Search Engine Marketing
Case Studies

Some Good Example SEM Case Studies

Search engine marketing and optimization is a long term strategy that involves far more than just keywords, layout, and web site design. Most times you need to look at the whole picture, the target group, the search terms, and every aspect of the web site.

We have tried to provide example case studies that demonstrate some common problems facing many web site owners. Each web site can be unique due to the product or service it is selling. One method doesn't fit all, you need to address each web site individually based on current information.

The trick is finding a good solution that applies to a specific web site. It may involve any one (or several) techniques to increase the sales, not just the traffic. What most web site owners are looking for is an increase revenue, not just more visitors.

Any good Search Engine Marketing firm or consultant uses every tool and method available to help the web site owner increase revenue. Regardless of what you may have heard or read about search engine marketing, there are no magic bullets.

Each web site and product or service presents unique challenges. There are some basic techniques that help any web site, and we make every effort to implement proven methods.

But the Internet is a highly competitive arena these days and just using the basic techniques no longer guarantee success. You need to crank it up a few levels and out market your competition. 

We can't get too specific or provide any actual client information since that would not be a good thing for our clients. What we can do is provide some good examples of how we work and some of the methods we use.

If you have any questions, or would like to discuss what we can do for you and your web site, just give us a call at 713-303-9289. Or send us an email by clicking here.

A few Case Studies From
The Last 6 Months

Getting Local Response

The first case study involves a company that does a commercial service in their local market. They had a well designed web site visually, but weren't getting very many calls or direct sales from their web site. 

When we reviewed their current web site we found the following

• It was built around features rather than benefits
• There was no call to action
• Local service area wasn't even mentioned anywhere
• Their web site was indexed but receiving little search engine traffic
• The little traffic they got was from all over the world, not the local area

We re-organized the web site into specific interest areas and re-worked the content to demonstrate the problem, then presented the solution with vivid examples. We emphasized both their location and service areas. 

The company started getting calls from local businesses and picked up new business on a weekly basis. The over all traffic went down at first but then climbed back above the original amounts. But most visitors were now coming from local service area.

End Result: Client gets 15-18 new calls per month! That's over 200 new prospects per year. Based on their average revenue per prospect, that's an additional $75,000 in revenue.

Tracking PPC Results

This client came to us about trying to better track the conversions and sales from their PPC campaigns. They spent a good deal on PPC (over 15K per month) and were getting some good results but had no idea from which campaign, adgroup, or keywords.

Due to the nature of the service and that it required a phone call, they couldn't set up normal conversion tracking with software. They did ask the clients where they found their phone number or how they came to call but the client rarely was specific enough to determine exact origin. Plus, not every phone call turned into a sale. So they really needed to track leads, and sales.

Tracking becomes a challenge when standard software won't track information. So it wasn't necessary to setup some type of tracking method that could show the leads and the sales from the different campaigns, adgroups, and keywords or phrase.

• First we contacted their local phone support company and explored some options for tracking incoming calls.
• Working with the local supplier, we designed phone software and client questionnaires that were both quick and effective tools to collect data.
• This data was then matched to web site information and logs and standard reports were created to provide ease of use by staff.

Now the client was able to track both PPC campaign and organic search results all the way down to the keywords. Since they were quite successful with the overall PPC campaigns, the decision was made take the savings and re-invest in addition campaigns.

End Results: The client has doubled the response to his PPC campaigns in the past year with no additional cost! His cost has remained the same and revenue has increased by 35%.

Quality Verses Quantity Traffic

This company was getting some very good traffic numbers. But sales were slow, and the conversion numbers were terrible (less than .002% or 1 in 1000). They are a totally Internet Business that sold information to a very specific niche.

They wanted to know what the problem was since they had done considerable research and paid some pretty serious dollars for copywriting. They had worked with a big name SEO firm and even had contracted Google representatives with little  or no improvement.

We took a look at their web site and server logs and here's what we found:

• The web site was well designed, and the copywriting looked good too.
• We checked the server logs to see if there were any clues to the problem.
• We reviewed their current marketing efforts, PPC campaigns, and targeted keywords and phrases.

When we did a profile of the average visitor, it appeared that the main common ground was they were looking for free information, not paid. Going back to the web site and looking at the keywords and phrases that were targeted, we could see why.

A common mistake in Keyword Research is looking for the volume and not at the profile of the traffic (or in this case the visitors). The keywords and phrases had a lot of activity, were dead on in subject matter, but were missing a few key elements.

We've found that certain words and phrases tend to be used more for people ready to buy rather than people just doing some research. Plus, you need to tightly target your potential buyer using more than number of searches based just on interest. Many times it's how they search (what actual terms are used) rather than how many searches.

It took a few weeks of testing, but we came up with some new keywords and phrases that were more effective in conversions, but much less popular. So the amount of traffic dropped considerably, but the conversion rate started to climb. 

We also found some other ways to market their product, and this has produced some good results. And the conversion rate has now dramatically increased, plus the secondary sales are even better. The company has a good product, great support, and benefits from both of these on secondary sales.

End Results: The client went from a few sales per month to multiple sales per day! And the secondary sales are running at about a 60% conversion rate, which is pure profit.

Nothing But "Net"

We got a call from an individual who was trying to start an online business. He had found a product that was quite unique and served a very tight but small market. So far so good, but he hadn't had one sale in the past 6 months. And he was getting no action what so ever from the search engines. We get calls like this often.

There's really no way to sugar coat this, his web site was terrible. He had made some attempt to promote his product and web site but they were very unsuccessful. He wasn't even in the search engines, let alone indexed under any proper search terms.

This was a complete re-do, the only thing we kept was the product =8~(. The product looked good and there was a market that he could target. But he was trying to use a shotgun where he should have been using a rifle with a scope.

Here's what we did to get him on the right track and make some sales:

• First, a little keyword research came up with several better choices
• Next we found him a reasonably priced copywriter to re-do the sales page
• We also had him find some related content and create standard web pages
• Suggested an up-sale of related items and incorporated a shopping cart
• And showed him how to get his web site indexed quickly under the new keywords and phrases

In the next few weeks all this hard work and effort started producing some traffic. We tested two versions of the sales page and one was clearly getting more conversions. Once he had a good sales page up, we suggested some additional ways to market his product through small advertisements on appropriate web sites.

Since this was a complete re-design, it took about 3-4 weeks to get to the working model. And his product is somewhat seasonal in that certain times of the year there is more activity in his market. But the last time we spoke he had made over 20 sales in the past week.

Finding a product with some potential is just half the battle. Getting targeted traffic from the major search engines is also important to be successful on the Internet. You need both sides of the equation.

End Results: The web site is now making sales. The client is also getting reorders of the consumables for the product. They are now adding a second line, newsletter, and good follow up methods.

The Bottom Line - Search Engine Marketing Works!

There are more than a billion people on the Internet today. Many people spend more time on the Internet than they spend watching television. And more than 80% of these people use search engines to find things and information they want.

Don't miss out on your share of the business. Organic search engine results can really help your business grow!!

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