Jtgateoperators.com, which sells automated gate systems to homeowners, has improved natural search rankings as well as sales since February when it launched a search optimization program with search marketing company MoreVisibility.com, the company reports. John Mitchell, president and co-owner of parent company JTE Enterprises Inc., attributes most of a 10% lift in online and call center sales since February to optimization efforts that have moved the site’s pages higher in natural search results.
In February, prior to optimizing its web pages, for example, Jtgateoperators.com was in the 170th spot in natural results returned by Yahoo under its main keyword, “gate opener;” and was on the 27th page under the same term on Google. Now, Mitchell notes the site shows up at number 35 in Yahoo natural search results and on page five in Google.
Danielle Leitch, executive vice president of client strategy at MoreVisibility, notes that her company’s initial research and recommendations centered on keyword selection. The goal was to determine which keywords would be the best to optimize on different pages of the site.
Leitch says that when sites are set up as Jtgateoperators.com was, with a hierarchy of category pages, sub-category pages and product pages, each of those pages should have its own dedicated URL so it can be optimized individually with the right keyword-dense copy. A home page or broad category page, for example, might optimize for keyword density on a more general keyword, while an interior, more targeted product-level page would optimize around a more specific keyword.
“We made sure that every page had content that was relevant and read user-friendly, but also supported the keyword we were trying for position on,” Leitch says.
One other effect of optimizing pages for natural search is that the optimized pages rank higher on Google where Jtgateoperators.com also buys paid listings for the same keywords. That’s due to the new quality score ranking system Google launched early this year, according to Leitch. Under the new system, Google’s engine places more emphasis on the landing page to which the paid ad directs users in determining how high in paid search results a listing ranks.
“If you have a quality site that is well built, user-friendly and easy to navigate, the engine is going to reward you,” Leitch adds. Bid price also figures into Google’s calculation.
The net effect for Jtgateoperators.com is that because his site’s pages are optimized, Mitchell pays less than he did before to achieve high positions on key search terms in Google’s paid search results. For example, for the keyword “gate opener” Mitchell was paying from $3.75 to $4.50 per click before optimizing the relevant landing pages with MoreVisibility.com. “Now I can be in the top three on Google paying $2.75 or $3 per click,” he says. “That’s substantial – we now have all of that extra money for advertising.”
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