Situation
Founded in 1908, Aubuchon Hardware is the leading hardware chain in New England, with over 140 local paint and hardware stores. Over the past 95 years, the company has worked to maximize its ability to sell more than 40,000 products encompassing 13 product categories.
In 1996, Aubuchon launched Aubuchon.com as an informational website to steer the company in a new direction.
Challenges
Soon after launching the website, Aubuchon found themselves faced with a similar problem many online marketers face-having created a website that was "unfriendly" to search engine spiders. Despite their success utilizing pay-per-click programs on Google and Overture, their overall natural search page visibility was limited by:
lack of website content
low link popularity
absence of product information
no search directory presence
Solution
Aubuchon Hardware turned to iProspect in July 2002 to significantly increase their search engine referral traffic. iProspect, the Original® Search Engine Marketing Firm, focuses on driving qualified website traffic through paid and natural search engine optimization, while tracking and analyzing the success of those campaigns, and enhancing the ability of the site to convert visitors to customers and improve overall ROI.
iProspect's solution to improving Aubuchon's visibility included:
Complete architecture and website redesign-including optimization for search engines
Extensive keyword research to establish top-level and supplemental keyword list
Launching comprehensive paid inclusion campaign
Implementing aggressive link popularity & directory submission strategies
Rigorously submitting pages to search engines to increase the number of indexed pages within the major search properties
Performing seasonal updates to all SEM programs
Hammering the Competition
Since Aubuchonhardware.com was re-launched, online sales have doubled. As a result, the site generates nearly four times the revenue of their largest offline retail store.
Aubuchon receives 350,000 more search referrals a month than they did at the outset of their campaign and has greater than 5,000 top 30 rankings-dramatically outpacing their competition in non-branded, hardware-related, keywords.
Competitive Landscape
Aubuchon Hardware has become a dominant player in the hardware industry by propelling its visibility within the major search properties. Aubuchon outranks companies like Amazon.com, USA Hardware, Ace Hardware, Lowes, True Value and Home Depot on non-branded, hardware-related, keywords.
