This is a question that is probably asked as many times as it is answered. SEO, when done properly, will increase traffic to your business website and from that, the very likely possibility of increased sales for your product or service. The return on your investment in SEO will vary from market to market, but we are confident in our abilities to make your websites presence online as good as it can be.
Some facts to consider:
- Top 5 results on a search engine page get 75% of clicks (Search Engine Watch)
- 51% of visitors to a website come from organic search (Bright Edge)
- Over 40% of revenue captured by organic search (Bright Edge)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of enhancing the visibility of a brand’s web presence in organic search. SEO is receiving free, organic and natural results on a search engine page by delivering content that matches what consumers are querying.
SEO in the digital marketing mix is here to stay. For these reasons, many companies hire a firm or consultant to do SEO for their website.
But do businesses see results from SEO? And why?
Here’s are examples of successful SEO campaigns with proof positive ROI.
- CANTON ALUMINUM: Wanted to increase online leads. They decided it was time to pursue responsive website design with integrated contact forms and prominent lead-generating callouts. The site was optimized with new engaging content and unique phone tracking to report on phone-generated revenue. Results were: 1) 21% increase organic traffic growth, 2) 53% of visitors are from organic search and 74% increase in Facebook audience growth.
- DELL: Was unsatisfied with its global search positioning. For example, if searching for Dell in Australia, it was possible that the first listing on the results page would be for Canada, France, or another country. Dell implemented aggressive strategies across multiple countries which reorganized Dell’s search presence and increased its organic search rankings, traffic and revenue worldwide. Dell saw: 1) 46% increase in organic traffic, 2) 177% increase in number of ranked keywords and 3) 1,000% increase in return on investment.
- PLOW AND HEARTH: A retailer based in Madison, Virginia specializing in hearth and replace accessories, furniture and home furnishings, and lawn and garden accessories, wanted to make a push for their “fairy gardens” products. The goal was to increase SEO performance and ultimately revenue for these products and bolster the overall performance of Plow & Hearth. They focused on choosing strategic keywords to target for the fairy gardens pages. Then began to implement on-page changes for the pages. This led to a 550% increase in keywords on page 1, a 729% increase in traffic, and an 1157% increase in revenue on a single keyword topic out of the tens of thousands of products they carry.
- SOUTHLAND LOG HOMES: Has specialized in custom log home plans and cabin kits for more than 30 years. The company specializes in creating reliable, affordable and beautiful log homes that last a lifetime. They needed to improve the company’s rankings in the major search engines. The company didn’t have strong rankings for any competitive keywords and wanted its website to show up on the first page of the Google search results. Southland developed a marketing campaign that included identifying competitive keywords and aggressively pursuing improved rankings through link building and content optimization. Southland Log Homes currently ranks No. 1 in Google for the keyword phrase “log homes” and saw a 66% increase in Page 1 rankings and 85% increase in website traffic.
- SPANGLER CANDY: makers of Dum Dums, Circus Peanuts, candy canes, and other tasty treats since 1904, wanted to expand the marketing strategy for its e-commerce websites. A carefully planned strategy to build on content creation adding and optimizing fresh content in expanded product descriptions, developing videos, creating printable PDF games and greater social media involvement on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. From these improvement, SpanglerCandy.com saw: 1) 40% increase in organic visits, 2) 10% increase in online sales and 3) 30% increase in mobile sales.
- THE CONTAINER STORE: Did not have a methodical approach to content marketing and capturing organic traffic. They created page groups, populated with logical keywords, on-page recommendations, and identified the best pages to map the keyword topics. They also used backlink technology to map backlinks and target new sources of links. In 7 months, the results were dramatic: 30% increase in keywords in 1st rank position (more than 1000 keywords), 93% increase in organic traffic, 68% increase in organic traffic conversion and 96% increase in organic traffic revenue.
- TIME INC.: Has 95 iconic media brands that serve 81 million online visitors every month who generate ad inventory they sell to advertisers. Time’s SEOs face duplicate content, lack of thematic grouping by keyword, non-optimal internal links, and significant crawl and redirect errors. They resolved over 500 crawl errors; executed fundamental internal link and anchor text recommendations. Sitemaps were improved, rich snippets were added, and duplicate landing pages were removed. In the 4th of July season Time improved its page 1 Food & Wine 4th of July rankings from 2 to 7 keywords, which led to a 30% gain in organic traffic vs. 1 year earlier. Overall Food & Wine page 1 ranking keyword count improved from 620 to 757 and that led to a 34% increase in traffic and ad inventory. Travel and Leisure keywords ranking and traffic increased 45%.
Does this mean your company has to be in the big leagues like these examples to make it? Absolutely not. It is actually easier to rank sites on the local level rather than competing on a national level. If you have the right SEO agency doing your work and have a strategic plan laid out, there is next to no reason why you shouldn’t see massive increases in both traffic, ranking and sales from your site.
