A friend of mine, Gord Hill, has been running a stucco business for many years. Up until recently he has had no trouble getting contracts but over the last few months new business has been slow. I suggested that he may want to consider developing a website and try marketing it online. He agreed since he didn’t have a website but he was concerned that the associated costs may not be affordable.
As a challenge, I offered to set-up the website for the price of dinner. He agreed and the barbequed steak dinner was exceptional.
Our first step was to choose a platform for the website. We wanted a website development platform that was cheap, easy to use, quick to set-u, easy to change content, had functional template designs and would work with search engines. We considered the following sites:
- www.siteground.com using WordPress
- www.kwiksites.com/admin/
- www.citymax.com
We reviewed each platform and selected CityMax for a few reasons:
- you can set-up a site first and pay later
- they had a template with houses on it that worked well for Gord’s business
- the price was $17.98 per month for 6 months (cheaper for a year subscription)
The URL of the website is www.whiterockstucco.com.
What I didn’t know is if the site would be search engine friendly. Below are the steps that we took to develop the pages, optimize the pages, start a linking campaign and begin to market the site online.
1. Adding Content
The first task was to add content and images which Gord did. He was even able to switch out the images of the houses in the template and add images of his work on customer’s houses.
2. Tracking Visitors
To measure performance, we wanted to track the number of visitors to the site. CityMax uses HitLinks which looks fine but I prefer Google Analytics. Once we set-up an account adding the JavaScript code for Google Analytics was pretty simple because we could edit the HTML code of the template.
3. Selecting Keywords
The third step was keyword research which we did using WordTrackers Free Keyword Tool. For now we are focusing on 3 keyword phrases: Calgary Stucco, Synthetic Stucco Finishes, and Stucco Exteriors. We will be adding more phrases later. We avoided phrases related to “how to” and “do it yourself” since neither will generate business for Gord.
4. Optimizating
Next, we wanted to optimize the source code of the site so that search engines could find keywords easily and index the site into their inventory. This was easy using the Easy Editor and HTML Editor in the CMS.
5. Creating In-bound Links
Everyone knows that you need in-bound links to a website in order to get higher rankings on the natural (organic) results. But getting links to a new site for minimal cost and effort can be tricky. Our approach for an initial linking campaign was to submit the site to a variety of search engines and business directories using online submission programs. www.freewebsubmission.com and www.evrsoft.com/fastsubmit/ were simple and easy. I doubt they will be effective to get top rankings but this is a start. We will do an aggressive linking campaign later.
6. Marketing Online
Next, we set-up an account with Google AdWords to start driving some traffic to the website. One limitation of CityMax is that the Contact Us page has been created using JavaScript, so there is no separate URL for a Thank You page. Typically, when using Google AdWords, we would add a little snippet of code to the Thank You page so that every time the form is filled out a “conversion” is recorded when the Thank You page is activated. Unfortunately, this is not possible with CityMax.
7. Testing
The final step was to test the coding of the site. We did this by looking at the text of the site using Anduro’s online tool called SEO-Browser. We typed in the URL, parsed the site and then reviewed details in Advanced mode. The site looks pretty good but there is still room for improvement.
Results So Far:
We set the site up last week and started the advertising online on Saturday. So far, we have spent just over $100 for hosting and we set the online advertising budget at $200 per month. To date we have had 10 visitors to the site.
Jeff Nelson