I have a client with whom I've worked for the past year. When I first started on their project, they didn't know what they wanted, but they were/are in a particularly advantageous position which provides them some excellent SEO-related benefits. The trick is that no one in their industry exploits the position they have, and until I came around, neither did this client. They now rank in the top 10 for over 100 unique search terms, and they hold 1+2 positions for 25 of their 65 #1 rankings. In a market which is made of less than 10,000 monthly searches on GY&M, they now receive at least 10,000 uniques per month. All I've really done is given them the ability to throw their weight around more. I'm already giving them new possibilities through an affiliate program, forums, corporate blogs, new business relationships with other companies, and experts in the industry. I've even started them down the path of 'parisitic' SEO by reserving space at Blogpsot, Wordpress, Squidoo, MySpace, and others. I know no one can give me the straight answer on what to do next, but I find inspiration in the conversation. So DP members: what would you do with a client like this?
Seems like you've taken them as far as they should be go and are keeping them on a track level that they'll maintain and grow traffic naturally, without more SEO work. I'd suggest working on convertions. How many leads/sales/quotes are they getting per day? How can you better optimize their site for increased conversions? Also, I didn't see any mention of PPC? Organic listings are great to have, no doubt, but searchers aren't going to be just clicking on organic listings. You want to encompass your companies site throughout the WHOLE search engine result page. With PPC too, you'll have a nice little chunk of work, as you can really optimize landing pages and tune in on ROI. Lastly, I didn't see anything about a newsletter. Lots of money can be made in a company newsletter, with deals and specials every month and can really help improve branding and keeping your company on the tip of your customer's tongue.
Thanks for the reply, Voasi. I didn't include the PPC campaigns because I didn't want to get too far from the SEO forum's main topic, but I also currently manage accounts for them on AdWords, AdCenter and Overture (I dropped Miva due to fraud). Currently, these campaigns convert at an average 2% or greater. I should also mention that they also employ a full-time marketer, so she distributes a monthly newsletter as well as direct mail, etc. Although I have helped her to understand the importance of using tracking cookies and stats tracking on her landing pages. I have been keeping up an affiliate newsletter while they try to find someone to handle business development & aff. relations. I have also worked closely with their web designer to increase conversion rates. We just recently removed almost 20 fields from their conversion page to help get more people in the door. There is definitely more to be done here, though. Maybe working on conversion is the way to go, although it could be a tough sell as they feel that they hired a web designer for that purpose. Any other suggestions/ideas?
Very good job, What i would suggest next is to submit press releases whenever the company offers something new.
Most web designers I know only know one thing: How to make the site pretty and usable across browsers. Conversions have to do with marketing. I love www.marketingexperiments.com
It sounds like you have SEO pretty much covered. Like Voasi said, I would go to the stats. If you have a good enough stats program you will be able to track and improve on your affiliate marketing, conversion, usability and more.
I like that term - "parasitic" - but many of these are symbiotic relationships - especially at Squidoo.