Organic growth for Blurb’s Blog

Blurb is a self-publishing platform allowing individuals to create, publish, promote, and sell their own books. Blurb authors have created more than two million books since the company started, with a new book created every minute.

Blurb has engaged Menerva Digital to help lead all areas of its website. With blog growth a central area of focus, Menerva’s SEO team has been fully integrated with Blurb’s internal processes to help actualize a successful content strategy and increase organic visibility.

Results

+88%

Increase in organic traffic YoY

+50%

Increase in the number of keywords ranking in positions 1-3

Finalist

U.S. Search Awards

Countries and languages we support

United States (English)
United Kingdom (British English)
Germany (German)
France (French)
Spain (Spanish)
Italy (Italian)

Activities

Content gap analysis

As the foundation of Blurb’s content strategy, the SEO team identifies all relevant keyword data that reflects Blurb’s target audience. The team then uses this data to assess where Blurb is already visible and ranking well or where the brand can improve. This gap analysis effectively determines where there are opportunities to update existing content or gaps that inspire new content creation.

Based on the content gap analysis, the SEO team formulates detailed content suggestions and strategic content briefs on a quarterly basis. In addition to keyword data, content briefs are created by analyzing topics included in Google’s answer boxes, competing content ranking in the first 5 organic placements, long-tail keyword variations, and ideas generated by ChatGPT by OpenAI.

Menerva Digital has knowledgeable content strategists and experienced copywriters that support the development of Blurb’s blog content, all while following Blurb’s brand voice and guidelines. The copywriters ensure the blog content balances proper keyword inclusion for SEO without disrupting its readability and engagement.

On-page optimization is an integral SEO component that’s conducted across Blurb’s blog posts. Here, the SEO team optimizes fundamental page elements like the title, meta description, on-page copy, image alt text, hyperlinks, and more.

Menerva Digital also analyzes ways to improve organic visibility by improving technical performance across the site, such as optimizing crawl budget, page speed, and Core Web Vitals. The team also helps Blurb add Schema to enhance content elements across blogs and improve search visibility through rich snippets.

Menerva Digital uses automated reports to monitor performance on a monthly basis. The team analyzes performance and provides suggestions for improvement. Reports are created within Looker Studio (Google Data Studio).

Menerva Digital acts as an extension of the Blurb team and seamlessly integrates into Blurb’s workflows. This leads to a more streamlined approach to ensure deadlines are not missed. Menerva Digital also meets with Blurb on an ongoing basis to discuss future planned topics and strategic ideas for improvement.

“Blurb’s audience is highly specified, meaning that every single detail counts. By focusing on common questions, personalization, and answering the questions on an educational level, Menerva was able to capitalize and boost our ranking with high-level content.”

Allison Wollman

E-Commerce, Digital Marketing & Merchandising Manager at Blurb

“The Menerva team was able to integrate content that ranked in search with content that our existing professional audience actually wanted to read. That’s not easy. We also focused a great deal on improving the blogs we were already ranking for, taking them from basic, voiceless information to educational and fun content.”

Aer Parris

Manager of Copy and Content at Blurb

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