126 Must-Read SEO Traffic Generation Case Studies

I’ve been involved in online business for the better part of four years now, and if there is one thing that’s remained true, it’s that the best way to learn is through case studies.

No matter what you’re looking for, there are case studies out there, and more often than not they’re the best resources because they provide actual results and a step by step process.

We’ve hand selected 126 of the best traffic generation case studies on the internet that will show you how to increase traffic to your website and convert more leads.

We’ve broken them out into 13 separate categories so you can pick and choose where you want to focus.

• Chapter 1 – Content Marketing Case Studies
• Chapter 2 – Link Building Case Studies
• Chapter 3 – SEO Case Studies
• Chapter 4 – Social Media Case Studies
• Chapter 5 – Facebook Case Studies
• Chapter 6 – Twitter Case Studies
• Chapter 7 – Conversion Rate Optimization Case Studies
• Chapter 8 – eCommerce Case Studies
• Chapter 9 – Outreach Case Studies
• Chapter 10 – Make Money Case Studies
• Chapter 11 – Niche Websites Case Studies
• Chapter 12 – Paid Advertising Case Studies
• Chapter 13 – Other Case Studies

Content Marketing Case Studies

Content marketing has been the primary method that we’ve been generating traffic on the Ninja Outreach blog. It often encompasses blogging, guest posting, product reviews, etc. Anyone who has attempted content marketing knows that it is incredibly difficult, but there are “hacks”, which these case studies are going to show you.

1.  Update: 150,000 Monthly Page Views – STILL No Backlink Building
2. Blog Traffic Case Study: How publishing daily increased my traffic
3. 6 Months of Blog Growth: Results and Lessons Learned
4. How Content Marketing Saved this Brick-and-Mortar Business
5. How We Grew a Blog to $6 Million+ in 12 Months
6. 28K Per Month Authority Site Case Study
7. How I Increased Traffic 272% In 30 Days (Without Spending A Penny)
8. How We Got 1,000+ Subscribers from a Single Blog Post in 24 Hours
9. Content Marketing: Targeted persona strategy lifts sales leads 124%
10. 13,000% Increase In Traffic
11. How I Built A Top 100 Blog In 12 Months & How You Can Do It Too!
12. How I Used a Case Study to Grow My Sales by 185%
13. My $45,300 Mistake: How Text Drives More Traffic Than Video Content
14. How to build a successful blog with more than 250,000 unique visits per month
15. How To Increase Website Traffic to Over 100,000 Visitors Per Month
16. An Inside Look into My Most Successful Guest Posts

Link Building Case Studies

For a long time link building has been the crux of SEO and it continues to play an important role in ranking in the search engines.

A lot of people now consider content marketing and link building synonymous, but this is not true.

There are many white hat methods for building quality links, and these case studies will show you how.

1. Case Study: Using Infographics for Link Building
2. Case Study: White Hat Link Building Without Any Content
3. [Unnatural] Links are DEAD – A Case Study
4. How I Got My 10 Best Links – Point Blank SEO
5. [UPDATE] Does Building Links to a Local Listing Help Rank?

SEO Case Studies

You might be wondering – what’s the difference between SEO and link building?

Link building is a type of SEO, but nowadays SEO encompasses a lot more than just building links to a site.

It is about keyword research, website performance and user experience, and competitive analysis.

These case studies explore the many different facets of SEO.

1. How to Drive Organic Search Traffic to an Affiliate Site
2. White Hat SEO Case Study: 348% More Organic Traffic 
3. How the Dark Side provides SEO Services
4. The Case for Content: 620% Organic Growth
5. Inflow SEO Case Study: 108% YoY Organic Traffic Increase
6. An SEO Fail For Candie’s – A Big Brand Audit
7. How To Triple Your Startup’s Organic Traffic 
8. How to Increase Search Engine Traffic through Keyword Audit
9. Zero Link Building – How To Rank A Site Without Building Links
10. Cross-Marketing Optimization – Search and Social
11. SEO Case Study – 194% Increase in Organic Traffic 
12. How imgup.io doubled its organic traffic in 14 days
13. SEO CASE STUDY: 313.94% Year Over Year Traffic Increase
14. Ethical SEO Increases Organic Traffic by more than 1000%
15. How I Increased My Search Engine Traffic by 13.15%
16. From 0 to 1.4 Million Visitors in 6 Months
17. 5 Data-Backed SEO Strategies to Increase Traffic
18. How I Improved SERP Visibility by Over 1400% in 4 Months
19. 126% Increase in Organic Traffic for Rootfin
20. Effect of Showing Dates on Search Engine Ranking
21. 4 Small Business SEO Tips That I Ignored to Grow My Site
22. SEO CASE STUDY: A 1005% Increase in Traffic in 9 Months

Social Media Case Studies

It seems just about every business nowadays is “on” social media – but few really know what they are doing.

With all the social media channels out there it’s important to understand the nuances that make one a good fit and the other not.

In this chapter I’ve purposely excluded the top two (Facebook and Twitter) to be discussed later.

1. Going “Viral” On Tumblr: A Microblog Micro-Case Study
2. Amplifying content & generating traffic through Reddit
3. Google Plus Search and Google Authorship Case Study
4. 8 Steps to Capturing 500,000 YouTube Views in 10 Months
5. How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

Facebook Case Studies

Facebook is such a significant part of social media that it deserves it’s own category.

The fact is there are amazing things you can do with Facebook between advertising and content marketing.

At the same time, there are many people who are simply doing it wrong, and produce stale pages that have no hope of growing.

Learn from these case studies and, if you dedicate time and effort, you can reach thousands of people through this platform.

1. How We Got To 40,310 Facebook Fans In 4 Days
2. Preston Smith: Small biz superhero, from one to 94 leads
3. How I Earned $10,690 in a Week from Facebook Traffic Alone
4. How To Advertise On Facebook – My Facebook Marketing Strategy Revealed
5. Using Facebook Contests to Drive Fans, Engagement, and Website Traffic 
6. Can 25,666 Facebook Video Views Drive Traffic?
7. How to get your first 10,000 fans on Facebook
8. Facebook Brand Page Case Study: It Ain’t So Ruff For Three Dog Bakery
9. How I Increased the Traffic from Facebook Groups by 3,000%

Twitter Case Studies

Believe it or not, Twitter is actually our third highest traffic source on Ninja Outreach.

However it operates very different from Facebook, and in general has a lot less features due to the restrictive nature of tweets.

But with the introduction of images, and leadboxes that is now changing.

Check out these case studies for more ideas on how to grow your Twitter following.

1.  How CoffeeGroundz Uses Twitter
2. Twitter Case Study: When I Decided To Tweet Every 30 Minutes
3. Twitter + StumbleUpon = Massive Traffic – Beyond the Rhetoric
4. Twitter Drives Traffic, Sales: A Case Study – O’Reilly Radar
5. How Twitter Became My Largest Source of Referral Traffic
6. How I Used Twitter to Generate 35,967 Extra Hits to my Site

Conversion Rate Optimization Case Studies

It’s a common mistake to believe that the answer to all our problems is always more traffic.

The other side of the coin is simply to take the current traffic you have, and convert it better.

For example, on NinjaOutreach we were able to improve the conversions of our pricing page by over 40% with a relatively simple design change.

More leads – same traffic. Learn from these awesome case studies how to turn traffic into leads.

1. Google Website Optimizer Increases Conversion 591%
2. How We Raised Conversion 48% by Relaunching Our Online Store
3. How Walmart.ca’s Responsive Redesign Boost Conversion by 20%
4. How We Grew Conversions 100% by Rethinking Our Design Strategy
5. How to Convert 225% More Trial Subscriptions – Multivariate Test Results
6. How Intuit Increased Conversion Rate by 211% Just By Using Proactive Chat
7. Using Video to Lift Landing Page Conversion Rate by 100%
8. How A Single A/B Test Increased Conversions by 336%
9. How WikiJob increased sales by 34% by A/B testing customer testimonials

eCommerce Case Studies

eCommerce can be it’s own beast sometimes.

There are majoy players in the industry like Amazon, eBay and Etsy and this can make it difficult to start and grow your own eCommerce business.

Additionally, it’s difficult to content market.

Thus, I wanted to include some successful examples of eCommerce case studies for anyone who dares to build this kind of business.

1. 300% Growth in eCommerce Traffic for The Kewl Shop
2. The Open Book Sale of My $600K eCommerce Store 
3. Customer Review Widget Increases Sales by 58.29%
4. Removing product filter on website boosts site engagement by 27%
5. How An E-Commerce Site Increased Search Traffic By 1780%

Outreach Case Studies

Outreach, naturally, is very near and dear to our hearts at NinjaOutreach. Many of the case studies above require some degree of outreach as part of the process.

It’s hard to get started from nothing and get noticed without outreach.

While we’ve written about it a ton on our own blog, I thought including some unique case studies on this topic would round things out a bit.

1. How I Reach Out to Busy People and Get Responses
2. Outreach through Facebook and Twitter
3. Youtube Outreach Tutorial [Real Examples]
4. How I Convinced 120 Influential Entrepreneurs to Give Their Advice

Make Money Case Studies

I get it – sometimes you just want to make money.

At the end of the day, a lot of the traffic and conversion case studies are inevitably about increase sales.

So why not get to the point with some make money case studies?

1. “Throw Money At It” Project: Spend Money to Make Money
2. How I Created Paid to Blog Jobs [Membership Site Case Study]
3. How A New Blog Brought In $2,000 in Revenue In A Single Day 
4. Interview: How a Poker Membership Site Made $100,000 in its First Week
5. How 23 Bloggers Made $905k Last Month

Niche Websites Case Studies

Niche websites are fantastic case studies because they tend to be an ongoing process, involving SEO, content marketing, linkbuidling, CRO, and all the other types of caes studies mentioned prior to this. This is a good project to put all of your marketing skills into.

1. How I Built A Niche Site That Ranked #1
2. 6 Month Plan To $3K Per Month Building Niche Websites
3. Niche Site Income | A Real-Time Case Study
4. How To Create A $20,000+ p/m Affiliate Site
5. Using Social Media to Grow a Niche Site
6. How I Grew A Niche Affiliate Site From $0 To $3,934 A Month
7. From Niches To Riches: 3 Case Studies From A Scrappy Entrepreneur

Paid Advertising Case Studies

Sometimes you have to pay to play. I know it’s not everyone;s favorite, but when done right paid ads can be extremely effective and scaleable.

If you’re going to attempt it, I strongle encourage you follow one of the proven models discussed below.

It will save you a lot of headache, and potentially a lot of money too.

1. LinkedIn Ads vs. Facebook Ads – A Case Study
2. How I Made $400 With Facebook Ads In One Week
3. Twitter Advertising ROI | A Case Study From Digital Marketer
4. Paid Ads Case Study: Retargeting Vs. Facebook Ads Vs. AfterOffers
5. 3 Powerful Case Studies That Show you How to Advertise on Twitter
6. Facebook Ads Case Study: How to Grow Your Email Signups
7. The Actual Impact of PPC on Sales [Case Study]
8. $1K Profit (Almost) in 1 Week: My PPC Case Study
9. Google Adwords: A Case Study on Quality Score
10. Results from 13 paid traffic tests [Case Study]
11. 253% ROI Facebook Ads Case Study

Other Case Studies

Every list needs an other category. In this chapter we’re going to be discussing valuable case studies that just didn’t place in the other chapters; eBooks, press releases, and more!

1. How to Write an eBook That Goes Viral and Gets You Tons of Traffic
2. How One Man Saved the Family Furniture Business
3. How I Increased My Subscriber Rate by 10x Overnight
4. Case Study: Do People Actually Click Sitelinks
5. Our Logo Looks Like Underpants: A Case Study in Internationalization
6. Be Everywhere: How I Got 2000+ NEW Visitors To My Site
7. Case Study: 13 Pre-Launch Traffic Strategies for Startups
8. Word of Mouth Marketing Case Study: Epson & Sparkplugging
9. 17 Ways to Increase Website Traffic by 419.16% in 90 days
10. Long-Tail Keyword SEO: Over 350% in Organic Search Growth