LOCOMOTIVE Agency has won a 2021 Content Marketing Award for Best Topic Specific Blog on behalf of our client, Clearway Community Solar.
What Are The Content Marketing Awards?
The Content Marketing Awards are the world’s largest and longest-running international content marketing competition. They recognize excellence and achievement (i.e. ROI, increased organic traffic, improved CTR, etc.) for “content creation, distribution, and innovation.” Here’s a little bit more about our winning entry.
Our Content Marketing Strategy
Clearway Community Solar is a dominant leader in clean, solar energy in the United States. They wanted to create a Science Experiments Blog with fun, kid-centered, DIY experiments that would appeal to parents and teachers interested in sustainability as an idea and practice — a natural area of overlap with Clearway.
Designed to ensure success in execution, the individual experiments on the Science Experiments Blog also teach eco-friendly concepts, while inviting the children (and their helpers) to participate in the scientific method, critical thinking, and reflection. Science, sustainability, and innovation are at the heart of Clearway’s work in community solar, so creating content that highlights those company values and practices was an easy fit.
Our Content Marketing Goals
Our goals with the Science Experiments Blog were as follows:
- Build site authority in links. (Because of a restructuring, this was a brand-new domain two years ago.)
- Find traffic sources in the renewable energy space with low competition like “rooftop solar.”
- Build out the amount of content covering renewable topics on Clearway’s site to better position their subject matter expertise to search engines.
- Increase awareness of eco-friendly principles and practices — including community solar — among children, families, and teachers.
- Create evergreen content that would continue to teach, build eco-friendly allies and awareness, and increase Clearway’s organic traffic across time.
How the Science Experiment Blog Performed
Since its creation, the Science Experiments Blog has brought in 188,400 new users to Clearway Community Solar’s site through organic search alone. (The company doesn’t use social media or email to promote it.) Organic traffic on the site overall has greatly benefited. The year before Clearway started the Science Experiments Blog, organic search ranked 3rd in traffic type with 9,108 visitors. The blog’s first year (2018), organic search dropped to 4th place with 19,542 visitors. (PPC was getting a boost at this time.) During 2019 — and following a restructuring of the Science Experiments Blog template that improved usability — organic search was the 2nd biggest traffic driver to Clearway’s site with 40,124 visitors. During 2020, organic search became their #1 traffic source with over 201,000 visitors.
The Science Experiment Blog’s Performance in 2020
- The Science Experiment Blog has brought in 14,300 new users for 18,300 different sessions and 21,900 total page views.
- The Science Experiment Blog has driven 611 direct conversions and assisted 234 other conversion paths.
- The average time spent in 2020 on the Science Experiment Blog’s pages is 5:40. Clearway’s site as a whole is :55. (The Science Experiment Blog pages in total see an average on-page time of 5:59.)
- So far, the 2020 blogs have 13 backlinks (without any outreach efforts) worth $6,500, including links from high-value .org and .edu sites. (The value of all Science Experiment Blog backlinks is $32,000.)
- The 2020 Science Experiments Blog pages rank for over 1,500 different user queries and are in the top-ten for over 100 — queries Clearway wouldn’t rank for otherwise.
Because the experiments are evergreen, each blog page will continue to pull in traffic and backlinks. The content will never become irrelevant to families, teachers, and children eager to interact with, learn about, and protect their world.
Do you need help with content marketing strategy, creation, or distribution? Reach out to LOCOMOTIVE Agency today to find out more about our Content Marketing services.
