Case Study:
Yeager Employment Law
Introduction
Yeager Employment Law is a Vancouver, British Columbia based law firm that partnered with Method and Metric in April 2014 to improve its search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. The website had a consistent design containing relevant content. It had an active blog and used a number of enticing visuals.
Further, the website was mobile and tablet friendly. Although the website was well designed, issues related to on-page optimization and keywords arose. Analytics and Adwords campaigns were not optimized to generate leads and the webpage was lacking the depth that could further enhance users experience on the site. Yeager was also having trouble maximizing the number of leads received on the website’s contact form. Finally, the domain name, which was dismissal.ca at the beginning of the campaign, created confusion between the name of the business and the URL.
In order to improve these problems, along with the entirety of their SEO campaign, five (5) key goals and solutions were developed for the website:
- Improve on-page optimization to increase the traffic to the site.
- Improve keyword strategies to increase the overall success of their organic search ranking results.
- Improve analytics and Adwords strategies to increase the number of leads.
- Increase the number of entries received on the contact form.
- Change Yeager Employment Law’s domain name from dismissal.ca.
Areas of Improvement
1. On-Page Optimization
On-page optimization is crucial in any SEO campaign to improve the websites search engine ranking. Three key elements were the focus of the on-page improvements:
- Refined the keyword targets of each page to better segment information.
- Structured the content to simplify the scan for pertinent information.
- Improved the navigation between related topics.
After the completion of the campaign, Method and Metric increased the number of conversions that started from an organic search by 133%. The organic search traffic now makes up a higher percentage of the total WEB traffic, decreasing Yeager’s reliance on paid advertising.
Organic Traffic between 2014 and 2015 (February and March)
Further, by September 2015, Yeager’s ranking on Google and Bing was 49th and 48th, up 207 and 1,152 spots consecutively since October 2014.
These strategies also led to a positive 90.74% decrease in their bounce rate from 2014 to 2015 and a positive 96.66% increase in their number of page views and session times, as shown below.
Bounce Rates and Page/Sessions between 2014 and 2015 (April and May)
2 . Keyword Strategy
At the beginning of the SEO campaign with Method and Metric, Yeager Employment Law had curated a comprehensive keyword strategy for their Google Adwords Account. These terms covered the wide scope of the Employment Law sphere. However, the keyword strategy used for Adwords did not directly correlate with the on-page strategy of yeageremploymentlaw.com. This discrepancy reflected the overall success of the organic search ranking results.
In order to overcome this, M+M implemented a better association between the organic keywords strategy and the paid keyword strategy. With the increased popularity of voice search and for longer-tailed keywords, there is a decline in the historically effective 2-word searches. This change in search landscape offers higher click-through rates and better-qualified traffic. The effective targeting of these long-tail terms was apparent with terms such as “constructive dismissal lawyers Vancouver” and “wrongful termination lawyers in Vancouver.” In order to further improve the keyword strategy, M+M enhanced the strategy by taking the same approach with terms related to “employment law” as there is a significantly higher number of searches done for Employment Law than Wrongful Dismissal.
As discussed previously, by September 2015, Yeager’s ranking on Google was 49th, up 207 spots since October 2014. As demonstrated in the graph below, over the period of the campaign, the number of keywords in the 1-3 and 4-10 rankings on Google has increased dramatically.
Keyword Rankings on Google
* Data prior to September 2014 is unavailable.
Also, by September 2015, Yeager’s ranking on Bing was 48th, up 1,152 spots since the beginning of the SEO campaign with Method and Metric. As demonstrated in the graph below, over the period of the campaign, it experienced a 59% increase in search placements.
Keyword Rankings on Bing
*Data prior to September 2014 is unavailable.
3. Analytics and Adwords
Method and Metric implemented goal tracking into Yeager Employment Law’s analytics programs. Adwords were also targeted for specific landing pages. With the increasing cost of Adwords, it is imperative to have highly focused campaigns. These campaigns should target a specific action, such as subscribing to a newsletter, downloading an eBook or anything that requires clear action and is quantifiable. Unique landing pages should be used as well. This ensures a higher Quality Score from Google, as well as entices visitors to convert on the offer.
In order to be competitive in the Adwords space, an increase in the number of ads running and diversifying the content of these ads will help in getting the lowest cost per conversions. From an analytics point of view, building a larger ad network with different goals and keyword targets for each group gives a better understanding of what users are looking for, and ultimately delivers a better return on investment (ROI).
By using this Adwords strategy and implementing goal-tracking analytics for Yeager Employment law, Method and Metric was able to monitor the increase in the number of goal conversions by 252.36% from April 2014 to 2015 as shown below.
Goal Conversion Rate for 2014 and 2015 (April and May)
4. Contact Form Entries
By implementing goal tracking for inquiries in analytics, M+M was able to help Yeager better understand how visitors are completing this action on the website; as well as where people are leaving the funnel. M+M was able to increase the contact form entries by 123% from April 2014 to April 2015 by adding contact forms of varying lengths to prominent areas of the website and by improving the language for the call to action (CTA) and “submit” buttons.
5. Domain Name Change
At the beginning of the campaign, the domain name – dismissal.ca, created confusion between the name of the business and the URL. It also didn’t pertain to all of the diverse services offered by the firm. The URL was changed partway through implementation to the current URL yeageremploymentlaw.com.
Conclusion
Yeager Employment Law is an example of a company that has taken many appropriate measures to ensure the success of their business prior to their work with M+M. However, Method and Metric was able to provide them with professional and quantifiable SEO consulting in order to:
- Increase online contact form entries by 123%.
- Increase organic visit goal conversions by 133%.
- Increase the overall number of goal conversions by 252%.
- Increase search placements on Google and Bing by 59%.