Success Stories: The Smith Team

Beyond Rankings: SEO Doesn't Stop at the Top

The Client

Mauisales.com is the official website of The Smith Team real estate, a Maui real estate agency in operation since 2003.

The Problem

Mauisales.com wasn't ranking well. Its traffic was low, its bounce rate high, and it was on the tail end of all of its high conversion keywords. Its power as a selling tool was not as strong as The Smith Team had hoped.

The Smith Team assumed that increased rank in the Google results would lead to increased sales, and approached VKI Studios hoping that by optimizing their site they could increase traffic and perspective buyers.

The Solution

VKI Internet Marketing management. VKI Studios’ immediate efforts at both on-page and off-page SEO resulted in drastic raises in Mauisales rank. Complete rewriting of title tags, implementation of sitemaps, updating internal URL structure, on-page optimization, and link building skyrocketed its place in the Google Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), taking it to the first page for several highly competitive keywords.

However, VKI Studios’ SEO team knew that rankings alone weren’t enough.

While rankings were up, VKI Studios insisted that this metric was an insufficient measurement of success, and that basic SEO wasn’t going to be enough.

Mauisales.com still had a high bounce rate, near 60%, and their web page wasn’t pulling in the traffic that VKI Studios knew it could. VKI Studios advised a total website redesign with improved usability and layout, the implementation of a blog, on page testing of content and copy, SEO oriented content writing, and an analytics installation to track visitor behavior for SEO and business needs.

The Smith Team was concerned about the cost of these changes, but VKI Studios assured that they could be done cheaply and effectively. Implementing a blog would only take the Smith Teams time, and could be a powerful tool for building community around their website. The use of Google’s free "Google Analytics" meant that the only cost would be set up. The only real cost would be a web design and programming.

Under VKI Studios’ guidance and advice The Smith Team redesigned the website and implemented the recommended host of SEO related content changes. With access to the Mauisales.com analytics VKI Studios was then able to determine what keywords drove the highest converting traffic, and set up optimal long and short tail keyword targeting.

Sales erupted, and revenue soared.

The Result

Mauisales.com rose to the first position for several highly competitive search phrases in Google, but more importantly skyrocketed their visitor and conversion rates. Visitors rates increased over 250%, and the bounce rate was cut in half. Thrilled with the increased business, The Smith Team hired VKI for SEO content writing, and to perform Google Website Optimizer tests on newsletter signup page.

More importantly, the Smith Team took to heart the principle of VKI’s SEO strategy.