"The iProspect team is responsive, professional, thorough, and
most importantly, productive. We are appreciative of the work they
do for us on a daily basis, and their guidance throughout the platform
migration helped to ensure that we built the site with SEO best practices
in mind. As I've said many times, this is why we work with iProspect –
they are indeed a valued partner."
Marketing Manager, eCommerce
Situation
This client is a leading worldwide hospitality company. The company operates locations that provide hospitality services throughout the United States, as well as other countries and territories.
The client’s website launched in 1996 and included the ability to make reservations to receive services at any of their locations worldwide. Today, visitors to the site can make a reservation for any of their locations, read about their features, amenities, view photos, and read about nearby shopping, dining, and sightseeing options. In 2003, the website generated over a billion dollars in gross sales.
The company does business in one of the most intensely competitive online marketing categories. The company’s marketers wanted the site to achieve greater visibility within the major search properties, and as a result attract more qualified customers and generate more revenue for each of their locations.
Challenges
There was a sufficient lack of search engine visibility on non-branded terms for the client’s website. Non-branded terms are an effective way of acquiring first-time visitors to a site and building brand awareness. The website’s inability to be found when users were querying very general terms that applied to their marketplace (without the inclusion of their brand name) was hindering online sales for the company.
The website was also missing optimized meta data within the HTML code from all of its thousands of Web pages. Meta data is a key component search engine spiders use to rank websites.
The company was also planning a site platform migration, transitioning all of its URLs over to new domains. Migration for any website creates significant challenges. When URLs change, search engines have difficulty recognizing the correct pages within their indexes — causing diminished rankings in search engine results. Additionally, listings within directories must be manually updated and re-submitted for approval by search properties’ editorial staffs.
Solution
iProspect initially performed extensive research to understand the search behavior of this client’s target audience and identify and determine which non-branded keyword phrases would drive the most traffic to the website.
iProspect optimized the meta data on the website through the creation of customized site optimization tags that were implemented across the entire site.
To ensure the smoothest transition possible to the new platform, iProspect collaborated with the client to re-establish visibility by re-optimizing all meta data and updating existing directory listings. iProspect subsequently resubmitted the website to all of the major search properties, through both manual submissions and paid inclusion partnerships. Finally, the team identified third-party websites containing similar subject matter from which to obtain relevant content endorsement™ with an aim to expose the client’s offering to qualified audiences found elsewhere on the Web, thereby netting the site additional brand exposure and traffic.
Results
Almost three years after partnering with iProspect, the number of monthly natural search engine referrals to the client’s website increased by 163%.
In the same timeframe, additional revenues generated from the client’s search engine marketing campaign reached $40 million per month – an increase of 277%.
Reservations generated from the client’s search engine marketing campaign increased by 133% during the same time.
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