Sometimes I have a hard time getting prospects to understand what it is that I do -so here’s a scenario and an actual case study –
The local home remodeler
Dave smith is a remodeler in Woods bridge Virginia USA - he specializes in kitchen remodeling. Most of his business comes from within his county, a radius of about 30 miles.
Dave is 60 years old, he is not internet savvy, he has a facebook account (one month old) that he uses to post pics of his newly born grand-son. other than that he checks his Gmail and goes to CNN sports to check the latest scores –that pretty much sums up his life online.
As far as advertising for his business goes - he has a listing in the phone book, has put out ads in local papers and publication, a big sign out on his office lawn, a few trucks with his number on it,and a website built for him five years ago by a visiting niece - it is sitting on the 15th page of Google and is nowhere on yahoo and bing. The url of his site is www.davesmithemodelling.info ( a .info costs .89 cents and is not recommended because spammers use it because its cheap, but dave didn’t know that and his web designer didnt know that either so he’s stuck with a domain name that the search engines do not like)
Dave isn’t getting enough business. He wants to try this internet thing “new”. He finds me online, calls me and says he has a small advertising budget he asks what i can do for him to increase his visibility on this "new" "dang fangled internet thingy"
Will it get him leads, how much time will it take etc.. the usual questions
I ask him a few questions like, what’s your website url, how many visitors a day, do you have an opt-in form, where is the website on the web ???(on the first page, second?) he draws a blank , and asks me where can he get this info, I tell him ill get it for you, and ill give him a free keyword/competitor analysis and from there ill develop a campaign or plan of action to get visitors to his site, (if that doesn’t work we will spend a few dollars on a pay per click campaign on Google adwords and yahoo)
We get off the phone i get to work. I research keywords for Dave, go into Google adwords external keyword tool, check out how many people were searching for his keywords. I start with a base set of keywords from general to specific like, "kitchen remodeling" kitchen remodeling va" kitchen remodeling woods bridge va"- heres what i find - kitchen remodeling was searched for 22,000 times, kitchen remodeling Va 1,800 times, kitchen remodeling Woods bridge Va, was searched zero times
Armed wth that data i check out whats on the first page of Google for kitchen remodeling Va ( i picked that keyword as it is more specific ) i find that there
are a few websites that we can topple for this specific term, - if we buy the domain name and create a second site and slap on some relevant content so now he has a second site http://kitchenremodelingva.com which Google and yahoo love because of the relevant url (http://kitchenremodelingva.com) and relevant title ( kitchen remodeling va) of his new -(if all that doesn’t work we will spend a few dollars on a pay per click campaign on Google adwords and yahoo)
we do this and its on the first page of google in two weeks, i also include his site on google maps and he gets a lsiting on the first page as well, we do a few yotube videos
add an opt-in page on the new site to capture emails and send them offfers and discounts, create a newsletter for his new subscribers (by now he as a modest 30) and in a few months
his other site (the original one) is creeping up the rankings as well due to the "backlinking" service we outsourced, also we have added content on Press release sites, article directories,
placed ads on free classifieds, developed web 2.o properties , added social media into the mix (facebook, twitter, linkedin etc..) 60 days later, his new site is on the first page ranked number 4, his old site is on the 10th spot
and he has a press release that we wrote for him occupying the 5th spot.
Dave is now dominating the first page of Google for the keywords "kitchen remodeling va"and is getting three to four more calls a day and is converting one out of five prospects into clients. The only problem is that a lot of the calls are coming form out of county -should he set-up a second office??? hmmm...
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Ericka – Events management
Ericka is much savvier, shes only 30 and like most her age knows her way around the web , has all the prerequisite social media things going for her. She twits, updates her facebook fan page, has a blog and website about her events company / agency in Manila, She engages my services because wants to get more foreign clients.
Her company (around town productions) website is on the 40th page of Google, her blog is nowhere to be found - she asks me for help.
Given that she knows how to work these sites and wants to save money on writer’s fees, Ericka does her own writing, we just tell her what to write about and tell her where to put her content
We research her keywords, check out websites that are competing against her in the industry and choose the keyword phrases “event management manila” “event management Philippines” “event organizer manila” “event organizer Philippines” to attack
We tell her to create a free blog on blogger.com (http://eventorgmanila.blogspot.com ) , buy some domain names , write articles and put content on the free web 2.o sites that we have identified for her that will rank well on the engines.
To push her company site to the top we ask her to write 450 word article on “event management Manila” and publish it on her site. Then we ask her to re-hash this and put her content on several other web 2.0 sites . Within one month Ericka has forty percent of the first page of Google and Yahoo for the keywords we attacked. ( you can go check on Google )
The results..
Two weeks later she gets calls from an MLM company in Canada, one from salt lake city Utah, and a few inquiries from Singapore and Pakistan for a construction convention the are joining late this year. These new inquiries also give her insight into what events foreign companies are participating in the Philippines and soon she breaks into the construction convention market and generates three more clients - but this time she is targeting “construction trade show events Philippines” for her online campaign
Needless to say, things are exciting for her right now – Her foreign clients alone , the ones who found her services through her blog, company site and web 2.0 sites add an extra $100,000 dollars a year to her bottom line. Not too shabby for a company with three employees (including driver)
*****
ive found that sometimes the difference between success and failure (online and offline) is a small weak, a tiny discovery - in both cases they were just a keyword away from sucess, you financial success may be just around the corner - here's to you finding that "golden keyword" for y0ur business
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