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 Search engine optimization this and
search engine optimization that. You read and hear about
it all day, but what about your site? While there are
plenty of articles providing useful information, this
article shows you how a real world example met with
success. The point of this article is to emphasize
creativity when approaching tough optimization situations.
Problems for BusinessTaxRecovery.com
In November of 2004, our firm took on the seo marketing
for BusinessTaxRecovery.com. The site was being promoted
through offline activities and pay-per-click campaigns. No
effort had been made to achieve high rankings in Google,
Yahoo or MSN.
Keyword analysis revealed that combinations of the root
keywords, “business” and “tax” were going to be
difficult to attack. The primary problem concerned
government agencies with web sites. The IRS site, for
instance, had roughly 9,680 inbound links and an absolute
ton of content. State agencies weren’t far behind. The
California tax agency site had roughly 7,000 inbound links
and, again, tons of content.
For a final nail in the coffin, the client informed us the
business was cyclical with the busiest months being
January through April when people focused on taxes. The
site absolutely had to rank highly during this period. We
had two months to achieve results.
Gulp!
The Solution for BusinessTaxRecovery.com – 140,000
Hits
After staring at a Salvador Dali painting for a few hours,
we came up with a solution. It involved a combination of
internal site page focus, meta tag optimization, link
exchange and massive article promotion. The results
produced 145,828 hits from January through April, with
only 5,000 coming from the pay-per-click program.
The first step was to change the focus of the site from
the home page to the article page. Jumping the tax agency
sites on keywords such as business tax and taxes was
impossible in two months, so we didn’t even try.
Instead, we decided to focus on the keyword phrase
“business tax articles” and bring people into the site
through the article page. Meta tags were optimized and a
link exchange program undertaken. The key to campaign,
however, was a strong article promotion campaign.
Since taxes are confusing, it seemed obvious that an
article campaign focusing on tax information would meet
with success. Boy, did it. Approximately 35 articles were
written, published and submitted to article directories.
Since the articles were timely, they were snapped up and
published. The articles produced direct traffic to the
site as well as numerous inbound links because of the link
created in the article byline.
As for the search engines, we focused on everything but
Google. We expected nothing from Google because the major
content and meta tag changes would take six to eight
months to show results per the usual practices of Google.
In reality, it didn’t matter. The Yahoo and MSN search
engines produced big time.
In mid-January, the site went to number 1 on MSN under
“business tax articles.” By the end of January, Yahoo
was also listing it as number 1. MSN started listing it at
number 1 for “tax articles” in February. The
combination of these listings produced a significant
amount of traffic, conversions and a very happy client.
Can we go on cruise control now? No! With the end of the
tax season, the traffic to the articles page of the site
has dropped by 75%. Nobody is looking for tax information
after April 15th, so this is hardly surprising. The
promotion of the article page was simply a short-term
solution to a difficult situation. While it should produce
traffic during the first quarter of each subsequent year,
it is not a year-around solution.
Over the next six months, we will focus on the long-term
goal of jumping over the tax agency sites for keywords
such as “business taxes”, etc. It is going to take a
lot of patience, but will eventually produce a significant
amount of business for the client.
Creativity is often the key to conquering seo situations.
Blindly slapping up new meta tags and links isn’t always
the best answer. Sometimes, a little pre-emptive
consideration can yield amazing results. It did in this
case.
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