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Blue Index sees 400% growth in new business from search engine marketing
Added: (Wed Apr 06 2005)
Blue Index, the online stock trading specialist has been using online marketing agency SiteVisibility to achieve higher rankings in Google and other search engines, achieving a 400% growth in new business as a result.
Blue Index specialises in trading contracts for difference (CFDs) on behalf of high net worth individuals, providing a full service trading and execution service. But CEO James Swallow got more and more frustrated when he realised that clients punching in ‘CFDs’ or ‘Contracts for Difference’ into search engines would never find his site.
“We are one of the few CFDs specialist brokerages. We don’t do anything else and sophisticated investors who are looking for expert advice on this high risk, high reward investment vehicle appreciate the level of service we offer. But they have to find us first and we weren’t even making the first 3 pages in Google.”
James approached SiteVisibility. They work with companies to optimise a client’s Internet marketing channel; which includes helping clients to improve their visibility in search engines. Damon Lightley, Managing Director at SiteVisibility explains it’s a 3-pronged attack.
“First of all you have to make sure your site can be seen by the search engines. We call that indexing optimisation – IEO – and there are all sorts of ways of doing it. Re-organising the structure of the site is one example and optimising the site’s architecture for key word searches (like CFDs in this case) is another. Secondly, you need to look at the actual copy on your site. Does it really drive people to take the right actions? Could you improve the way your information is presented to help visitors understand what you can do for them? The third area is off-site factors – links from other sites for example.”
James Swallow gave SiteVisibility a year to improve the performance of his site at www.blueindex.co.uk but found they got results in just a few months. Blue Index now usually appears in the top 10 of Google for a search on CFDs and that’s out of a possible 240,000 web pages. But the real measure of success has been in new accounts signed up and doing business.
“We track where each new account comes from using SiteVisibility’s reporting suite. At the end of 12 months we had increased our Internet sign-up by around 400%,” James says. “Many of those accounts are extremely significant for us; our investment with SiteVisibility has paid for itself by a factor of at least 30. That’s good business in anyone’s book.”
So can SiteVisibility achieve these sorts of results for everyone? Damon Lightley says yes in principle, but it’s a competitive business.
“There are only 10 un-sponsored slots on the first page of Google, so you have to keep at it. We have other strategies we can use alongside search engine marketing to help optimise the Internet marketing channel, like pay per click campaigns and email marketing. Ultimately the web is a complex and dynamic environment and you have to continuously integrate, optimise and evolve your marketing activity if you want it pay off.”
More information: www.blueindex.co.uk
www.sitevisibility.co.uk
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513 words
Editors for more information:
Damon Lightley James Swallow
SiteVisibility Blue Index
Contact: Damon Lightley (Site Visibility Ltd)
Email: damon@sitevisibility.co.uk
Telephone Number: 01273 453 853 (Mobile: 07946 519081)
Website: www.sitevisibility.co.uk
About the Author
Damon Lightley is marketing director of SiteVisibility. His area of expertise is in Internet strategy development, online marketing and optimisation. Damon manages projects for clients that have a strong marketing element to them, including translating clients’ offline brands into an online environment, as well as content, interactivity, traffic generation, customer acquisition & retention and web analytics. Damon has also held senior marketing roles at The Financial Times (www.ft.com) and The Energy Saving Trust (www.est.org.uk)
About SiteVisibility
SiteVisibility was set-up in 2003 by Damon Lightley as a full service online marketing agency. The business helps clients optimise their Internet marketing channel. This involves effectively integrating search marketing, affiliate & email marketing, content syndication, online PR and online brand development into the marketing mix. Some of its current clients include Smiths Medical Plc, The Sports Nutrition Company & Cancer BACUP.