How We Increased Referral Search Traffic By 148% By Repurposing Old Content [Case Study]
Search has changed. Consumers no longer rely solely on Google to find what they want: they now turn to ChatGPT, Perplexity, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, and niche communities to find answers, compare solutions, and make decisions. If your content doesn’t appear across these platforms, it’s effectively invisible to their users and AI models alike. In this case study, we’ll show you how we helped a technology company in real estate data and analytics more than double their referral search traffic. How? By building a clear picture of where their audience was actually searching, then repurposing their existing content into the formats and platforms that appealed most to those search behaviors. The result? Their referral traffic grew by 148%. All from repurposed content. In this case study, you’ll learn : If you’d prefer to watch rather than read, I cover some of the key insights in this video. To start, here’s some context about the client and why their site needed our help. The Challenge The client is a technology company specializing in real estate data and analytics. Think of them as the Ahrefs of Real Estate. They had been publishing authoritative, useful content and expected that it would continue driving visibility over time. But search habits had changed, and their audience was no longer relying on Google alone to find what they were looking for online. They were turning to AI search tools, YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn to find answers in new formats and through new discovery paths. Because of this shift in search behavior, the client’s content stopped reaching the people it was intended for. Traffic plateaued, visibility declined, and their expertise was being overlooked. Meanwhile, competitors who distributed their content across multiple platforms were gaining attention, appearing in AI-generated responses, and earning greater share-of-voice in the industry. The problem wasn’t the quality of the client’s insights, it was that those insights weren’t being adapted to the places and formats where their audience now consumed information. That’s when they turned to The Search Initiative to help modernize their approach and extend the reach of the content they had already invested in. We began by pinpointing where and how their customers were actually searching e.g. traditional search engines, AI tools, social platforms, and online communities. This helped us understand which channels were as-yet untapped and precisely where competitors had been gaining ground. Next, to make sure we hit these opportunities quickly and effectively, we built a content repurposing plan that turned their best-performing blog posts into short social videos, LinkedIn updates, and formats optimized for AI visibility. This expanded their reach without having to create reams of content from scratch. Here’s how you can follow the same steps to make sure your expertise is seen by the right people, wherever they search. Understanding Multi-Platform Search Behavior Understanding how your audience searches and consumes content across multiple platforms is critical for modern SEO and AI visibility. Search behavior is no longer limited to traditional engines like Google, users now turn to ChatGPT, Perplexity, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Reddit for answers and insights. Getting a full picture of how and where your audience is searching helps you identify where they are active and what content performs best on those platforms. These are insights that will shape the content repurposing strategy in section two of this case study. Why Multi-Platform Search Matters Today Recent research shows that consumer search behavior is rapidly diversifying beyond traditional search engines. Large language models like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI search features are pulling answers more and more regularly from forums, social media, video platforms, and professional networks, rather than just traditional websites. Unlike traditional SEO, where content is mainly optimized for Google search, success in AI SEO requires a focus on content types that AI platforms like ChatGPT trust and process quickly – which extends to social platforms like TikTok and trusted advice/Q&A forums like Reddit. A strategy that understands the value in these platforms and what you need to post where will give your content the best chance of surfacing in AI-generated answers. Looking at the data would also suggest that there’s little time to waste. The number of ChatGPT users has doubled from 400 million to 800 million between February and October this year and SEMRush even predicts AI search referral traffic overtaking traditional search visibility by 2028! What does this mean? Success today means optimizing not just for Google, but also for AI engines and the specific platforms your audience is using every single day. If you leave it any longer, you risk being left behind. However, for online businesses, this also provides three key opportunities: 1. Broader Visibility Across Search and AI Platforms – By maintaining a presence on multiple platforms, your content is more likely to be surfaced in both traditional search results and AI-generated responses. For instance, a “how-to” guide on SEO may appear on Google… … but a repurposed YouTube tutorial or LinkedIn post can increase the likelihood of being cited in the AI answer.. 2. Capture Emerging Audience Behavior – Users increasingly expect answers in their preferred format and platform. For example, social media requires more visual elements that grab the attention of the user while scrolling their feed. Showing up in these channels meets audience intent head-on. 3. Competitive Advantage – Businesses that focus solely on traditional SEO are swimming against the tide and risk being lost at sea. Competitors who diversify across platforms and formats are gaining AI and social visibility, establishing authority that’s harder to replicate. In short: multi-platform search isn’t just about being discoverable, the goal is to position your content to be recognized by both humans and AI, ensuring you capture attention wherever audiences are looking today and will be looking in the future. Using SparkToro to Map Audience Habits Understanding where your audience spends time online is the first step in building a multi-platform content strategy. SparkToro is a powerful tool that helps you identify where your audience is active, what they follow, and which content formats they engage with most. By mapping these habits, you can prioritize the platforms that will make repurposing your content most effective (more on this later). Start with Audience Research Investigate the social platforms, websites, podcasts, and influencers your audience engages with most. 1. Log in or create a free account on SparkToro (where you’ll get 5 free searches per month) and select “Audience Research”. 2. Enter the key terms your audience uses (e.g., for a gardening website, you would search terms like “home gardening,” “urban farming,” “indoor plants,” “organic vegetables”). 3. Select the more relevant target location from the drop down. How to Prioritize Channels for Your Business 4. SparkToro shows a range of insightful information about the topic including: The social networks and search platforms where people are searching for this term. In our example, X (Twitter) and ChatGPT are clear frontrunners. The top accounts followed, websites visited, and podcasts listened to by your audience. The most popular Reddit threads for the topic. 5. Look at audience share by platform and engagement activity by clicking on the individual reports for Social Networks and Search & AI Tools. For example, the graph below shows social platforms ranked by SparkToro’s Audience Affinity metric. This is a score from 0 (not likely) to 100 (very likely) based on the likelihood that a user visits a given website based on the platform. Here’s the same stats for Search platforms. Matching Content Types to Channel Intent 6. Even without the paid version of SparkToro, these insights show that for the topic “organic vegetables”, the search platforms you should prioritize are: By aligning content type with platform intent, you maximize engagement, reach, and the likelihood that both humans and AI will discover and reference your content. Repurposing Content Across Formats You likely already have valuable content sitting in your drive folders just begging to be reused. Instead of creating more from scratch, revisit your existing blogs, guides, and resources to reach new audiences on new platforms. Repurposing not only maximizes the value of what you’ve already created, it also gives AI search systems more places to find, understand, and surface your expertise. The more formats your content appears in, the more signals AI can pick up, improving your chances of being included in AI-generated results wherever people search. For example, a high-performing blog post, can easily transform into: Take a look at how HubSpot is using this strategy with their AI Trends for Marketers Report: They’ve published a report: Which is then reused on their X account: Used for a YouTube video: And posted on their LinkedIn page: Before we go into how, it’s important to know why you should do this… Why Should You Repurpose Content Across Different Formats? Repurposing content not only maximizes the value of your assets but also increases your visibility in AI SEO. By adapting your message across platforms, you increase the chances of your content being recognized by large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Read More Read More
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