Case Studies. The power of SEO 
Below are examples of how Place1 has used SEO to achieve 4 different market place objectives - traffic, branding, sales and page 1 control.
Case Study 1. SEO Objective - Traffic.
Company: Software Designers. A software development company who had recently brought an SME accounting software to market. The software was initially offered for free in order to do in-market testing of the beta and improve the product before charging.
Industry: IT
Target Market: Small and Medium sized businesses as well as Sole Traders such as those working in the creative industries. The targeted local market had around 150,000 searches per month on their relevant keywords. The website was getting around 1000 hits a month largely from offline advertising and PR with a conversion rate of 2%. The sites was not ranking within the top 20 pages for any keywords.
Benchmark Keywords: small business accounting software, accounting online, cash flow software, accounting software, bookkeeping online, bookkeeping software, accounting software
SEO Objectives: Increase traffic by 35% within 6 months. Increase free sign ups by 40% within 9 months.
Campaign Tasks: Initial work to optimize the site and improve the action paths (in order to improve the conversion rate) was undertaken before SEO was begun. Once the website could be indexed properly by search engines, content optimization was begun and benchmark and long-tail keywords were identified and a link building campaign was initiated.
Campaign Outcomes: Within 3 months the site was beginning to show rankings in the top 20 pages for the benchmark keywords. More importantly, the less competitive and more profitable long tail keywords were already showing top 10 page rankings and moving up fast. After 6 months site traffic had increased to 1700 a month and sign ups were running at 50 per month. After 9 months site traffic was leveling out at 1850 a month but the conversion rate had jumped from 2% to 4% (due to the successful targeting of longtail keywords) and sign ups were now 74 per month. The customer is now preparing to double the SEO budget to coincide with the move over to charging for their product.
Within 9 months traffic up by 54% / conversion rate doubled / sign ups up by 308%
Case Study 2. SEO Objective - Branding.
Company: Social Responsibility Lecture Producer. This company puts together lectures for social entrepreneurs in order to bring a wider audience to the idea of creating more value through doing good in the world. They upload all the lectures to their website and it is the website which is their main touch point with their growing customer base as the lectures are currently of limited capacity.
Industry: Conferencing/Social Change
Target Market: Entrepreneurs of all types, charities, sponsors, people looking for inspiration. Their market is varied and large, but their main objective is to create a brand that stands for social responsibility and knowledge. They want to do this via the internet and SEO as their funds are limited and would not go far in offline advertising. There search engine rankings were mainly very specific to lecture and conference producing. These needed to be expanded to encompass lateral keywords such as social responsibility, sustainability, ideas, good.
Benchmark Keywords: social responsibility lectures, sustainable development lectures, social responsibility conferences, sustainable development conferences, social responsibility, inspirational ideas, green business, community development, green ideas
SEO Objectives: Get page 1 rankings on Google for general keywords in order to increase presence and reach of brand in the Social Responsibility arena.
Campaign Tasks: In order to get the customer’s website ranking as high as possible it was important the information architecture of the site was very flat so that the search engines could index all pages easily. It was also important that the video and images on the site were optimized properly as these made up a large part of the content. Even though the company had a lot of great partners in the industry it had failed to capitalize on this via link building.It was also necessary to make some coding changes to the Content Management System (CMS) in order make it more SEO friendly. A link building campaign was the begun and continues.
Campaign Outcomes: Within 6 months the site was showing 12 page 1 rankings on Google. After a year of SEO their web presence has increased and their brand has begun to be picked up by the media. They are also in the running for some industry awards for most innovative brand.
Within 6 months 12 page 1 rankings on Google and increased brand recognition including nomination for award.
Case Study 3. SEO Objective - Sales.
Company: Lingerie e-shop. This company has a website that sells women’s underwear and bikinis.
Industry: Fashion
Target Market: The product is aimed at the more mature and larger women in age category of 40-65 years of age. This is a good niche market but even though the web design agency fully optimized the website they are still not showing up on any of their main keywords due to a lack of inbound links. The company is struggling and needs results relatively fast.
Benchmark Keywords: plus size lingerie, plus size bras, full figure bras, plus size corsets, plus size garter belts, full figure lingerie, lingerie, women's clothing, lingerie apparel, women's apparel, women's lingerie, intimate apparel, large underwear, large bikinis, plus size bikinis
SEO Objectives: To increase sales as fast as possible.
Campaign Tasks: The site is currently getting nearly no traffic at all, and sales are negligible. The site is optimized and has been indexed by the Search Engines but has had no SEO and therefore is showing no rankings on any of the benchmark keywords. The quickest way to get sales is to target long-tale keywords which have less competition and a higher conversion potential and optimize content in order to get started on a aggressive link building campaign.
Campaign Outcomes: Within 6 months the site was ranking number one on over 40 long-tail keywords increasing traffic by 500%. Within 9 months sales were covering the cost of the SEO campaign, and within the 1st year the website was making a profit from SEO with an initial ROI of 3.5. As the marketing budget grows and the company can afford to put more money into SEO more resources can be put into the bench marked keywords to begin building the brand value and solidify the initial successes.
Within 1 year company is profitable with SEO ROI of 3.5 and increase in traffic of 500%.
Case Study 4. SEO Objective - Page 1 Control.
Company: Data Storage Manufacturer. The company manufacturers and distributes data storage solutions such as cds, dvds, usb sticks and hard drives.
Industry: IT
Target Market: The company’s website already ranks highly on some benchmark keywords.
Benchmark Keywords: removable data storage, cds, dvds, usb sticks, flash, bluray
SEO Objectives: To manage the company’s reputation via page 1 control.
Campaign Tasks: The company suffered from an amount of bad press due to the recall of one of its products. When the company name or one of it’s subsidiaries is searched on some articles referring to the problem and subsequent recall appear with their own company listings. The aim of the SEO campaign was to fill the top positions in order to knock the bad articles down out view on to pages 2 and 3. This would involve optimizing pages on their own domains and subdomains plus subsidiary companies using social media, press articles and PR as well as link building and content optimization.
Campaign Outcomes: This kind of SEO is very challenging due to Google’s algorithm favouring diversity in its results pages. However, due to this company having quite a few sub companies that could be SEO’d in relation to the company name the control of page 1 is on its way to being realized.
