SEO + SMM Resulting In 4,003 Enrollees for a Local Training Course

By Yesh Quijano

Training Course

Organic Search Share

45.6% from 0%

Facebook Followers

11,000 from 0

Students

4,003

Links From

aamconsultants.org (DR 32)

bulk.ly (DR 74)

cyrelnicolas.com (DR 29)

This is a case study about SEOTraining.ph, a local SEO training course that I made to help freelancers upskill or shift careers.

I have been running this course for four years already and have only experienced growth year-on-year.

It should be noted that I started this course from scratch - everything in this course was made by me, from the website all the way to the individual lesson slides. This also includes running the SEO and social media strategy.

Strategy

After carefully analyzing the target audience of the course, I realized that the target demographics uses Facebook every day. This prompted me to utilize two marketing channels: organic search and social media.

SEO

Content & On-Page Optimization: For SEO, we focused a lot in on-page optimization, ensuring that each article we published are relevant, insightful, and optimized for search engines as well.

stph blog posts

The content was written using solid on-page optimization practices, with topical authority in mind.

Off-Page SEO: Since the website is started at zero, it's important to get started with some "foundational" links, specifically with local directory links.

It's important to choose which directories to submit to, because some of these directories have no authority to speak of.

Here's where it gets surprising: we didn't run an outreach campaign for this website and naturally acquired links on its own.

Social Media

I focused on Facebook because the target audience is mostly on it. We created other social media accounts in Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube, but Facebook was where the most money is at.

Facebook ads is this course's bread and butter, but I also published content regularly to keep engagement levels up.


Here are some sample images I made:

We found that carousel posts have the biggest engagement and have been focusing on that content type ever since.

The Results

SEO

  • 45.6% of website traffic from organic search
  • 1st page ranking for our main keyword, beating more established marketing agencies and training courses.
  • Landed high-quality natural links, with no outreach, one with DR 75.

Social Media

  • 11,347 Facebook followers
  • 10,627 Facebook likes
  • 300+ member exclusive "mastermind" group
  • 396.4% increase in messaging conversations vs last year

It should be noted that ranking #1 for our target keywords also boosted the course's credibility. This was one of the reasons why students enroll in the course over my competitors.


My course's Facebook page has always been a strong driver of enrollments:

An active social media account with a substantial following helps in the credibility department, too.

The course I offer is quite niche, which means I don't need thousands of traffic to generate sales.

Number of Enrollees

At the time of writing (Updated to Sep 23, 2024), the course has over 4,003 enrollees.

Final Thoughts

I had to get out of my comfort zone and adapt our marketing strategies due to the target audience's online behavior. 

I identified where the target audience spends most of their time online rather than tunnel-visioning in SEO and made sure both SEO and social media marketing work hand in hand. This resulted in a successful and holistic marketing campaign.

205% Organic Traffic Growth For A premium photobook company

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