SEO and Inbound Content Marketing Strategy
In 2018, I managed the launch of MIT Open Learning’s first SEO initiative: a professional education blog called, “The Curve.” As of 2021, the blog boasts 25K unique sessions and has contributed in part to MIT xPRO’s $2M+ in organic search related revenue.
The goal of this project was to create a blogging/SEO strategy that would ease friction in the average learner's buying cycle, and address pain points for MIT xPRO's key demographics.
At launch, I created basic personas that incorporated insights from exit surveys, customer service exchanges, webinar Q&As, and other anecdotal data. After transitioning our websites, email marketing, and e-commerce platforms to Hubspot, we were able to gather more marketing event/conversion data, to fine-tune our buyer personas.
Here is a sample of my early SEO planning (2018):
In 2020, I was able to work with marketing and sales to refine our SEO process using Hubspot reporting tools and Google Analytics. My process became more dynamic, slicing and dicing existing content that was performing well, or finding new topics based on popular search terms.
For example, in December, 2021 I noticed that "Asynchronous learning" was a popular keyword query for The Curve. So, I created a new, bite-sized listicle based on our popular asynchronous learning thought leadership piece.
Original thought-leadership piece (Jan 2021): https://curve.mit.edu/ask-mit-experts-advantages-of-asynchronous-learning
Bite-sized piece (Dec 2021) https://curve.mit.edu/5-benefits-asynchronous-learning
TOP POSTS FROM THE CURVE:
Other SEO / blog iterations and experiments include:
1) Summarizing and re-purposing existing on-demand webinars to drive post-event lead generation
2) Creating a listicle of professional development resources to help bottom of funnel leads make the final push employee sponsorship
3) Developing a comprehensive rundown of online resources available across MIT for parents with kids stuck at home during the pandemic.
THE POWER OF SEO
Refining our personas and fine-tuning our content strategy to focus on high performing keywords and subject matter made a huge impact on our organic revenue generation efforts.
In 2021, organic search was the third most popular traffic source after direct traffic and paid search, yielding a total of $2,674,117.80 in deal revenue. That's $84,352.60 more than the previous year!
In 2020, The Curve published 24 posts but generated only $7,358.11 in revenue. With half as many published posts in 2021, The Curve generated 57% more revenue; $17,392.50 in deals are attributed to blog content in 2021.
BLOGGING IDEATION PROCESS
Brainstorming with Marketing, Communications, Sales, and Customer Service is also an important step in developing new content for The Curve. Here is a preview of the Google Jamboard we use to brainstorm, collaborate and refine ideas:
