SEO Link Wheelers Case Study April 2010
Project Goal
To provide uplift in organic search engine traffic through higher SERPs (search engine
ranking positions) for highly targeted keywords.
SEO Strategy
To achieve these results, we used the following SEO strategies:
• Consultation with the client to recognize campaign goals.
• Thorough keyword research to find targeted keywords.
• Link wheel construction for each of our selected and related keywords
• Blog creation and blog posting from aged, PR3+ domains
Site Background
The goal of the client’s site (Domain removed for privacy) is to inspire you to discover
the real Italy, the out-of-the-way places where the sights and sounds of real people
will provide wonderful memories for a lifetime. The client offers personalized tours of
Italy for anyone wanting to see the beautiful locales of Italy. Bookings can be made
through the on-site phone number, email address or contact form.
Consultation
SEOLinkWheelers spoke directly with the client about the site’s goals and what they
would like promoted. After consultation, we determined the site’s goals were to
increase organic traffic for targeted keywords. Convert organic traffic to additional
bookings. The client wished to promote general tours of Italy as well as a special
emphasis on Italy honeymoon packages.
Keyword Research
At SEOLinkwheelers, we complete SEO packages for a variety of customers. Some are
internet savvy marketers or webmasters, other are SEOs themselves that have us do the
ugly part of SEO, off-site link building. These client’s have done their research and
have an idea of what keywords they would like targeted as well as what pages we’ll
build links to.
Other clients are newcomers to the internet, with perhaps 1 or 2 pet project sites they
would like to take to the next level. Very often these sites can be monetized in a
number of ways, they just need the targeted traffic to support their goals. These
client’s often have an idea of the keywords they would like to go target but are unsure
of their site’s relevance to that keyword, or what kind of traffic these keywords are
capable of providing.
For any client that wishes, we offer to research keywords relative to our client’s site.
SEOLinkWheeler’s consultants take in account their client’s current site and their
established goals for this campaign identified during the consultation portion of a
project and use this to research and suggest keywords to optimize their site around.
This is a service we are happy to provide as we share the entrepreneurial spirit of many
of our customers and we LOVE to see their goals develop into realities.
All of our keyword research is done “by hand” by a certified professional SEO
consultant. First we brainstorm keyword options that fit the client’s site and goals. At
SEOLinkWheelers we keep the humble understanding that even though we are
seasoned, professional SEOs; what we consider great keywords may or may not be
worthy of promotion at that time. Keywords can be ruled out, or promotion postponed
for a number of reasons, including: low search volume, lack of focus, or too much
competition. Not that we shy away from competition, we have top 3 SERPs for MANY
highly competitive keywords, however sometimes the cost of promotion is not in-line
with our client’s level of commitment or budget at that time. These facts can be taken
into account when beginning a project and a long-term strategy can be developed to
achieve even the loftiest of goals by building on and leveraging smaller successes.
In the case of the client’s website we had a clear set of goals and a solid webpage to
build on. The client wished to increase organic traffic for Italy Travel Tours with a
special emphasis on honeymoon packages. During the brainstorming phase of our
research we identified the following potential keywords in no particular order:
italy honeymoon, italy tours, italy vacation, italy vacation packages, italy vacation
rental, italy vacation rentals, tour Italy, tour of Italy, tours of Italy, vacation in
Italy, vacations Italy, italy travel tour, Italy travel tours, italy honeymoon, italy
honey moon, italy travels, italy travel.
After brainstorming keywords, we use Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool to identify
search volume for these keywords as well as identify additional keywords based on the
tool’s suggestions. We then will run the keywords through our Keyword Difficulty Tool.
This will analyze many factors that contribute to a keyword’s difficulty in attaining 1st
page Google SERPs. This step allows us to give a suggestion as to which of our link
building packages will be right for them and their keywords of choice.
Screenshot of Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool:
Screenshot of Keyword Difficulty Report:
Keyword Research (cont.)
After identifying relevant keywords worthy of promotion, we’ll discuss these with our
client’s and listen to their input. For best results, on-page and off-page SEO should
work together. While SEOLinkWheelers only provides off-site link building, we have a
very complete knowledge of SEO and will make on-page SEO suggestions to our clients
where necessary. These, often very small, tweaks are often not 100% necessary to the
overall success of the project, they do however provide the most effective way to
achieve the highest SERPs.
In the case of the client’s site we decided on the following keywords: “Italy Travel
Tours”(8100 monthly searches), “Italy Honeymoon” (4400 monthly searches),
“Italy Honeymoon Packages”(2400 monthly searches).
We chose these keywords because of their moderate difficulty, search volume and the
client’s site already being well optimized to these keywords (no on-site tweaks were
needed). The keywords of choice also allow for us to promote an inner page as well as
the home page for maximum SEO benefit. In addition, they will provide uplift for many
longer tail keywords amounting to another few thousand monthly searches, a
screenshot of this report will be included.
Project Commencement
After the client settles on their keyword choices and make payment, we’ll begin the
project. The first steps are to input the keywords into our rank tracker and record
current SERPs. Secondly, we create the project in our project management suite, an
email is promptly sent to the client inviting them to the system. Here we interface our
clients with our consultants and link engineers for maximum transparency and
accountability. Any additional questions or requests can be made through this system.
Screenshot of our Project Management System:
Screenshot of our SERP Tracker:
Project Completion and Reporting
Upon a project’s completion, we prepare a spreadsheet containing all the links we’ve
created. Also included in this spreadsheet are the login credentials to each of the
directories we utilized as well as the account used to create the youtube videos.
Screenshot of the Reporting Spreadsheet:
Screenshot of Article(partial) with Youtube Video:
Project Completion and Reporting (cont.)
We completed our Platinum Package for Traveling to Italy on March 5th 2010. This
package includes 52 Web 2.0 articles, 45 blog posts, 19 press releases and 3 custom
videos. This generated a total of 119 backlinks with the selected anchor text. All of
the writing done for SEOLinkWheelers projects are 100% hand written, never computer
generated or spun content; and are seen as natural to search engines.
By March 8th we began to see movement on “Italy Honeymoon”. After a project is
complete, the target URL will begin to change SERPs erratically over the next 2 – 3
weeks, mostly moving up, but sometimes temporarily down. This is caused by the
search engines beginning to index and reindex the links created as well as the target
page. Temporarily lower SERPs is possible during this time, however the SERPs will
only sometimes drop below their starting point and never for longer than a day at a
time. By the second and third week SERPs begin to settle and always equal to or above
where they started. Our rank Tracker of choice monitors SERPs from page 5 of Google
and up. For “Italy Honeymoon” we went from previously unranked in the top 50 SERPs
in Google to page 4 position 8 within a week of the project completion.
Final SERPS for keywords:
Italy Honeymoon: Google Page #1, Position #9
Italy Honeymoon Packages: Google Page #1, Position 4
Italy Travel Tours: Google Page #2, Position #4
Screenshot of SERP Movement for “Italy Travel Tours”:
Screenshot of SERP Movement for “Italy Honeymoon”:
The keywords of chosen for this project allowed us to promote an inner page as well as
the home page for maximum SEO benefit. In addition, they will provide uplift for many
longer tail keywords amounting to another few thousand monthly searches, this can be
for a few reasons. In this case, the additional long-tail keywords were always on the
client’s site, however it was lacking the support of relevant sites confirming the site’s
relevance to those keywords. The articles and blog posts written for this site contain
some of the same long-tail keywords as Traveling to Italy, confirming to the search
engines that this site is the authority for these keywords.
Screenshot of Indexed Keywords (Before Project = 15, After Project = 81):
Conclusion
So where do we go from here you ask? It again depends on your goals. If you reach
the SERP and traffic level you want is that a place to stop? Not really, link building is an
on-going thing; while you can slow down your link building strategies, it is encouraged
to continue on to protect the SERPs you just invested the time and effort into
achieving. Not done growing? They are almost always new and/or broader keywords
to target. The best part is future link building will always be a little easier after you
have a solid amount of links under you. Your site will be crawled more often, your
click through rate will be up and your PR should also be higher; you are now in a much
better situation to compete for the larger more challenging keywords.
What keywords next for the client? In a way it’s up to what the client would like to
promote next. More culinary tours? Maybe. Does he want to explode this thing and
get all the traffic he can? Great too. Here are some keywords and their monthly
search volumes to target next:
Culinary Tour
9900 Monthly Searches
Wine Tours Italy
5400 Monthly Searches
Wine Tour Tuscany
4400 Monthly Searches
Cooking Tours Italy
1900 Monthly Searches
Italy tours
165000 Monthly Searches
Travel to Italy
74000 Monthly Searches
Italy Vacation Packages
49500 Monthly Searches
To conclude SEOLinkwheelers would like to thank the client for allowing us to do this
case study on their site. It provided the perfect vehicle to display the strengths of our
service. We hope this will bring on-going success to them.
Get In Touch With SEO Link Wheelers
If you are interested in more information on our link wheels, and how they can help
you dominate Google, please visit our website to purchase one of our packages:
http://seolinkwheelers.com/view-packages/
Give us a call (352) 509-5736 or email us help@seolinkwheelers.com
Silver Gold Platinum
Web 2.0 Sites 12 21 35
PR3 Blog Posts 16 36 56
Article Sites 8 15 25
Custom Videos 1 2 3
RSS Submission Yes Yes Yes
Keywords / URLs 2/2 4/4 6/6
Total Backlinks 37 74 119
Price $299 $349 $549
Thanks again for reading this, best of luck on your SEO marketing.
The SEO Link Wheelers Team