interest to a prospect farther down the funnel than a common informational query. There's some variation: someone interested in the benefits of managed services may be just beginning to consider whether managed services are right for an organization, while a searcher interested in a network assessment is probably closer to actually pursuing an engagement. But going after keywords with a prospect of converting is crucial, and why you shouldn't be misled by simple organic traffic figures when evaluating SEO performance.

Source: Ahrefs

The Pillars of SEO

Our work on content would not have generated the same level of sitewide benefits for Burwood Group without our focus on four pillars of SEO.

Technical SEO. Crawling, indexing, speed, redirects, and all the under-the-hood necessities so Google sees your site as high-quality and crawls it with ease.
Information architecture. Sometimes included in technical SEO, the organization (or architecture) of your website.
On-page SEO. Optimization of elements like page titles, URLs, meta descriptions, etc.
Off-site authority building. Also known as link building, generating backlinks to a website.

01.

Fix it: Technical SEO

As with most sites, we encountered a range of technical SEO issues, many of which we were able to identify and rectify within the first few months of work. Our familiarity with the Squarespace platform, including our expertise in Squarespace-specific SEO, was essential for this work. Issues included:

Structured data. We identified areas that would benefit from additional schema markup not produced natively by Squarespace (such as Corporation schema and BreadcrumbList schema for blog pages).
UX and mobile responsiveness. We improved issues related to user experience (such as improved CTAs) and to site rendering on mobile, including instigating use of AMP.
Website migration issues. Burwood’s site had been migrated previously from another CMS. We identified problem areas (e.g., broken links, misdirected or missing redirects) and resolved them.
Cleaned up 404s, redirect chains, and the like.
Proper no-indexing (for example, of case study tag pages) where needed.
Site speed. We improved site speed by eliminating superfluous fonts on the site, compressing images, and eliminating unnecessary scripts, among other actions.

02.

Creating a New Information Architecture

Website navigation needed greater clarity, and website structural issues included:

Expertise pages that were thin yet combined too many expertise areas on one page and which were not focused on the right queries; they consequently failed to rank for any significant keywords
Industry pages that did not enact or elaborate upon the significant expertise, authority and trustworthiness the company had achieved in many areas such as healthcare and higher education, and which suffered from a lack of appropriate internal linking
Service pages which were diffuse and not comprehensive and failed to rank well
Orphan pages.

We helped to develop a new information architecture for the site that would allow link equity to pass easily from new, comprehensive hub expertise pages to relevant subpages. We simplified and expanded core service pages. We reduced and rationalized the categories and tags on the site to eliminate superfluous indexed pages and support an updated architecture. And we improved rankings for key industry pages by updating and expanding them and linking well internally to them. Internal linking from blog pages was entirely revamped to support appropriate pages and anchor text was comprehensively rewritten.

03.

On-site SEO

We updated numerous thin pages on the site separate from the content program, including redesigned and expanded Contact, About and Case Studies pages, and many subpages related to Burwood’s expertise areas—subpages that then benefited from improved rankings. Informed by keyword research and competitive analysis, we were able to recast many pages, in some cases with simple changes, to rejuvenate their performance on the SERPs. Changes included:

Page titles and URLs. We right-sized and revised page titles in line with keyword research and broader SEO goals, as well as page updates, in some cases radically. And we resolved cases of incongruence among page titles, H1’s, URLs and navigation.
New, original page elements. We worked in concert with Burwood’s marketing team and their external design team to develop a series of new call-out boxes, page slugs and other elements. These enlivened and enriched pages and allowed for boldly visible linking to relevant, related content on the site, and other functions.
Page restructuring. Many pages were updated with new headings and heading hierarchies and graphic and other elements to provide the rich, varied, yet easily parsable type of page Google now favors.
Meta descriptions. We right-sized meta descriptions for the most important pages and engaged in wholesale rewriting to improve CTRs.

04.

Off-site authority building — and beyond

The world of authority building has changed over the years. Pursuit of links without regard to the authority and relevance of the referring domain doesn’t work and may, over time, be harmful.

Our content program produced numerous pieces of highly linkable content that attracted a panoply of richly deserved, organic backlinks from authoritative sites. Internal linking and page improvements throughout the site boosted authority elsewhere and generated additional improved rankings and backlinks.

Our efforts benefited further from Burwood’s rich mix of partnerships and industry relationships, event sponsorships (including in collaboration with valued partners), social media engagement and other off-site pursuits. Burwood’s Marketing Director, Colleen Barry, nurtured numerous relationships with partners and clients over lengthy periods of time. These efforts bore fruit in backlinks from valued, high-authority partners. We pushed for overhauls of partner pages and encouraged keeping partners abreast of updated partner pages, new relevant content, and other improvements to nurture these relationships.

“Burwood is a boutique IT consulting firm. We are proud of our reputation in key markets, but general brand awareness is an ongoing challenge,” says Colleen Barry. “Building partnerships with market-leading manufacturers is essential to our growth. Marksmen’s approach to link building empowered us to make sure we checked critical boxes during joint marketing content and campaign efforts.”

Looking to the Horizon

“Our website is completely transformed with Marksmen’s insistence on creating rich, varied content. This focus has also helped us develop better distribution across channels. When we develop offline content like a sell sheet or pitch deck, it’s become a natural habit to consider how we should repurpose it in a compelling digital format.”

— Colleen Barry, Burwood Group Marketing Director

Marksmen-developed About page. Hover to scroll, click to view

Good SEO is more than the sum of its parts, and its boundaries are wider than is often perceived. Site development requires more than specific, detail-oriented improvements, as necessary as they are. A holistic approach tunes in to brand identity and messaging as part of the overall user experience. Users sense when messaging is perfunctory, inauthentic or incongruent. Poor messaging harms conversions, increases bounce rate, and impacts overall site performance.

That is why we pay attention to messaging and overall site quality, as well as the quality of each individual page on the site, from the homepage to workshop pages, and not just those with significant organic search potential.

For Burwood, we utilized our knowledge of the Squarespace CMS and design background to work closely with the marketing and design teams on site development. Often, we created new pages and made page updates ourselves without needing to involve the design team, speeding up development. In particular, we paid attention to the design and content of crucial conversion-related pages that were unlikely to excel in organic search but helped improve the funnel.

An effective engagement also requires awareness of institutional priorities and teamwork. Without understanding and buy-in from crucial stakeholders, SEO efforts are likely to dissipate ineffectually as other priorities take precedence. So we provide continually iterated reporting and custom Google Analytics reports geared both to the marketing team and institutional stakeholders, and make sure to keep a medium-term horizon for our efforts explicitly in view.

“The guidance and education we’ve received from Marksmen Studio have been invaluable. Greatly increased traffic and lots of much improved pages throughout the site are gratifying, and their hands-on approach to content development very helpful. But their contributions have gone beyond SEO: Marksmen is an advisor, collaborator, and peer in developing Burwood’s content marketing strategy. We are proud of what we’ve achieved and see a lot of potential to expand from here.”

Colleen Barry, Marketing Director, Burwood Group

Not Satisfied With Underperforming Content and Mediocre Rankings?

We've seen it before and may be able to help.

We work with organizations that have a content program ongoing or are ready to start. We can help you plan and execute a content journey, fix outstanding SEO issues, and turn your website into a lead generator with better rankings and improved organic traffic.

B2B specialization
Platform agnostic: we can work in most CMS’s
Broad understanding of the role of thought leadership
Reporting and goals customized to your needs

If our work here sounds like what you may need, get in touch.

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