We all love case studies. Who is we? We in the SEO industry, we in social media and online marketing, we business people. Case studies show on real life examples, real websites, projects and campaigns that something works.

Good case studies are more than proof though. They also show you how to market or optimize a site. They show an example of how it actually works.

Case studies combine both, the insight of a how to articles and the business proof of a finished campaign. They shows the results from experience.

These are some of the reasons why I’ve collected a comprehensive list of 30 SEO, social media & marketing case studies that prove the ROI of it All.

Yes, the ROI in SEO, social media and other kinds of online marketing is still too often fuzzy. We want success stories, numbers and explanations so that we can reenact the steps you need to succeed. So here they are, enjoy:

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Did you know that there is a whole mobile SEO and mobile Analytics industry on top or underneath the SEO and web analytics offerings we already got used to? I didn’t until this week. I underestimated the mobile Internet and it’s search by and large. I read about the iPhone impact on mobile Internet usage a few times and then forgot about it. Meanwhile others didn’t. It’s time to jump into mobile SEO now more than ever. You won’t be an early adopter of mobile SEO anymore but you’re not too late to the table yet.
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After the tremendous success of my top 10 list on non-Google SEO methods I decided to follow up with a more in depth list.

Drawers, Building REsources is a Creative Commons licensed image by heather.

While preparing the 35 Non-Google SEO How tos, Tutorials & other Resources I realized that I need to split up the list due to the high number of links that have to be included.

So there will be another list following this one. The first 35 Non-Google SEO resources list encompasses how tos and tutorials for the initial 5 types of online business promotion in 2009:

1. Twitter
2. Blogging
3. YouTube
4. LinkedIn
5. Social Shopping

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Web Design for ROI is a book that had huge impact not only on myself. It has changed the way the SEO industry approaches web design and finally made people embrace usability to it’s full effect. Sadly the web developer community wasn’t impacted to the same extent yet. Many web designers and developers, especially of the “failed artist” kind seem to assume that web design is more about flashy animations, fancy graphics and beautiful decoration than real business value or ROI/Return On Investment.

“One of the most striking and true tidbits of web design for ROI is the notion that not the homepage of a website is the most important part of it but the forms. Yes, forms, the most hated and neglected part of web design are the crucial part of the website which determines your business success. It depends on the form whether your potential customers will subscribe, apply, buy, check out, contact you etc.”

This collection of 50 must read web design for ROI, usability and SEO articles also embraces the philosophy behind designing websites for the ROI of it not the looks. It  contains a few all time  favorites from the eraly days of the web which still are true as well as mostly current cutting edge articles and resources.

As stated above the list starts with the most significant part of Web Design for ROI, form design.

Intro

• SEOmoz | Web Design for ROI: Chapter 3, Managing for ROI

Forms

• 25 Web Form Optimization Tips
• Effective use of forms on websites (theory, March 1, 2001)
• Getting a Form’s Structure Right: Designing Usable Online Email Applications – Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design
• 7 Shopping Cart Tips That Even Amazon Could Use | Improve the Web
• Pop Upon Magazine: Geek Trends: 15 Outstanding Feed Subscription Displays
• Web Form Design in the Wild, Part I
• Web Form Design Patterns: Sign-Up Forms | How-To | Smashing Magazine

Universal Search and Multimedia

• The Local Search Ranking Factors: Ranking High in Google Maps and Yahoo Local
• 19 Ways to Optimize Your Site for Google Images
• blinkx Video SEO Whitepaper [PDF]
• A List Apart: Articles: Understanding Progressive Enhancement
• Guide to Optimizing PDFs for Search Engines
• mezzoblue § Image Replacement + Google
• Why Web Design Matters : SEO Book.com
• 2009 Google Flash SEO | beu blog

Blogs

• Blog Usability: Top 10 Weblog Design Mistakes (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
• Five Winning Approaches for When Your Audience Doesn’t Read Blogs
• How to Blog Design Style Guide | Blog design Blog for Blog Designers
• Evaluating the Effectiveness of Your Blog Theme | Vandelay Website Design
• SEO 2.0 | Blog Suicide: Top 7 Title & Meta Tag Mistakes that Kill Your Blog

Usability

• UX Magazine – Conversion Rate Optimization – Part 1
• UX Magazine – Conversion Rate Optimization – Part 2
• Usability Post » Does Your Website Suffer From These 7 Usability Mistakes?
• Findability, Orphan of the Web Design Industry
• 30 Ways to Increase Readability Online
• 50 Web Usability Tips that Help You Attract and Retain Web Visitors
• Social Proof Optimization: How to Make Your Website Appealing to the Masses

Website optimization

• The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period! – Search Engine Guide Blog
• 14 free tools that reveal why people abandon your website | Conversion Rate Experts
• How To Diagnose Your Site with Google Advanced Search
• The SEO Guide to Information Architecture | AudetteMedia
• Search engine marketing blog – Reseo: Ten steps to higher conversions using Google’s Website Optimiser
• 50 Ways Your Web Site Is Discouraging Conversions — and How to Fix It – Inside CRM
• The Internet Marketing Unlist: 49 Things You Probably Are Doing But Shouldn’t | Internet Marketing Strategy: Conversation Marketing
• 21 Factors that Influence the First Impression of Your Website’s Visitors | Vandelay Website Design
• 10 Easy Steps to Great Website Optimization. | The Wojo Group
• Internal Links – Are You Making the Most of Yours? | SEO Design Solutions

Content

• Reading on the Web (Alertbox)
• How Little Do Users Read? (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
• Use Words on Your Site Correctly: The Complete Guide | Improve the Web
• Headline Writing for Google, Social Media and Profit : Condomunity
• 10 SEO and Marketing-Friendly Title Tag Formulas | Internet Marketing Strategy: Conversation Marketing
• Your Content Development Strategy | Datadial Blog

URLs

• adaptive path » user-centered url design
• SEO 2.0 | Top 10 Fatal URL Design Mistakes
• Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Dynamic URLs vs. static URLs

Misc. web design

• SEOmoz | How to Ruin a Web Design – The Design Curve
• 25 Beautiful Minimalistic Website Designs – Part 4 | Vandelay Website Design
• CSS Typography: Contrast Techniques, Tutorials and Best Practices | Noupe

This list is not meant to be all encompassing but it is meant to collect indispensable know how in what I tend to call ROI web design. I’m quite sure I forgot some must read resources so feel to add them in the comment section.

Business people often ignore many simple fixes for websites. Their sites don’t get found or scare away visitors who do land there. Web developers often underestimate the plethora of ways to tweak a website for more visitors and higher sales. SEO has been around for 10 years but still many sites fail to take advantage of most little fixes Google needs to assess a site and visitors need to get what they want.

This list of 30 really “quick and clean”, mostly one minute fixes will enable you to give Google plenty of these so called “signals” it needs as well as the clues your visitors need to find what they want and ideally also to buy. I assume that your site has already some keyword research done, some basic on-page SEO measures implemented and some backlinks gathered.

Titles

• Add one more keyword to your title-tag if your site is already performing well in Google, substract one if your still a little weak in Google. Strong? Then follow this example: Before “SEO Blog”, after “SEM & SEO Blog”. Weak? The other way around.
• Add an often searched modifier to your title, something like “cheap”, “affordable” or “London”, “Glasgow” or “shop”, “services”.
• Remove your company name or shorten and move it to the end of the title. Wrong: John Doe Industries SEO Services Glasgow. Right: SEO Services Glasgow – J.Doe

Meta Tags

• Repeat the keyword/keyphrase at the beginning of the meta description: If the title is “SEO Blog” then the meta description should be: SEO blog: The UK’s leading SEO blog offering global search marketing news about SEM, PPC and more.
• Remove al other meta tags, they just clutter your code and make your “code to content ratio” look bad. Google ignores most, others are nice to have, not more.

Headlines

• Add a h2 headline which is a sentence explaining your h1 headline. Example: h1 – “SEO Services Glasgow”, h2 – “We’re the first professional search engine optimisation company in Glasgow offering SEO services since 1995″.
• Add a h3 headline with a teaser, something that kicks ass, example: “Seoptmise – The SEO blog that will kick your ass like Beckham”. It can be a longer one. Do not repeat keywords too often.

Page Elements

• Change your menu item “shop” or “services” to something that reflects what you offer or sell, e.g “SEO services”.
• Change your homepage link from “home” to “SEO Blog” or whatever your site or blog is about.
• Add your address in the footer.
• Create a big bold link or button with a “call to action” like “buy now!”, “subscribe here!” or “join now!”.
• Add a large phone number in bold at the top of your page
• Delete an element on your homepage you never click on other websites
• Change the anchor text of a “more” link to the keyword the “more” page deals with

Backlinks and PageRank

• SMS your mother/daughter/sister or father/son/brother and ask for a link to your site.
• Link out to your favourite site on a topic similar to yours. Recommend it explicitly.
• Add a sentence like this “Like us? Link us! <a href=”http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/”>SEO blog UK by SEOptimise</a>”
• Add a “permalink” link to your pages
• Add the nofollow attribute to your “contact page” link.
• Add a “Bookmark to Delicious” badge or button, Delicious bookmarks often automatically appear on blogs

Copywriting

• Mention what you offer exactly on your site/page, use brands and exact product names
• Mention where you offer it “SEO Services Manchester”
• Mention why you offer it “We offer recycling solutions because we believe that clean business is profitable business”
• Mention to whom you offer it: “Web hosting solutions for small business”
• Make an unordered list which reflects the 3 most relevant topics of the page you’re tweaking and put it on top adding the words “this article deals with…”
• Explain one key term the page e.g your homepage contains: SEO (Definition: search engine optimisation, the process of making websites more search and search user friendly)
• Add 5 tags to your page by adding following text: “Tags: tag1, tag2, tag3, tag4, tag5″. In our case it would be probably: “Tags: SEO, optimisation, website, traffic, sales”
• Replace your homepage images with smaller ones in byte size (below 50 kb) so that non-broadband users stick with you
• Convince! Start the first or second sentence of your page with “We will make you number 1 in…” instead of solely describing “X offers…”
• Add your name to the text: John, CEO of John Doe Industries. People trust people not companies.

This “quick and clean” fixes will help already tremendously. Many sites miss these opportunities. Do you want to spend more time than half an hour fixing your website to get more traffic and higher sales? Well check out this huge list of 5 minutes website improvements.