Conversions are Not the Goal: Revenue is the Goal

by Daniel Spenrath | Aug 3, 2021

Conversions are Not the Goal: Revenue is the Goal

The Objective

Goal 1: Increase actual revenue from Paid Search efforts by at least 50% year over
year
Goal 2: Increase top-of-funnel organic traffic by at least 50% year over year
Goal 3: Increase organic leads by at least 30% year over year

The Challenge

Paid Search: Freedom Solar came to Apogee Results having had some success already. Their paid search efforts by their agency had produced 1,802% return on ad spend (ROAS). This is a really good return, but Freedom Solar was not satisfied with really good- they wanted to get even better results, and so they decided to
work with Apogee Results. Our goal was to build off past success and make a significant improvement in these numbers.
SEO: Similarly, to Paid Search, Freedom Solar had seen some success on a YoY basis for traffic growth. However, leads were flat, and traffic to location pages were down. Location pages are incredibly important to Freedom Solar because they yield roughly twice the conversion rate as other pages people land on organically.

94% increase in paid search revenue

Doubled Organic Search Traffic

Paid Search Strategy

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Target

Improve ROAS over 1,800%.

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Strategy

To accomplish this goal, the Apogee team restructured and rebuild the account to have as much granularity as possible, including the use of single keyword ad groups (SKAGS), this allows for significant optimizations over time. Because the team was able to see the entire funnel, and see which keywords were not only driving leads, but actual customers as well, they were able to significantly increase actual sales by focusing more on keywords that drove sales.

Here are some of the many strategies the Apogee team employed:
-A revamp of keywords to utilize only search terms that were previous converting well
-The increased use of exact match and broad match modifier keyword forms
-Significant and ongoing negative keywords to exclude undesirable searches
-Constant A/B testing of ad copy
-Utilization of audience targeting
-Optimization of ad schedule to target peak times
-Adjusting bids up for higher converting zip codes
-Expanded ad extensions
-The use of manual bidding

Paid Search Revenue Increase

Organic Traffic Increase

Organic Leads Increase

Amazing Result

SEO Strategy

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Target

Ensuring Google Rankings were as good as possible, an improved GMB profile, and of course increased conversions.

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Strategy

The SEO team went to work by first auditing the website and working to fix technical issues that make it harder for Google to understand the site. On the technical side, we found the following issues and helped remediate them:

-Clean up robots meta directives blocking roughly 100 indexable pages
-Clean up over 20 internally linked 3XX errors
-Clean up multiple internally linked 4XX errors
-Create schema markup for relevant pages (particularly local pages)

Next, the Apogee team focused on improving local SEO with citation building, citation fixing, implementing local schema markup, improving the GMB profiles, and restructuring the content on the location pages. This process was ongoing
and took many months to complete.

While working on local SEO long term, Apogee also helped Freedom Solar optimize their current high-value pages and also create new, SEO-optimized pages.

Results:

Goal 1: Increase actual revenue from Paid Search efforts by at least 50% year over year

Due to the strategies mentioned above and a revenue focus, we were able to significantly increase revenue, despite less conversions:

As you can see to the left, conversions reduced by almost half, but revenue increased by almost double, with a similar amount spent. The goal is not conversions. The goal is revenue!

When done correctly, Paid Search can yield excellent results; however, you need to make sure the team you have working on the account is manually and relentlessly optimizing the account. It could be the difference in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Goal 2: Increase Organic Traffic by at least 50 % year over year (due to a migration in December of 2018, YoY data is not available until January of 2020, 10 months into our work)

Traffic nearly doubled for the organic channel. This was a great result, especially considering a significant lull in late March and April due to Covid 19

Goal 3: Increase Organic Leads by over 30% YoY:

Freedom Solars two most important conversions are a Free Consultation Form Request and their Solar Calculator:

Combined Freedom Solar saw an increase of 32.6% for their two main goals year over year (362 vs 273).

SEO is not one activity. Freedom Solar is a fantastic example of the fact that working on all of aspects of SEO together in one unified strategy yields the best results.

Chris Glazer

Head of Operations, Apogee Results

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Content and Local SEO for the Win

by Apogee Results | Aug 29, 2019

Content and Local SEO

for the Win

The Challenge

Every client, no matter how large or small, deserves the best return for their search marketing efforts. The relationship between Apogee Results and The Bug Master is an example of how conscientious and creative application of best practices in local SEO, data, and content writing can positively impact a client’s bottom line without spending big marketing dollars.

The Objective

Objective: #1: Increase Organic Search Traffic by at least 20% year over year in the first year of the engagement.
Objective #2: Increase revenue from Organic sources by at least 20% within 6 months (and ongoing). This is to be achieved by increased form fills and phone calls.

WINNER - Best Local SEO Campaign of 2019

US Search Awards

Small Budget – Big Impact

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Target Audience

The target audience for The Bug Master is all homeowners and renters in the Austin Metro area who experience pest and insect problems. Additionally, service areas in Temple and Waco were also a priority. Pet owners are a sub-audience among these groups that particularly use pest services.

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Strategy

Our strategy for The Bug Master was two-fold:

1: Clean up citations and produce enhanced schema local markup to gain more exposure from Google Maps and the local 3-pack for Austin, Temple, and Waco.

2: Create new, SEO optimized content pieces related to bug and pest infestations that would be valuable to consumers and help answer common questions about different types of pests and infestations in Central Texas. This new content would establish The Bug Master as the go-to resource for the Austin area when it comes to bugs and other pests.

Increase in Organic Search Traffic

Increase in Form Fills

Increase in Phone Calls

Implementation

Technical Remediation Included:

Updated Robots.TXT
Updated Sitemap

Local SEO Practices Included:

Citation cleanup and new citation building
Creation of local pages for each service area, content created using query analysis
Creation of local schema markup for each local page

Content Creation

Through deep query analysis, intent analysis, and competitive analysis, we determined the right topics to write about that would gain traffic for The Bug Master’s website. We also took the further step to publish pest topics according to seasonal peaks in search volume for each particular user query.

The Creative

Creativity comes in the application of the research to match data to human behavior. While there is high search volume for general terms like “termites,” national companies like Orkin have such a high domain authority that they will outrank a local service provider nearly every time. Also, the more general terms tend to include people looking for information and not necessarily services. Creating content for the longer regional phrase enabled the team to filter The Bug Master’s potential search traffic by a higher intent to hire services in their area and rank with authority for queries that are much more specific to Central Texas.

- Termites – https://www.thebugmaster.com/the-most-common-termites-in-texas/

- Spiders – https://www.thebugmaster.com/spiders-in-austin-texas/

Over the course of a year working with The Bug Master, we produced over 50 content pieces for the website high local or regional intent and timed with the highest peaks in queries for particular pests.

The Results Were Amazing

Despite starting with a low floor of traffic and a limited marketing budget, the team was able to achieve significant increases of qualified traffic, driven by blending query data and creating useful content. This local focused strategy had a huge positive effect on the bottom line for this client.

Results

Objective 1: Increase Organic Search Traffic by at least 20% year over year in the first year of the engagement.

We found significant success in driving traffic for The Bug Master, with significant gains over time:

By December, we saw an increase of 33.21% in year over year sessions. From this point forward, our gains became increasingly dramatic. Here is the growth in sessions over the last 3 months (June is just through the 26th)
● April: 66.16% increase
● May: 74.18% increase
● June (through the 26th): 98.10% increase

Digging deeper, we can see that individual pieces created by Apogee contributed significantly to this, with the 4th and 5th top organic landing pages pieces we created:

Overall, 5 of the top twenty organic landing pages were built by Apogee.

Objective 2: Increase revenue from Organic sources by at least 20% within 6 months (and ongoing)
● Revenue from organic sources increased by over 22% year over year in December of 2018 according to the client
● Revenue from organic sources has nearly doubled this spring according to the client
● Form Fills increased 80.31% year over year from October 2018 through June 2019 (goal was not created until October 2017):

● Phone Calls increased 19.81% year over year October 2018 through June 26th 2019 (goal was not created until October 2017)

The Results Got Even Better

UPDATED Results through October of 2019:

All results above convinced the US Search awards to grant us the Best Local SEO Campaign for 2018/2019. In the 4 months since the creation of this case study which won the award, we have seen even more dramatic increases in traffic and goals.

Here is a look at June 2018 through October 2019:

Despite the fact that the growth seen in early 2019 was significant, the growth from July through October was such a huge improvement, it makes earlier gains look like almost nothing.

Here we see the actual difference in acquisition growth numbers between these two periods:

June 2018 – June 2019

July 2019 – October 2019

Why did this happen? Multiple pieces built by Apogee Results gained featured snipits and showed huge ammounts of growth.

The two pieces highlighted above really took off:

Overall, 12 of the top 20 landing pages were pieces built by Apogee Results at this time, and these pieces accounted for over 87% of the traffic during this time.

Through this work and significant increase in traffic, Bugmaster gained more customers through phone calls and form fills (Goal completions include both conversions):

Overall, during the period from October 2018 (when YoY data for Goals begins) and June of 2019, goal completions increased 45.28% YoY.

In the four months since these incredible results, goal completions increased 78.48% YoY.

“I enjoy working with Apogee – because they are good people. But in addition to that, they continue to generate quality traffic that converts! Apogee brings a deep understanding of their craft that’s actionable; and ultimately, it adds real business value. It certainly makes my job a lot easier. Our traffic is up, and not just up, I mean UP. The content they produce, coupled with the deep SEO knowledge/experience, is relevant and adds real value to our visitors – which, in turn, creates more customers. That’s what it’s all about. I couldn’t be happier; I highly recommend Apogee Results. “

Jesse Alaniz

Director of Marketing, The Bug Master