Big Oak Client: Agee Woodworks Agee Woodworks is a family-owned business that started in the family’s basement in 1996. Six years after constructing their first handcrafted wood fireplace mantel, the company was ready to go online. Over the subsequent years, increasing competition signaled a need for search engine optimization. A year after Agee began working with Big Oak, sales had tripled!Like many small businesses, Agee Woodworks had a limited marketing budget. With a print advertising campaign already in place, the company added a pay-per-click campaign and other web advertising initiatives to their marketing arsenal. But Agee needed something more to give them a competitive advantage, and research into SEO led them to Big Oak. “My research showed that I had to do it – it was necessary in order to compete,” said company Vice President Carol Agee. From the initial conversation, Carol said she felt she’d found the right company to match her needs. “They were professional and knew what they were doing. They were very willing to talk about solutions to the problem,” she said. “We had a couple of different meetings and they told us how they could help us.” “I liked the fact they were local, and I just had a good feeling [about them],” Carol said. Agee Woodworks' GoalsThe site was already getting steady traffic, but the traffic was not converting into steady sales. Big Oak and Agee Woodworks established several goals for the company’s SEO campaign:
Our StrategyWe got to work optimizing the existing site to make it search-engine friendly. “After optimization was done, sales started to increase some,” Carol said. “We decided early on to make the site more user-friendly because we needed to be able to give the customer choices that were not there.” The site was streamlined and features such as a “how to” center were added, but the company continued to see slow sales growth. Research into the company’s low conversion rates revealed evidence of a site navigation problem. So we simplified the mantel ordering process and worked on a redesign to make the site easier for customers to navigate. In addition, we wrote and distributed targeted articles and press releases about the company’s newsworthy initiatives, and pursued both link building and directory submission campaigns to further increase Agee's online exposure. Impressive ResultsAgee Woodworks now ranks in the top results for its key search terms. Carol reports traffic and conversion rates have both dramatically improved, leading to tripled sales revenue. In addition, more customers are coming to the site and following up with phone calls for specific questions about their orders. “I’ve been very pleased with Big Oak,” Carol said. “They are small enough that they get back to me and I know who I am talking to, they have excellent follow-through and in a timely fashion, and I know what to expect.” We continue to work with Agee on a monthly basis with implementation of a targeted monthly strategy that includes analysis, planning and continued optimization. “I understand that with fierce competition, I must have a strategy to get our site ranked – I don’t fully understand the process, but I don’t need to because Big Oak takes care of that,” Carol said. “If there is something we don’t understand or we have a question about, somebody gets back to me in a timely fashion with an explanation, and Big Oak just follows up and follows through – it’s a simple thing, but that’s what it takes.” Search Engine Rankings*
*Search engine ranks change often. Results from July 6, 2007. Why Big Oak is DifferentWe couldn’t have said it better ourselves. We truly believe each SEO campaign is a partnership - we treat each client’s business as if it were our own. We care about your success because that translates into our success. While Agee has been burning up the search engine results pages, has your company been lying in the ashes? Contact us to see how we can help your company rise in the search engine rankings. Our next successful case study could be your site! |
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Are searchers loyal to their search engine?Learning more about the behavior patterns of searchers can help you make decisions about search engine optimization. What can George Bush teach us about SEO?An interesting phenomenon illustrates the power of linking to websites. |
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