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Company: UK Digital Storage Ltd
Project: UK Digital Storage - Search Marketing

http://www.ukdigitalstorage.com

Dates: Jan 2007 to Mar 2008

Attachments:

How did the project start?

UK Digital Storage (UKDS), a document scanning, document management and archive storage business wanted to increase the number of enquiries and visitors via its main website http://www.ukdigitalstorage.com.Document Management is a competitive IT industry, with many businesses competing and optimising their websites. Target clients are often in IT roles due to the nature of our product, making online marketing all that more important than in other industries.

The Managing Director was keen to grow the business quickly and realised this would be possible by concentrating on an aggressive, internet based marketing strategy.

The North East based business wanted to generate business throughout the UK and embarked on a focused online Marketing Strategy in January 2007 to increase sales for its business. The nine point strategy involved:-

•Main website redevelopment
•Pay per click marketing
•Pay per lead marketing
•E-mail marketing
•Search engine optimisation of 17 industry related keywords
•Link building
•Acquiring domain names
•New product related micro sites and websites
•Analysis of competitor websites

What options did you consider?

The company considered and trialed third party providers to manage the sponsored links and optimisation of its website and achieved funding from One North East’s Catalyst programme.
UKDS quickly realised that there would be a real advantage in understanding and carrying out its own online marketing, website development and optimisation programme. The company embarked on a nine point online marketing strategy, detailed below
1. Main website redevelopment of www.ukdigitalstorage.com including:-
• New contact us button and telephone number on each website page to capture customer enquiries for document scanning, document storage, document management, accounts payable software, data entry and forms processing.
• Redevelopment of document scanning estimator, encouraging potential clients to work out their document scanning project costs, providing project details, creating leads and capturing contact details.
• Links to main product areas from home page, helping to increase the natural search engine positioning of each key product area.
• Additional text area on home page, allowing specific product information to be marketed.
• “Good key words” software helped the company to discover and initiate the use of location specific keywords, increasing unique visitors to website.
• Newsletter sign up page to encourage clients to sign up for latest product and services news from UKDS and to capture contact details.
• Optimisation of a number of key words and introduction of a weekly monitoring and evaluation system for each word on each search engine.
• Competitor analysis of websites of top listed companies on Google
2. Pay per click Marketing
Investment in monthly Google Adwords campaign for main product keywords to increase leads and positioning of site, utilising freeware to help identify cost effective keywords.
3. Pay per lead Marketing
Investment in pay per lead marketing with two leading providers for Document Scanning and Document Storage.
4. E-mail Marketing
E-mail marketing software and development of templates for product specific e-mails to potential clients throughout the UK. 5000 e-mails distributed per month.
5. Search Engine Optimisation
Promotion of 17 keywords throughout main website to increase natural search engine positioning and ultimately unique visitors to www.ukdigitalstorage.com. Use of main keywords in title bars and in description of picture content. Development of weekly monitoring system of positioning on 5 main search engines (Google, Alta Vista, Lycos, Yahoo and MSN) to evaluate the impact of website development and optimisation.
6. Link Building
Link Buiding strategy to acquire links with sites that have a page rank of 4 or more to increase www.ukdigitalstorage.com google page rank.
7. Domain Names
Accquring several product related domain names to increase visitors to main website.

8. Product related websites
Creation of product related websites for document storage, large format drawings scanning and benefits of scanning for disaster recovery plans. Creating high unique visitor levels for new websites.
9. Analysis of Competitor Websites
Evaluation and ranking of top 5 competitor websites to discover how to increase natural search engine positioning.

What help and expertise did you receive?

The company’s Managing Director, David Bryce embraced online marketing as an essential tool to facilitate the company’s ambitious growth plans. He initially joined the Business Link Website Optimisation Forum and found this to be focused towards those with no prior knowledge of website marketing.
He then followed up a One North East article offering search engine optimisation services. UK Digital Storage participated in sessions with One North East to develop knowledge of search engine optimisation.
Following this training UK Digital Storage started a pay per click marketing campaign and optimisation programme, producing a number of quality leads and re-enforcing the value of online marketing. After the success of the initial campaign, UK Digital Storage decided to employ a Marketing Manager to focus on online activity, including keyword optimisation, pay per click, pay per lead and website redevelopment.
A Catalyst Grant was received to fund the re-development of the company’s website, launch product related websites and optimise a number of keywords for its website. The grant also enabled the company to design e-mail templates for e-mail marketing purposes.

Did you face any challenges or learn any lessons?

The company found it more effective to manage its own optimisation and online marketing. It also implemented a programme of evaluation to monitor keyword statistics performance on the 5 main search engines in order to assess the impact of specific SEO work and website redevelopment.

What are the outcomes and how has it improved your business?

As a result of investment in keyword optimisation and search engine marketing, UKDS has increased its positioning on natural search engine listings. The company has 1st position on MSN for 7 keywords, is in the top 3 on Google for 6 keywords and is in the top 10 on Google for 5 keywords.

Example of Keyword Success
Scanning Bureau UK (152,000 search engine results) – 1st on MSN, Alta Vista, Alltheweb & Yahoo. 3rd position on Google. Positioned between 10th to 40th place on main search engines in October 07.
UK Document Scanning Bureau (48,200 search engine results)– 1st position on Alta Vista, Alltheweb and Yahoo. 2nd and 3rd position on Google in March 08. 11th in October 07.
Document Scanning Bureau (118,000 search engine results) – 8th position on Google in March 08. 47th position in October 2007.
Drawing Scanning (598,000 search engine results) – 3rd position on Yahoo, Alltheweb and Alta Vista in March 08. Not listed on any major search engines in October 07.
Website Visitor Success

Weekly unique Visitors to UKDS website, http://www.ukdigitalstorage.com, has quadrupled since January 2007.

Average number of unique visitors per week in January 2007 was 59, with 2728 hits. The average number of unique visitors per week in March 2008 was 244, with 13297 hits.

Business Success

UK Digital Storage’s business has grown by 90% during the last 12 months and 85% of its revenue is now generated outside of the North East Region by Website Enquiries. The company can attribute this revenue from website enquiries and has identified this media as a key source of growth for the business and, of course, job creation in the north east.
The internet is fundamental in driving its business growth and has enabled the company to increase its sales team from 1 to 4 people
The increased amount of enquiries generated has enabled the business to invest in new premises with confidence. The business has invested in state of the art, customised premises.
The company receives enquiries from a wide range of product areas online including document scanning, document storage, archive storage UK, document management software, accounts payable software services, microfiche conversion services, microfilm conversion services, aperture cards scanning services, scan-on-demand services,

What are your plans for the future?

The company plans to continue its online marketing strategy, focusing on link building, search engine optimisation and new website development.
The online marketing strategy has had positive effects for the business and the directors are continuing with their strategic approach to marketing.
UKDS is currently developing two additional product and industry related websites. The company has learnt from previous experience and is ensuring that the new websites are built with ease of navigation for search engine spiders in mind.
All new websites will be optimised with product keywords and are being designed to promote customer capture.
The company is trialing a range of e-mail marketing material and product related templates and is tarageting companies throughout the UK
Product related pay per click and pay per lead campaigns for its main business area continue.