We Ranked A Client At Top Of SEO Search Results After We Got Fired

“Will we ever take on a client for too cheap again? Honestly, probably.”

We Ranked A Client At Top Of SEO Search Results After We Got Fired

Intro
1. Website Overhaul
- a. Update The Theme
- b. Implement Beautiful Formatting
- c. Update The Content
- d. Focus On Branding
- e. Make It Easy To Buy And Contact
- f. Get Feedback

Getting fired can be embarrassing. But if you always do a good job then there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Here’s the story about how I got a client ranked #1 in Google search and got none of the credit.

We Ranked A Client At Top Of SEO Search Results After We Got Fired

Intro

The client seemed to understand when I kept reiterating how good marketing and branding takes time. He understood so well that he super underpaid us to help him. But when we worked our asses off to help rescue them ASAP, we still lost the client. It was mostly because of differences in the way they operated, but I just think the guy wasn’t a good manager because of his insecurities, and from paying a subpar marketing agency in the past.

Anyways, here’s how we did it.

1.Website Overhaul

That’s pretty much it. Their website was very out of date. It was difficult to find what you were looking for, and it was very unpleasant to look at. It was ugly. It looked old. It looked unprofessional, or the old kind of professional when you could just open up shop and get customers for free. Ah, the good old days.

Here’s some of the most important specifics of what we did:

a. Update The Theme

Since the site was already on WordPress, we were able to change up the styling while keeping most of the actual content. We would update the content later. I tested a few themes, and picked out of the themes known for loading quickest.

The new theme let me change the colors and text formatting to bring it into 2018. Search engines like sites that provide a great user experience. Since some sites are painful to look at and navigate, they rank low in search results.

b. Implement Beautiful Formatting

The theme won’t change too much about how a site is laid out, so we had to poke around and install some other plugins to help display the content in a way that was beautiful and thoughtful.

Keeping things on web pages spaced out in a way that’s easy to digest goes a long way. Simple is usually better. Pay attention to the way things are grouped and make sure it’s clear how to get to the next info the site visitor wants.

c. Update The Content

A lot of brands make the mistake of building websites that are all “me, me, me.” But it’s better to talk about how you help the customer and make them happy. “You, you, you.”

We also created a new, updated logo to replace the old ugly one. There wasn’t much technical expertise in the design. It was just thoughtful. We included the Florida state seal and an icon of the state of Florida since they were exclusive to serving professionals in Florida. The state icon was familiar, and the Florida state seal built a sort of “officialness.” Both gained the visitor’s trust. And it helped that their brand name had the word “Florida” in it.

We also designed a “prize/award” patch for the main logo that touted their being trusted for over a decade. “10 Years.”

Trust, trust, trust.

d. Focus On Branding

We used their terrific reviews to display real testimonials right on the site. These personal testimonials are gateways to branding that other people are interested in since it comes from “the people” and not from the company. People trust a recommendation more than an advertisement.

Adding keywords that included the brand’s actual name made Google trust it more. Because it makes the customer trust it more.

e. Make It Easy To Buy And Contact

The amount of pages this site had, that weren’t even very easy to get to, was a bad dream. We cleaned them up, cleaned up the menus, and made it clear where the customer could go to make a purchase or get in touch.

Remember, a person becomes a customer as soon as they learn about your existence. This definitely includes when they visit your site for the first time. So making it easy for them to call you, email your, or subscribe to your email list is just as important as making it easy to give you their money.

Now, the “checkout” page was on a completely different site. So they were losing out on some traffic score, and even losing sales at that transition. But we made it more seamless for the time being and recommended letting us build the checkout process directly into their marketing site, eventually.

f. Get Feedback

AS SOON as we finished updating the site to make it decent, we received an email form the owner thanking us for the spike in sales (and visitors). This was within a couple days of the website overhaul, so it probably wasn’t from search engines. It had to be from the regular visitors that were enjoying the great usability of the new site. That’s a good sign.

Now, like I said, we were fired shortly after the overhaul. Management differences, I guess. But I just Googled exactly what they’re selling in an Incognito Window and they are the first organic result. I also checked a few months after we left the partnership and it was ranked at the top, too, with our redesign.

Will we ever take on a client for too cheap again? Honestly, probably. I like helping my community and the excitement of putting on a company in way that grows them way too much is way too much excitement to pass up. Just has to be the right client.

In fact, I’ve done a project recently for a friend for free. It was an entire website from scratch for a subscription business. The day of launch we generated a lot of sales because the site was nice, simple, and thoughtful. The owner kinda fell off pretty quickly. But it was a good friend, so it was worth it. What’re ya gonna do. I like flexing, so it’s fun for me.

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