SEO Case #3

This is a great example of what happens when you are not prepared for success.

Case#3 is a hardware manufacturer in Tampa.  They are in a niche industry and are fairly new only being in it less than 10 years.  The number one competitor has been in business for over 60 years and has ad a web presence on the Internet ever since it started.  They have never been out of the number one spot that we could find.  Their competitor is like the “Kleenex” of their industry.

I came on board and the owner having a very hands-on approach wanted to be a part of all I did to the website and actually gave me assignments that he wanted me to accomplish.  This may not sound all that bad but if you hire me for my expertise at the rate I charge?  I think you should take it.

Needless to say after 180 days we had a review and he was not satisfied with the results.  I explained that it was because I was only doing what he instructed me to do and could not manage the site for SEO in the way I needed.  We struck a deal that we would backup the website that day so that he could put it right back to exactly how he wanted it and let me do what I do the way I do it.  If after another 90 days if it was not doing well then he could put the site right back to where it was and we could part our ways, no hard feelings.  We agreed.

It took me about 2 weeks to rewrite the content.  I had to do it myself because of his insistence that he couldn’t afford to hire a copywriter.  I uploaded all the new content including images with all the proper SEO techniques I know applied.  Then we just had to tell the search engines to crawl it and wait.

But me being me, I’m not a sit around and wait kind of guy.  One of the things I pride myself on is I use all White-Hat techniques.  No Black-hat EVER.  But just because I play fair doesn’t mean your competitors do.   So I used some of my SEO tools and ran reports on the top 3 competitors sites.  I learned that all three of them had bought into a link buying scheme that by Google standards was now black-hat.  If Google knew of this then they would start working on suspending these sites.  It doesn’t happen right away but once the process starts your site will suffer.

First, Google gets a report and checks out it’s validity.  Now keep in mind, I don’t work for Google in any way shape or form but I work with their stuff every day.  One of the things I do well is see certain types of patterns.  What does happen is when something happens like a competitor gets reported for using black-hat techniques Google notifies them and then they begin the slide down rankings.  If you let it go long enough or do not fix it you will get suspended.

Well, it just so happened that Google got notified of his competitors using these techniques and after more than 20 years as number one in every search engine there has been, for their hardware industry, has been dethroned and my client now holds the #1 Spot on Google for the primary keyword of his industry.