Ethical Consumer Case Study (ethicalconsumer.ca)

The Challenge: Create an organic search (SEO) strategy for a new online directory devoted to ethical/green/eco-shopping, positioning it in the results of the main search engines alongside the 2-3 most significant competitors.

Background: When approached in June of 2008, EthicalConsumer.ca had just launched and was "live” but was virtually invisible in the major search engines and was receiving only minimal search traffic.

"I chose to work with Snaptech after considering a number SEO companies because they were the only company to sit down with me and spend time going over my needs and goals before a contract was signed. When I originally met with Mike and Ian it was quite apparent that they enjoyed the work that they did and enjoyed working at Snaptech. They gave me excellent advice upfront which still serves me today." Melody Owen, Founder EthicalConsumer.ca

Our Approach: Content was crucial while the site owner concentrated on building the number of product and service listings in the database. This was addressed through the addition of a blog and the promotion of this freshly updated content by regularly producing and submitting XML sitemaps to the search engines.

Snaptech SEO specialists also performed technical work on the site infrastructure to ensure all pages had unique titles and accurate descriptions. This required minor programming changes to the software powering the site.

Keyword research was conducted and recommendations made regarding blog content and changes to the site’s main page.

Proper analytics tracking was put in place and the site’s owner was trained in the use and interpretation of the collected data.

Results: (comparing the months of July 2008 with November 2008)

1. Overall traffic from search engine sources has increased by 222%
2. Visitors from Google rose from 552 in July to over 1800 in November.
3. The site is now ranked #1 in Google.ca and #3 in Google.com for the search term "Ethical Consumer”
4. The site is now ranked in the top 5 for Ethical Consumer in MSN, Yahoo and Altavista
5. A blog page is ranked #1 for the key phrase "Canadian ethical products” in Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask and Altavista.
6. The overall number of unique visitors has increased by 188% (800 – 2300)
7. The overall number of pages viewed has increased by 118% (2400 – 5260)

We continue to work with Melody and the Ethical Consumer website to ensure online visibility continues to grow, and the search enginesfind and index new content

"Snaptech has gone above and beyond what I expected. All questions and concerns have always been addressed quickly and professionally. Snaptech is obviously interested in building relationships with their clients that are mutually beneficial. As an Internet business, we were not able to generate revenue until we had traffic so increasing traffic quickly was incredibly important. The traffic at Ethical Consumer continues to grow and I am pleased with the results." Melody Owen, Founder EthicalConsumer.ca