Since around 2008 I have contributed to or developed overall Web strategy for a brand. This has included determining the roles played by various Web properties and social and email channels, as well as content direction. I’ve worked with upper management directly, as a team member and autonomously.
Here are a few examples of my work in overall Web strategy.
Zynx Health
When I joined Zynx Health in 2011, they had two websites, sans SEO, and a LinkedIn page used mostly for HR purposes. They also had several underperforming PPC campaigns. Emails were sent to clients from different departments, each with a different template and content style.
The Challenge: Improve marketplace authority and lead generation while staying within the marketing budget.
Approach: To build brand authority online, I created new social media channels on Facebook and Twitter, and developed the LinkedIn channel to function for Sales as well as Human Resources. I SEO-optimized the corporate website for the terms their primary users searched on, editing metatags and making slight changes to content. I streamlined their PPC campaigns, removing non-converting terms, utilizing more exact match, and adding new term variations. I introduced a simple, branded email template for all departments to use, including uniform email signatures.
Results: The uniform branding created a much more organized impression online. Clients and other influencers began engaging with the brand more, and the company was able to participate in outside conversations among users. Search traffic to the website climbed, and incoming Web leads improved significantly. PPC cost per click dropped by 20% while average CTR nearly doubled.
Dental Assistant Schools
Dental Assistant Schools was a micro-brand belonging to an online advertising agency I joined in 2012. When I came aboard, the site, which represented a major portion of the company’s organic revenue, ranked on page two in Google for its primary keyword and was losing rank as a result of the Panda and Penguin updates. The site had no blog, no social media presence, and was poorly optimized for search.
The challenge: Improve organic revenue.
Approach: I first reworked the site’s content to reflect a more natural-sounding, informative voice, improving the site’s information value and inter-page linking. I also reworked metatags and image content according to SEO best practices, and established more obvious on-site conversion channels. I established a Google Plus page for the site, and used it to promote new and existing content. I developed plans for a blog, but the desired effect was achieved before it was necessary to launch it.
Results: The page moved from the second page of Google results to the number one spot for its primary keyword, and remained within the top three spaces for the remainder of my tenure. Revenue from organic leads for the site improved around 60%.
Travel RN Jobs
I created Travel RN Jobs as a way of providing my wife, who is a travel nurse recruiter, an additional stream of travel nurse leads to complement leads from word of mouth and from her company’s database.
The Challenge: Attract new, qualified travel nurses.
Approach: Since experienced travel nurses typically already have a recruiter or find one through a friend, I focused this site on less experienced nurses who research travel nursing and look for jobs online. To speak to this segment of nurses, the site’s content was tailored to introduce nurses to the basics of travel nursing. Articles focused on travel nursing requirements, types of travel nurse, salary expectations, and other topics searched by newer travel nurses. The site was accompanied by a twitter page, where featured jobs were tweeted out using common nursing hashtags. Paid search was also briefly used, thanks to a one-time Google promotion.
Results: The website first began attracting leads through Twitter, and briefly through paid search, until it began ranking well in Google. Once Google picked it up, it ranked high on the first page for its primary keyword, even passing my wife’s company’s website. Her company even considered adopting the site’s tagline, which I was OK with. It served as a passive source of nurse leads for my wife for years until hosting issues led to my shutting it down.
