When the executives of Accu-Tech Automation, a small manufacturer of custom parts-feeding systems, approached MarketWise Solutions for assistance with lead generation, they did not have any specific marketing tactics in mind.  Founder Brian Rhinehart and company manager Cheryl Hoch just knew they needed more and better-qualified sales leads.

One of the immediate tactics MarketWise Solutions implemented was to "optimize" Accu-Tech’s website so that it appeared at or near the top of the major Internet search engines when people searched for keywords or phrases that are relevant to Accu-Tech’s business.  In this case, a total redevelopment of the site was done, but in other situations, MarketWise Solutions would only focus on optimizing the existing site.  Accu-Tech’s previous site was not found in the top 100 results on any of the major search engines, and the look and feel of the site was not what the company desired, so some more extensive work was in order.

Accu-Tech’s new, optimized site went online just after Thanksgiving 2002 (www.AccuTechAutomation.com or www.Accu-TechAutomation.com).  By the end of January 2003, a mere nine weeks later, Accu-Tech was ranked highly on the major search engines for most of their important keywords.  As the enclosed printout proves, Accu-Tech was even listed #1 on Google, the leading search engine in the world!

As a direct result of this exposure, the phone started ringing, and Accu-Tech was brought into contact with qualified prospects the company never would have known about.  Almost immediately, the company received four significant leads from qualified, “ready-to-buy” prospects.  These leads resulted in several face-to-face meetings, some proposals, and one sale – the larger projects are still in the sales process, but should result in some additional closed orders.

Several Factors Contributed to this Success

1) The Website Host - Location, Location, Location

DellHost, one of the larger and better-known national website hosting services, houses Accu-Tech’s site on a shared web server for a minimal monthly fee.  This is important to the success Accu-Tech achieved because the major search engines, such as Google, Overture and Inktomi, scour the Internet with software search robots (known as spiders or crawlers) looking for web pages to include in their respective databases.  These robots know the most populated web servers have more new or revised pages than single-site or localized host servers, so they visit them more frequently as they make their continuous global rounds.  This helps get the pages on those well-populated servers indexed and ranked more quickly.

In Accu-Tech’s case, most of the important search engine spiders crawled and indexed the new site within three and a half weeks.  The first lead from a search engine listing came about a week later, which prompted Cheryl Hoch to write an email stating, “We received a phone call when they found us listed #1 for 'vibratory bowl coating' on Google.  Brian loved that!  It is a pleasure working with all of you.”   Accu-Tech completed the sales process and closed the deal shortly thereafter, and they have since received additional phone inquiries about bowl coatings based on web search results.

In fact, Google ranked Accu-Tech in positions #1 and #2 on Page 1 of those results, out of more than 1,400 listings (again, see enclosed printout of Google’s results page).  Had Accu-Tech chosen a service provider less popular than DellHost, or similar hosts such as XO or ValueWeb, these important leads may have been lost.

2) Relevancy is King

Because “Information Relevancy” is the prime determinant in establishing search engine rankings, one of the important factors in achieving Accu-Tech’s rankings success was the decision to allow MarketWise Solutions to re-develop their website from the bottom, and moving up, rather than the common top to bottom development method.  Here’s what we mean:

Developing a website from the bottom, means we are primarily focused on third level pages and building each of those pages around certain keywords.  This shifts the focus of a website from a generalized online brochure to a solution-specific knowledge base that is highly relevant to decision-makers.  By researching the most important keyword phrases – the phrases these decision-makers actually search for – MarketWise Solutions is able to create and deliver pages to them that provide the most meaningful information.  This approach also gets these pages to the top of the search engines.

3) Various Other Factors – Our Secret Weapons

Simply knowing Accu-Tech’s most important keywords, and placing the site on a popular host server, was not enough to create a site that achieved significant search engine rankings.  A vital factor for obtaining rankings success includes an understanding of the various algorithms employed by each of the search engines to determine page relevancy.  We must integrate all of the requirements of those algorithms into a single page of code to create a page that will receive high rankings.

Additionally, we must understand the multi-tiered (and down right confusing) relationships between all of the major search engines and how to economically submit pages for indexing.  This is very important in achieving quick and affordable success.  MarketWise Solutions started conducting research in this area over a year ago, and we continue to make this on-going investment.  Although most developers still know very little about website optimization (and others know absolutely nothing), MarketWise Solutions has become an industry expert.

Another very important factor in Accu-Tech’s rankings success is the fact that they have jumped into the optimization game early.  In a year or two, when every company has finally caught on and have optimized their websites, it may be too late to achieve a high ranking through optimization alone.  Right now is the time to take advantage of optimization.  If your site gets ranked high now, and starts getting hits, then in the future when most sites are optimized, your site should still be ranked higher because the hits you have received over the years makes your site appear to be more relevant to the search engines.

An additional significant factor in Accu-Tech’s optimization success is that Brian and Cheryl trusted MarketWise Solutions, a vendor they had never worked with before, to implement a tactic with which they had no familiarity.  Sometimes, when the going gets tough, the tough get courageous – and courage motivates us to reach out for something new as a means of expanding our potential.

For more information about how you can courageously grow your sales potential, contact Marketwise Solutions at 317-873-6976 or Info@MarketWiseSolutions.com.