Yesterday I sat down with a beautiful client of mine (my wife) who is the marketing muckity-muck at Casco Development, developers of ShopVue: software that tracks shop floor data collection, labor management (time and attendance,) and graphic dispatching into a new category called Shop Floor eXecution (SFX.)
She had been reading my recent newsletter on tracking your Google rank using Keyword Tracker. She was curious to find out how she was doing on some keywords that were important to her, such as:
- data collection (n/a)
- factory data collection (n/a)
- shop floor data collection (12)
- shop floor control, (n/a) and
- shop floor execution, (1+2)
In addition, she was curious how she ranked for "lean manufacturing,"(n/a) a very hot topic in manufacturing right now. Casco’s current Google ranking appears in parentheses after each keyphrase. The n/a doesn’t mean they don’t appear, just that Keyword Tracker hasn’t found them yet, due to a limit on the amount of searching it can do for any one client in a given day.
We did a quick Word Tracker report to find out how effective these key phrases were. If you don’t know what Word Tracker does, read my newsletter "Research Your Keyphrases" or take a look at 7 Days to Search Engine Success.
Outside of "lean manufacturing," none of these phrases were overly popular as searches. However, given the company’s niche and the scope of one sale, they don’t need huge traffic, just qualified traffic.
To improve Casco’s rank we updated the title of the home page from "Casco Development: Real-time Control for Shop Supervisors" to "ShopVue: Shop Floor and Factory Data Collection – Casco Development." We updated the header for the home page to "Real-time Shop Floor Data Collection."
The keyword analysis revealed a lot of requests (searches) for "definition of…[keyphrase]." Cybele (again, my wife) is now going to do is develop an F.A.Q. that defines a lot of the more popular phrases. Wherever those phrases appear on the site, they can be linked as anchor text to the definitions on the F.A.Q. page. I.e.,
Q. What is the definition of shop floor or factory floor data collection?
A. Shop floor–a.k.a. factory floor–data collection is…
My suggestion to her was to put each definition on its own page to keep the focus of the page as narrow as possible. A Web page that is about everything will rank well for nothing.
I also suggested the definition pages have 3 parts:
- Define the term.
- Talk about how ShopVue can benefit the client in regards to the term.
- Have a call to action; in this case, getting them to complete a form online.
Remember: it’s not just about driving qualified traffic to your Web site, it’s about converting them to customers. Getting them to take action. Filling out a form. Signing up for your email newsletter. Picking up the phone. Making a purchase.
A Web site that is optimized for search engines but forgets that it’s people who are going to be using the site will always fail.
In addition to all the work Cybele will be doing on improving and optimizing her site, Casco should also benefit from the number of keywork-appropriate links we’ve created to their site from this blog.
We’ll check back on Casco in a month or two to see how they’re doing on their search phrases, and whether they are getting more prospects to leave their contact information.
