I came across a “SEO Deep Dive” on IBM and was inspired to write my own thoughts – you could call it a mini deep dive.
Before I continue, I can only comment based on the content that is free to read in the original story and the social posts I’ve seen.
Before we get started – let’s make another thing clear. IBM’s traffic has obviously grown over the past 5 years.
Their organic traffic in January 2019 was estimated to be 3.6 million.
In 2024 IBM’s estimated organic traffic grew to 9.4 million – but what has their growth been like over the past 2 years? That’s what i’m interested in looking at today.
Look at the graphs below, this confirms how strong their growth has been since 2019. So on the surface, that’s a job well done – but there’s more to the story.
January 2019:
January 2024
IBM: Out Of Content Traffic Chart Or The Real Deal?
Traffic charts can easily be taken out of content in the SEO world – so lets break down some of the data.
IBM Non-Branded SEO Traffic
When you exclude brand terms like “IBM”, “Watson”, “SPSS” – Ahrefs shows:
Top 10 Keywords:
– Jan 2022 = 181,832
– Jan 2024 = 153,171
Top 3:
– Jan 2022 = 48,853
– Jan 2024 = 39,259
Position 1:
– Jan 2022 = 22,558
– Jan 2024 = 20,107
Cross check with SEMRush – est org. traffic
Jan 2022 = 2.5 million
Jan 2024 = 2 million
(All US numbers)
Compared to 2022, in 2024 IBM have:
- fewer non-branded keywords ranking on page 1
- fewer non-branded keywords ranking in the top 3
- fewer non-branded keywords ranking in position 1
More Organic Traffic Does Not Always = More Organic Revenue
IBM have definitely done a great job compared to 2021 and before.
More legacy organizations could follow their example in overhauling some of their tech & processes. IBM’s team has done an excellent job of culling excess pages, but what is this new traffic doing for them?
IBM rank for a lot of TOFU, explainer keywords – and that’s why I ask the question, what’s the new traffic doing for them? They’re not using their position in the market to create BOFU content, that is supported by the TOFU explainer content.
(Btw, I don’t discount TOFU content – I’m a big fan of building topical authority via explainer content -& you should definitely checkout my process).
So depending on how you analyze the data you could frame 2 different SEO stories from 2022 to today.
Sometimes leads from explainer topics end up costing more money & resources than they are worth.
Despite IBM’s organic traffic nearly increasing by 3x since 2019, their overall revenue has not even reached pre-covid levels. So it’s clear to anyone reading their financial statements that the boost in organic traffic does not = a boost in revenue.
Some of the traffic increases you see in SEO tools can be down to increases in search volume for particular topics.
For example, it looks like IBM launched & consolidated an AI article under /topics/ folder in Nov 22. It quickly became one of their top pages. IBM rank for a lot of TOFU queries related to AI, but what is that doing for their revenue?
I don’t believe people searching for explainer AI content will be buying the products IBM sell – so to summarize I’m not taking anything away from the original deep dive or IBM ,
SEO in enterprise can be tough, I’ve worked with enterprise clients and know how difficult it can be to get s*it done.
When you take IBM’s traffic graph back a few years they’ve done a great job. However, when you analyse IBM’s non-branded SEO performance over the past couple of years you could argue that their performance has actually decreased.
