2023 Trailblazer Award Winner: SEO
ELEVATOR PITCH:
Fine-tuning your company’s SEO strategy to compete in today’s market with Google’s algorithm at the forefront is essential in the supply chain and logistics industry. RLS Logistics and Autumn Consulting have been partners in accomplishing the marathon of SEO since 2021.
While reviewing our keywords at the beginning of 2022, we selected “golden keywords.” These words represent words we were already targeting but missed the ranking mark and needed to work on for the upcoming year. Even though RLS’ extended strategic list of keywords would always be on our radar with content and implementation, the golden keywords were selected because they are high volume and more difficult to rank for - our “big hairy audacious goal” keywords.
The six golden keywords selected were on page 10 or higher on Google in January 2022. Through a strategic process, the keywords we ranked on page 10 or higher at that time slowly grew in our page ranking throughout the year. Currently, half of those keywords are on page 1 or 2. Our video shows that growing rank on difficult keywords is possible with intentional, consistent content and technical updates!
MEASURABLE RESULTS AND OBJECTIVES ACHIEVEMENT:
SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. With this in mind and with the help of Autumn, a strategic plan was developed to ensure ranking for the target solution the keyword was influencing. Our main objective is to rank on page 1 for our golden keywords;however, we understand that SEO has no timeline and is a long game. We are on Google’s time.
The process that overall helped us gain ranking for our golden keywords was as follows:
- Review the selected golden keywords related to our core business. We analyzed each keyword to ensure the phrase was accurate to the target audience. We searched through Google in various locations throughout the U.S. and updated them when necessary if it brought up a search that may have missed the mark. An example is that we once thought “logistics and supply chain management” was an ideal keyword to target for a managed solution RLS offers. However, after thorough Google research, we discovered this search is mainly for educational books and collegiate websites (.edu), which are very difficult to compete against.
- Secondly, we updated any pages associated with any particular golden keyword with technical revisions to support Google while keeping in mind the user’s experience and not keyword stuffing. Specific examples of updates we made were title tags, meta-text, photo file names, the slug, and ensuring the photo sizes were Google-friendly (i.e., 600x400px).
- Lastly, we implemented a strategic content strategy concerning the keywords to support the keywords' organic growth and ensured the keywords were applied to content the marketing team was pushing out already. For example, if the RLS team wrote a blog about the transportation market, we’d ensure we would specifically replace vague transportation words referring to our transportation business units with pointed freight brokerage or less-than-truckload shipping keywords. From there, we would also ensure backlinking to the appropriate pages was placed. While a strategic content goal of two pieces a month has been RLS’ marketing goal for a few year’s now, we became deliberate about what we put out for the repercussions of SEO and website traffic.
From our initial groundwork on the technical side of the website to ensuring our team is churning out content, we have been about to grow our golden keywords and organic traffic to our website. Our website organic traffic in 2022 compared to 2021 increased by 40%. Furthermore, our website leads increased by 25% in 2022 compared to the previous year. As a result, our marketing deals won increased by 31%.
BLAZING A TRAIL!
Our strategic implementation of technical SEO and research of keywords have allowed us to grow the ranking in difficult keywords that our team was getting buried in until 2022. When we get asked what makes our golden keywords golden, it is the words we struggle with in the simplest form. Here at RLS, we love a good challenge. We didn’t want to name any keyword golden if we were ranking high for it already. We wanted to focus keenly on the hard ones we knew we were struggling with so we could figure out 1) whether they were the right keywords to have on the list and 2) test our team’s ability to grow in the ranking of very hard keywords.
We often ask ourselves, “how do you know if you are winning or losing?” The golden keywords were our losing keywords in January 2022, but now we can look back and relish how far we have come since then due to the hard work we have put together.
Video to more KPIs and details:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WSiq-SF13YmmEmcSRvJzffGQbUs6BAhT/view?usp=sharing
