How Apex Global Learning's New Blog Grew Its Search Visits 4x in a Year
Apex Global Learning trains working professionals in fields such as project management and IT service management. Its blog was new in November 2015. We filled it with guides that professionals search for and share, and within a year it was drawing four times as many visits from search as in its first six months, about 465 a month by early 2017.
4x
visits a month from search,
Jun to Nov 2016 vs. Dec to May
465
visits a month from search,
January to March 2017
6,589
pageviews for one guide in 2016,
79% from other websites
The Business
Apex Global Learning is a Philippines-based learning solutions firm that runs public and in-house training for companies and working professionals, with courses in areas such as project management and IT service management (ITIL).
Industry: Professional training and education
Location: Philippines
Services: Content Marketing, SEO
Challenge & Goals
When the program began in November 2015, the Apex blog was new. It drew no visits from search in its first two weeks, so the people researching Apex’s training topics were not finding it.
Apex wanted the blog to reach project managers, IT professionals and HR leaders while they were researching the topics Apex teaches.
Strategies & Solutions
Here is what we did.
Topics in Apex’s course areas, in formats people share
We chose topics in Apex’s course areas, such as project management, ITIL and HR, and built them as infographics, visual guides and curated lists that other sites would share and link to.
Four guides in four weeks
Between mid-March and mid-April 2016 we published Top 50 Project Management Terms You Need to Know, Top 40 Business Blogs in the Philippines, ITIL Testing Centers in the Philippines and ISO 9000 vs. Six Sigma: A Visual Guide.
Resources for a wider business audience
Posts such as Top 40 Business Blogs in the Philippines reached business readers beyond Apex’s course topics.
Planning from what earns attention
In 2017 we reported on what each post earned and proposed new topics modeled on the most shared and most linked posts on each subject.
Results
We compared the first six months after launch, December 2015 to May 2016, with the next six, June to November 2016. All figures are visits to the Apex blog from organic search, added up by month.
| Apex blog, organic search | First six monthsDec 2015 to May 2016 | Next six monthsJun to Nov 2016 |
|---|---|---|
| Average visits a month | 67 | 266 |
| Best month | 109 | 411 |
| Month | Visits bar | Visits |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 2015 | 32 | |
| Jan 2016 | 64 | |
| Feb 2016 | 48 | |
| Mar 2016 | 50 | |
| Mid-March to mid-April 2016: four guides go live | ||
| Apr 2016 | 99 | |
| May 2016 | 109 | |
| Jun 2016 | 164 | |
| Jul 2016 | 186 | |
| Aug 2016 | 209 | |
| Sep 2016 | 277 | |
| Oct 2016 | 346 | |
| Nov 2016 | 411 | |
| Dec 2016 | 327 | |
| Jan 2017 | 482 | |
| Feb 2017 | 426 | |
| Mar 2017 | 486 | |
| Apr 2017 | 398 | |
| May 2017 | 406 | |
| Jun 2017 | 485 | |
The blog had no visits from search in its first two weeks. It averaged 67 a month from December 2015 to May 2016 and 266 a month from June to November 2016, four times as many. From January to March 2017 it averaged 465 visits a month from search.
The guides did two jobs. In 2016 the four guides drew 10,375 pageviews, 66% of them from other websites. Top 50 Project Management Terms You Need to Know alone drew 6,589, 79% from other websites. By May 2017 the four guides had 14 links between them, according to our blog performance report.
They also brought in readers from search. In April and May 2016, Top 40 Business Blogs in the Philippines brought in about half of the blog’s visits from search. From January to mid-May 2017 it drew 701 views from search, and ITIL Testing Centers in the Philippines drew 543.
All four guides are still live on the Apex blog today.
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