Case Study

Client: Weichert Realtors, Brockwell and Portwood, Colonial Heights, Virginia

Presented by Jim Navary, Virginia Search Engine Marketing – www.va-sem.com

Project Start Date: October 24, 2009

Status Update: January 6, 2010

The Weichert Realtors, Brockwell and Portwood website is located at www.johnbrockwell.com.  This domain name presented a hurdle for search engine optimization (SEO) right from the start. One of the primary factors in “on page” SEO is the selection of a domain name that directly references one of the optimal keyword phrases used to drive traffic to the site. The likelihood that a potential client who is searching for a home in the Colonial Heights area would use the name of the broker, John Brockwell, in their search queries on Google is practically nil.

A much better domain name would have been one that is inherently keyword-rich. For example, “tricitiesvahomesforsale.com” or “colonialheightsvarealestate.com” would be much more effective choices.

Of course, this is not an unusual problem to find. And it’s certainly not insurmountable. Most small businesses are unaware of the importance of the domain name. As a result, when their websites were originally built, little significance was given to selecting targeted keywords to be included in their domain names. Many website designers who are able to produce gorgeous websites are often unaware of the factors involved in optimizing the websites for high quality search engine results.

When the Weichert website was built, the web designer included a list of keywords in the html code. The keywords (phrases actually), were intended to draw traffic to the site. Here are the keywords that I discovered when evaluating the Weichert website:

Original Keyword Phrases Used

Colonial Heights real estate

Tri Cities Real Estate

Prince George Homes For Sale

Homes For Sale In Central Va

Find a home in colonial heights

homes near ft lee

real estate for sale in petersburg

how to sell my home

help me sell my home

sell my home

find a realtor

Weichert Realtors Brockwell & Portwood

Richmond homes for sale

richmond va homes for sale

virginia homes for sale

va homes for sale

central va homes for sale

find a home for sale

help me find a home for sale

A few of these keyword phrases would be good choices. However, many of them are either irrelevant or are not targeted for local business results. For example, “sell my home” is much too broad since it is not geo-targeted to the area where Weichert Realtors conducts business. Efforts to rank well in the search engines for this phrase would be extremely difficult if not impossible as we would be competing with every other website in the English speaking world that sells homes. Even if we could achieve first page ranking for this phrase it would be nearly pointless since 99.999 percent of people who clicked on the search engine results link would be in New York, California, Hawaii, England, and other areas where Weichert Realtors in Colonial Heights does not conduct business.

In addition, no real effort to optimize for any of the above keyword phrases was provided by the web design company that built the Weichert website. So, even if all of these phrases were highly targeted and appropriate, they would still not be driving traffic – and new customers/clients to johnbrockwell.com.

We discarded the original list of keywords and replaced them with a much list that is much shorter but contains highly targeted keywords. This is the new list of keywords that we selected for optimization.

Revised Keyword Phrases and Initial Google Results as of Oct. 24, 2009:

colonial heights va real estate                Page 7, Position 70

petersburg va real estate                         NOT FOUND in first 25 pages

fort lee va real estate                                NOT FOUND in first 25 pages

prince george va real estate                    NOT FOUND in first 25 pages

tri cities va real estate                               NOT FOUND in first 25 pages

colonial heights va homes for sale         Page 7, Position 69

petersburg va homes for sale                 Page 15, Position 147

fort lee va homes for sale                        NOT FOUND in first 25 pages

prince george va homes for sale            Page 6, Position 58

tri cities va homes for sale                       Page 13, Position 122

The results refer to where the listing for www.johnbrockwell.com appeared in Google when entering the keyword phrase into the Google search engine. At this point in time, the best keyword phrase did not bring the Weichert website to the searcher’s attention until the sixth page of results – overall position #58. Since the vast majority of traffic is to websites listed on the first page of results, it’s not surprising that the website was not bringing in much business. Half of the keyword phrases did not bring the Weichert website into view within the first 25 pages of results.

Here are a few screen captures of the initial search results:

This is a screen capture of the baseline ranking at the start of the project. The keyword Phrase was “Colonial Heights VA Real Estate”. The listing for www.johnbrockwell.com appeared on the 7th page of results, overall position number 70.

Another screen shot of search results at the start of the project. The keyword phrase searched was “Colonial Heights VA Homes for Sale”. The listing for www.johnbrockwell.com appeared on the 11th page of results, overall position number 122.

Yet another screen shot of results obtained by searching for the keyword phrase of “Petersburg VA Homes for Sale”. The listing for www.johnbrockwell.com appeared on the 15th page of results, overall position number 147.

Here the keyword phrase used was “Prince George VA Homes for Sale”. The listing for www.johnbrockwell.com appeared on the 6th page of results, overall position number 57.

We started optimization efforts on October 25, 2009. The following chart shows the progress made for each keyword phrase over the first month of work:

KEYWORD PHRASE and
GOOGLE POSITION BY DATE	10/24/2009	10/31/2009	11/6/2009	11/13/2009	11/20/2009	11/27/2009
colonial heights va real estate	70	70	62	39	23	21
colonial heights va homes for sale	69	31	37	23	12	12
fort lee va real estate	200+	200+	76	73	32	32
fort lee va homes for sale	200+	200+	38	33	16	16
tri cities va real estate	200+	123	32	33	27	25
tri cities va homes for sale	122	32	21	18	18	18
petersburg va real estate	200+	200+	45	43	42	42
petersburg va homes for sale	147	144	31	29	25	25
prince george va real estate	200+	86	68	60	43	39
prince george va homes for sale	58	43	40	38	27	27

This report is being updated on January 6, 2010. Current standings for the initial ten keyword phrases are as follows:

colonial heights va real estate	10
colonial heights va homes for sale	6
fort lee va real estate	14
fort lee va homes for sale	9
tri cities va real estate	8
tri cities va homes for sale	2
petersburg va real estate	18
petersburg va homes for sale	14
prince george va real estate	19
prince george va homes for sale	13

We are continuing to make steady progress toward our goal of appearing on the first page of Google search results for these ten keyword phrases.  So far, the Weichert website appears on page one of the results for five of the ten keyword phrases being targeted.

One of the unexpected benefits of optimizing highly targeted keyword phrases is that the work will bring additional traffic from keyword phrases that are related to those being optimized but not being specifically targeted. Below is a listing of some of the other keyword phrases for which www.johnbrockwell.com is currently listed on the first page of Google search results.  Please note that for 13 of these keyword phrases, www.johnbrockwell.com is in the first position on the first page.

We will be updating this case study from time to time so that those who are interested in the results of our work can follow along.

Jim Navary    01/06/2010

Jim Navary

Virginia Search Engine Marketing

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