Google Page 1 Ranking for Local Business
Case Study: Industrial Liquidators
CLIENT
Industrial Liquidators
1100 Alpha Drive
Alpharetta, GA 30004
Website:
https://forkliftscheap.com
Case study of how TechnoSimpatico helped a local business go from a dead search listing to Google page 1 within a few weeks.
Work included full website design & development, maintenance, and hosting support for an industrial heavy equipment dealer. Other services included SEO & SEM services in tandem with coding & markup optimizations with an emphasis on keyword strategies for geographic related searches, with the goal of ranking higher in search results than local competitors.
Summary
TechnoSimpatico provided full website development, design, maintenance and hosting support for ForkliftsCheap.Com. Other services included SEO & SEM services in tandem with coding & markup optimizations with an emphasis on keyword strategies for geographic related searches, with the goal of ranking higher in search results than local competitors.
Problem
The website had been offline for almost 2 years and was deleted by the prior web hosting company because the client’s content did not fit their new business model, which was to only serve and support automotive sales websites. After the prior web hosting company dropped support, the website went offline and lost the Google page 1 search engine ranking (SERP) that it had established over the prior years. The client was losing potential sales due to a limited market reach, which had been reduced to using online business profiles on sites like Yelp, pre-existing customer business, and word-of-mouth. The client urgently needed a website to showcase live inventory and to draw local and regional customers to the business who might otherwise choose one of the area competitors they would find performing online and mobile searches.
Solution
The client needed a new (rebuilt) website / content management system that he would be able to easily manage and update to add and remove product inventory as needed. The new website also required bilingual translation capability to switch content from English to Española. Most importantly, the site needed to be coded and configured for SEO and performance.
Due to the site being offline for so long, the design, structure, and initial content were replicated using https://web.archive.org/ as a reference from one of the prior years’ snapshots. The website maintains its former “look & feel” as requested by the client for reasons of customer familiarity and established branding.
Technology Used
Drupal 8 was chosen for the content management system (CMS) platform due to its flexibility for administrative and editor workflows, ability to support backend and UI customizations, scalability, support for language translations, and its native SEO friendly markup.
Various Drupal SEO modules were also added to enhance optimization and to allow page level control of keywords, page titles, and metadata.
Google Analytics was integrated into the website along with Google Search Console to track users, record and analyze traffic metrics, and to evaluate keywords and search phrases used by visitors to find the website.
A YouTube Channel was established and video integration was added into the website to stream product videos from YouTube to the client’s website and increase the backlink count for the client’s domain. The YouTube channel also provides additional product pages that are available to a greater range of potential customers.
For email marketing outreach, a MailChimp account was created in order for customers and site visitors to signup for company newsletters and announcements.
Performance tuning was also a focus during development in order to speed up page loads. The number of server requests was reduced by localizing external JavaScript files, using native device fonts versus custom fonts, and by eliminating unnecessary and redundant file requests. JavaScript and CSS files were also minified and compressed to reduce page download times.
Image files that are uploaded to the website are now automated & configured for optimized display and to compress file sizes using image caching modules. In addition, the website has been integrated with the CloudFare CDN to further compress images, compress the site’s HTML, and to provide additional layers of security for the website.
Results
Within 2-3 weeks after going live the client’s website was re-appearing back in the top results of Google Maps and within 2-3 months was back to appearing on page 1 of Google Search Results under particular keywords with local & regional geographic search terms. Examples include: “forklifts Atlanta GA”, “forklift sales in Atlanta”, “forklifts near me”, etc.
Most importantly, the client and his business now have a website that can be independently managed and updated with new products, specs, videos, announcements, etc. without outsourcing mundane tasks to a developer. No longer are they restricted from backend access to their own website due to a controlling host provider. Ongoing monthly support costs have been dramatically reduced and once costly updates and content control restrictions have been eliminated.
The client is now receiving more direct phone calls from the website, plus a range of 2 to 10 email submissions per day from site visitors (potential customers) to request more information about particular products that are listed for sale on the website. With each user inquiry the business is able to collect valuable customer data such as names, phone numbers, and business affiliations that can be used for future marketing purposes.
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