Princeton Windrows
This client came to us through the company that is doing marketing for this
independent living retirement community. Inquiries into purchasing condos were
low, and the marketing company was struggling to get the word out. They didn’t
have enough money to redesign the website, so we agreed to just do search marketing
to start. The number of Top 50 ranks in the three major search engines increased
by 340% in the first two months of us working on the site. Total search referrals
increased by 65.51% in the same period.
The client, who is tracking where their inquiries are coming from, sent us the following break-down of inquiries by source, showing “internet” referrals being the #1 source of inquiries, after just 3 months of working for them.
| Source | Total Received | |
| Internet | 62 | |
| Word of Mouth | 41 | |
| Advertising | 24 | |
| Live in Area | 18 | |
| Resident Referral | 13 | |
| Direct Mail/Response | 11 | |
| Drive By | 8 | |
| Family in Area | 6 | |
| Family Friend | 1 | |
LectraLock
This client came to us with a simple website and a pre-packaged (“canned”)
shopping cart. At first, we just did a very basic search marketing campaign,
which increased their ranks and helped get some orders. The client saw that
what we were doing was working, so when they needed to add more products to
their line of child-proof electrical outlet covers, we designed and built a
new website with a full shopping cart and custom administration area. The increased
optimization on the new site, in addition to the more professional look, resulted
in a huge increase in ranks (they now have first-page results for “outlet
cover” and “outlet covers”) and where they used to get about
4 orders per month, with the new website and search marketing they are averaging
about 25 orders per month – over 6 times their previous amount!
In addition, they are getting calls from companies such as Ace Hardware, wanting to stock their products in their nationwide chain of stores. LectraLock is currently setting up retail packaging in order to fulfill this huge request, and is looking to increase production in order to manufacture enough for larger chains of home supply stores.
Gordon Mycology Laboratory, Inc.
We redesigned this site using search engine ranking techniques and within a
couple weeks of the rankings taking hold, we got the following testimonial.
Looks like they will pay for our entire year's fees in a month or so!
Email subject: Business is booming...
"Is there a way to slow down the business coming in from the website??? Kidding, just kidding. We're swamped, well at least compared to the past few months! We have gotten 6 calls in the past week from people finding our website! Thank you thank you thank you!!"
Deborah J. Gordon
http://www.moldtestingma.comGordon Mycology also sent the following:
Thank you John.
Still having great success with the website! We're hearing more and more that people have found us via the web! I'm very happy!
Take care,
Deb
Hearing Planet
In the late 1990s, we did search marketing for a hearing aids website, hearingaidsonline.com.
Our client’s company was bought out by a competitor solely because the
website was #1 in Yahoo for “hearing aids”.
Hearingplanet.com, who bought my client, then called us to have us keep an
eye on the site and make updates. In August of 2004, the owner called us to
say he was very pleased - his purchase of the company just for the rank was
worth it, since many years later, despite some up and downs with ranks, he was
back at #1 in Yahoo! for “hearing aids”. He said “the crazy
thing is, I pay a fortune to get my paid listing in the sponsored results right
next to the organic one you got us, which we haven't paid for in years. Most
concerning now, however, is that, while we convert well on Hearing Planet, our
hearingaidsonline.com site, despite its #1 rank in Yahoo!, does not bring as
many new clients as we would expect. We then decided together that we would
make a link to a form that, upon filling out, would offer the searcher a free
buyer’s guide download, and submit the data into the hearing planet database
with a reference that it is coming from a hearingaidsonline.com referral. The
amazing thing is that, within hours of posting the link at the top of the home
page for the free buyer's guide, someone filled it out. Since the form has gone
live, they have been receiving 1-3 submissions a week. That is a minimum of
500 new potential customers per year just by adding a link to a form in the
top section of the home page!
Dominic's Music
We had the #4 rank for saxophones for years even after we were on sabbatical
from our retainer fees with this client. His business was really hurt when the
government dropped school music programs, making the cost of not only an instrument,
but private lessons as well, unbearable. The whole industry is in the tank but
he has some good war tales even in tough times. He still has people saying "I
found you in Google" or "I found you in Yahoo". The pay per click
Google Adwords campaign we do costs $200 a month for a half dozen terms. Do
the math. His ranks would have cost an unbelievable amount via pay-per-click.
We still like pay-per-click for certain terms but only when the ROI is high.
The hosting company has increased the bandwidth charges 2 or 3 times since so
many people use the site but he never complains about that.
Melrose Oriental Rug
When this client came to us, they didn’t even rank for their company name.
Within a few weeks of going live, we got a call from the owner saying he had
already booked two on-site consulting appointments that resulted in his customers
purchasing rugs.
All Things Sicilian
For the first year of getting the basic optimization done on this site the owner
was not totally convinced it was working but the orders were on the rise. They
called to bring us back in because clearly something was working. We found that
the recipes page that we convinced them to create was now the most popular page
on the site and brought ten thousand more hits than the home page itself. Clearly,
if that page gets more traffic than the home page, visitors are coming straight
to the recipes page from the search results. We then made links right from the
ingredients list in the recipes to the products in the shopping cart to increase
conversions. This is a case where our advanced tracking really showed the value
of the optimization, and it was obvious where to focus our efforts based on
the traffic to certain pages. This helped us make the site work better and helped
the client understand his return on the money he spent on search marketing.
United Painting (unitedpainting.net)
Within a month of making search engine edits, we got a call from the owner.
Since not a long time had passed and at the time search engines were slower
at re-indexing sites, we assumed it was the usual "scared parent"
call. Dave said he was just calling to say he already booked an order to paint
the house of a client who found him through the search engines! He was just
calling to say “thanks, it worked”. Not bad considering that one
new client may have paid for the entire year of search marketing.
McDougall Fine Arts
This client (our president’s father’s company) used to just rank
for artist names and now they rank for such terms as American Impressionism
(#3 in Yahoo). They get emails just about every day with people either asking
for a price or asking if they want to buy a painting. They have had people buy
paintings for $25000, $8400, $7500 etc. that were strangers that found them
through the search engines. They have bought paintings of Cape Ann artists from
people in New York and Scotland and have become further networked in the art
world through our search results. People really feel, based on the ranks, that
they are one of the top galleries. They were highly respected already but find
the constant mention of their top ranks proof of how being dominant in the search
results helps branding. They are so busy, their biggest problem is sorting through
the hundreds of emails they get.
The Fresh lobster Company
We built this site and quoted on Search Marketing. At the time, a number of
years ago, the client said he was going with a larger firm for SEO because the
price was three times our quote and he was hoping that "you get what you
pay for". We still made the website updates and, after a short time, we
got a call from his search marketing "experts" asking us how to add
meta tags to the shopping cart pages. Apparently they just handed the project
to an intern because they were growing too fast. We called the VP and told them
that they were ripping off our client if they didn’t know that a) the
dynamic shopping cart pages wouldn’t rank well and, b) adding meta tags
is web design 101. We explained to them what they should do and they ended up
giving our client 10 new, free, static html pages and optimization on them.
Our client then kept us in the loop on all future correspondence with this company,
and we were horrified by this popular marketing company's practices. Our client
was appreciative of all our efforts, and continues to refer clients to us. We
are happy when our honesty is recognized and when it creates long-term customers
and referrals.
The American Marine Model Gallery, Inc.
This site was about a ten pager before we got to it and we wanted to expand
it to become a resource of ship model artists/information. We made it 50+ pages
with half the pages being for individual artists that we now rank well for -
#1 in many cases. So if people are looking for a particular artist they are
the authority site to visit. They are also on the first or second page for terms
like “ship models” (still #4 in Google in 2007, years after we completed
our work for them), “custom ship models” (#1 in Google) and “ship
model conservation” (#2 in Google).
