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Brief
Footasylum Ltd came on board in June 2008 having tasked The WebMarketing Group to optimise their e-commerce website.
Footasylum was established in 2005 and operates through 12 high street stores and wanted to increase their online visibilty and e-commerce sales volumes. Footasylum are at the forefront of the sneakers market and wanted to develop their niche site which fully embraces the sneakers culture, related clothing and accessories. Footasylum operates in a highly competitive market, particularly from an SEO perspective as their brands and keywords were highly competitive and specialised.
The brief was simply stated… make their keywords rank better, in turn increasing traffic to their site drawing on The WebMarketing Group’s expertise. Our dedicated Account Manager was appointed and we began to formulate our strategy.
Strategy
The start point for any project we undertake is to carry out a comprehensive analysis of the market the client operates in. We benchmarked the start point to ensure that measurable ROI indicators are in place for monthly and ongoing reviews with our client. Included in this benchmark is a full snapshot of where the website stood in organic search.
We analysed the site, critically examined on site areas that need optimising, looked at all inbound links and which keywords were being used. In turn we reviewed how these keywords were ranking in organic search and took our experience of long tail SEO to see which other keywords our client should look to use.
Our optimisation approach looked to tackle three distinct areas:-
• Onsite optimisation – suggest best practice use of title tags, keywords, ALT tags, site structure etc.
• Content Writing – content building of compelling articles seeded with keywords.
• Link Building – building relevant inbound links.
Long tail SEO LTaS is an invaluable technique to look at less competitive keywords that move away from ‘vanity’ keywords. Research shows that search queries are getting longer and we capitalise on this trend to ensure our clients can increase traffic through better keyword usage. With Footasylum, we determined a range of keywords that they wanted to rank highly with and created a list of achievable action points which we would both work from.
Inbound links, which should be regarded as true reputation builders and are much loved by search engines, were analysed and we developed a link building campaign. This campaign was formulated to build a determined amount of links on a rolling process to increase Footasylum’s online reputation and positioning in search engines. We identified relevant and industry specific sites which we would want to link back to Footasylum and started contacting these sites and building links. Relevance is key, we only build links based on related and relevant content between the sites as these work to build our client’s online presence.
The saying that “Content is King” is very much a mantra here at The WebMarketing Group and we recognise that along with good keyword use and strong inbound links, a successful website needs excellent content. Our Content Writing team wrote compelling articles that were fully optimised and seeded with keywords that we had identified with Footasylum.
The project was by now fully up and running… our Account Manager headed the Link Building, Analytics and Content Writing teams.
Execution
We have monthly reviews with our clients where we discuss the brief, review our strategy and formulate action points. SEO is a very fluid process, search engines move the goalposts regularly, our client’s competitors rise and drop and we have to adapt our processes accordingly.
In the FootAsylum case study, as they ordered our link building service, we reviewed how many additional inbound links were being created on a monthly basis and fedback a full list of these links. This is highly important as clients want to see tangible and measurable ROI indicators. Monthly action points also have to be realistic and achievable, while SEO is fluid, clients need to have return.
Monthly reviews feedback critical data to Footasylum. These reviews use our inhouse tools to trawl the internet and checks rankings, inbound links, traffic statistics, keyword performance and allow us to measure and plan. Typically they feedback comments, actions and conclusions. Our SEO expertise lets us reached informed conclusions, our team members live and breathe the internet.
Comments may take the form of suggesting better use of title tags, shortening title tags, meta descriptions, using ALT tags etc... all the basic tenets of SEO which when implemented fully optimise a website.
Of huge importance these reviews allowed our client to review their PPC spend. At the start of the project, Footasylum used PPC to a much greater extent and our SEO campaign was so successful that Footasylum were able to cut their PPC spend down.
Without SEO and regular feedback our client could have needlessly continued to spend significant sums on PPC.
Results
We are particularly proud of our work and association with Footasylum as we have delivered strong ROI. It’s a job well done and that brings mutual satisfaction.
Our SEO work on keywords delivered the expected traffic as did our link building.
Statistically this breaks down as follows:-
• Organic traffic increased by 125% since July 2008
• A very significant drop in PPC spending. Footasylum manage their PPC and as of July 2009 they have reduced their PPC spend by 99%.
• Inbound link growth in excess of 500%
• Bouncerate decrease of over 16% indicating better and more relevant inbound links, people are arriving at Footasylum and liking what they see.
Client testimonial
Footasylum started working with Web Marketing Group on our Search Engine Optimisation strategy in June 2008 and since then, have seen some excellent results.
Our traffic, orders and revenue generated from this key activity have all increased significantly over this period.
Our rankings for key search phrases have also been impressive, particularly given the highly competitive nature of the branded fashion and footwear market and we regularly find ourselves at the top of the first page on Google.
We receive monthly reports which give us a detailed overview of how our SEO campaign is performing and also provides recommendations for changes we can implement to enable us to continue to improve the performance.
- Catherine Lomas, Footasylum
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