Search Engine Optimization for Prudential Kansas City Realty
“Two decades ago, when I was the CEO of a hard disk company, I asked Jim Stevenson of Strategic Planning Group to develop a marketing campaign for us. His first step was a single advertisement. It ran one time in a single issue of InfoWorld and generated $30 million worth of purchase orders within three months.
“More recently, I have worked as the Chief Information Officer for several real estate companies. When I began with Prudential in Kansas City, we were ranked 150th on the search engine results page. I knew that few user looked past the first page so I asked Jim for help. Quickly, he had us on the first page of the results, somewhere between 6th and 9th place. More recently, using the most common search term, “Kansas City Homes For Sale,” we are in first place. [See side bar at upper right.]
“After solving that problem, I asked Jim to help me with search engine marketing, those innocuous-looking advertisements that appear at the top and right on search engine results pages. In many cases, I was able to write my own advertisements. But from time to time, I asked Jim to see if he could improve my work. In one case I remember distinctly, after a few minutes examination, he increased the click through rate by 400 percent.
“More important than the click-through rate is the conversion rate, because that is where the money is. We had been averaging about 5 percent on conversation rates. I gave Strategic Planning Group the assignment of developing a series of variations to our conversion page. Again, within a brief period, Jim developed a conversion page that increased our conversion rate 250-300 percent.
“As a result of working with Jim, I can directly attribute an additional $6 million in sales for the first 9 months of 2006 to his pay-per-click work and indirectly credit him with 40 percent more.”
Richard Brown
Chief Information Officer