About a month ago you would have had a hell of a time finding the Proof:Positive Consulting website on Google, no matter how hard you searched. Although they had been online for nearly 9 years, the website was completely static, and unchanged since it was first built. The search engines considered this business’ website outdated and irrelevant, making it nearly impossible to find – even if you knew the business name. But their search engine rankings changed – and changed quickly – when the company moved to a blog platform for their website. What follows is an interesting case study that emphasizes the importance of fresh, relevant content on your business website, and how a blog can be the perfect tool for creating it.
Foresight Demonstrated:
Proof:Positive did have the foresight to go online well before many of their competitors did. At that time simply having a website was probably “good enough.” But as time passed, the common requirements for a business website changed, and many more of their keyword competitors* went online.
* Proof:Positive has two types of keyword ‘competitors‘:
- Companies that may be in the same industry, that are attempting to be associated with the same industry-specific keywords and key phrases (in the case of Proof:Positive, these are key phrases like ‘workers compensation’), which increases ‘competition’ for those key phrases.
- Websites, perhaps from other industries, that are attempting to be associated with Proof:Positive’s company title (‘proof positive’ is a relatively common phrase in many contexts, so there are numerous places where that phrase is used online, increasing ‘competition’ for the phrase)
Other Priorities Took Precedence:
Meanwhile Proof:Positive was busy growing their business and serving their customers. They put their web presence on the back burner for a number of years (after all, their business came from word of mouth and from pounding the pavement – not from the internet). Fast forward nearly a decade, and the executives at Proof:Positive were realizing that more and more customers (and prospective customers) were trying to find them online. But even with a search for the company’s name (“Proof Positive Consulting”) on Google, their website was nearly impossible to find.
Time to Re-build:
Realizing that a web presence had become an important aspect of any company’s marketing plan – regardless of industry – Proof:Positive undertook a website re-design project with the following goals in mind:
- Demonstrate the company’s authority and expertise by publishing information that customers and prospective customers need
- Allow non-technical employees to add and modify content on the website to easily keep it current, and to reduce the cost of website maintenance
- Increase the website’s visibility for key terms (including company name) on search engines (also known as search engine optimization (SEO))
The company chose to re-build their website on a blogging platform, which allowed them to achieve all three goals.
Overnight Success:
The third goal (search visibility) – an indirect result of the other two – is easily the most quantitative goal. Success in “increasing a website’s visibility” is simply measured in search engine rankings and in website traffic from search engines. And while it’s been only 30 days (as of the date of this blog post) since the company’s website launched, the company has already achieved the top two spots on Google for a search of their name (Proof Positive Consulting). They went from relative obscurity on the web to top rankings in less than 30 days. Customers are now having no trouble finding the company’s website. There are, of course, other key phrases for which Proof:Positive is fast gaining web rankings (which I’m not at liberty to share), and they’re looking forward to the day when they the website itself generates its first lead (at this rate that’s not far off). But even at these early stages, this is a true testament to the power of blogging.
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