Case Studies

Maryland Search Engine Marketing/Pay-Per-Click Marketing

Deborah Ager managed the SEM (search engine marketing) program for a publishing company. The goal of the SEM program was to gain more sign-ups to free reports, so leads could be offered a variety of products later. Ager tested the use of several search engines, including Ask.com and Business.com; she also tested contextual networks. Her A/B landing page test results involved testing long versus short landing pages and a “keyword insertion test” that tested inserting the user’s search query into the headline. This testing improved the number of leads.

When Google AdWords began to bring in leads that would not buy, Ager shifted strategy to test into contextual networks in order to attract qualified leads and increase sales. In the course of five months, she reduced the cost per lead from $60 to $24 and achieved the goal of 450 conversions per month during an economic downturn with an average 70% opt-in rate.

Maryland Search Engine Optimization

A professional speaking and training company showed up in the rankings for keyword 1 and keyword 2 at positions 17 and 18. Keyword 3 was at position 23. Speaking bureaus, which take a percentage of speaking fees, contained positions 1 and 2 for keyword 1. Competitors held the top two positions for keywords 2 and 3. As a result, potential clients often called the speaking bureaus instead of calling Ager’s client directly, resulting in less revenue. For keyword 3, potential clients were visiting the websites of competitors.

In order to improve search engine positioning, Deborah studied how the current number 1 and 2 positions structured their websites. She noted title tags, keyword density, and keyword usage in link and header tags. She made a number of changes based on her research, including rewriting copy to be more search-engine friendly.

The website did not have many incoming links, which lowered search engine ranking. A colleague worked on an article campaign, placing articles in directories such as EzineArticles.com, and Ager instructed her to use anchor text (linked text using keywords) in the author biographies. Doing so gave this speaking and training company more incoming links on a variety of anchor text. At that time, the Google algorithm favored anchor text variety – links coming in from outside websites and using a variety of text in the link name – to indicate relevance and, therefore, search engine positioning.

Within a few months, Ager’s client surpassed the speaking bureaus in search engine positioning. The result was that more clients called Ager’s client directly to order services, and the client did not have to pay a finder’s fee for those services. Traffic to the website continued to increase.