Case Study: 
Type of Campaign
SEO – search engine optimization
Synopsis
Heinz Wattie’s is an FMCG manufacturer of packaged food products. “Food in a Minute” (www.foodinaminute.co.nz) (FIAM) is a promotional vehicle Heinz Wattie’s uses to market its products to New Zealand consumers through a variety of channels. FIAM generates demand for Heinz Wattie’s products by providing recipes targeted at time-poor cooks with average to low cooking skill.
The main function of the website is primarily to support TV commercials. This is done by providing the recipes shown on TV. Another key role of the website is to acquire new audiences who do not see the TVCs and so who may not be aware of FIAM.
A key issue facing FIAM was that the site had very limited search engine visibility and was absent from top 30 rankings in search engines for recipe-related search terms. This effectively meant the site was invisible to most search engine users, which as a result was costing FIAM lost web traffic and sales opportunities.
Objectives
FIAM’s online agency engaged SureFire to provide search marketing services to promote the website. Specific objectives were to:
- Improve search engine rankings
- Generate increased website visitors from search engines
- Increase “MyCookbook” registration sign ups.
Strategy and Implementation
SureFire under took a search engine compatibility audit of the site to identify reasons why the site was not ranking in search engines. A range of issues were identified and solutions to address these recommended. Many of the issues related to the fact that the FIAM website is essentially a database of recipes and consequently web pages had URLs containing query string parameters that search engines had problems with.
Due to the fact SureFire was engaged after the site had just been re-developed SEO fixes had to be retro-fitted and recommendations such as URL re-writing could not be implemented by the client. Recommendations that were implemented included:
- Development of unique title and meta tags for web pages
- Development of an html sitemap search engine spiders could use to reach all recipe pages
- Development of a link building strategy
One limitation faced was limited ability to do on-page optimization and modify page copy. A solution to address this was development of optimized content rich landing pages which were created for a range of targeted keywords identified from keyword research. NB – these pages contained real content and were integrated into the site. This is in contrast to the solution proposed by another SEO firm which involved implementing a hidden “doorway pages.” Search engines strongly object to these & penalize sites when they are detected.
Results
Following optimization the FIAM search engine visibility improved substantially, as did the traffic delivered from search engines.
Pages Indexed
Since optimisation the number of pages indexed by Google has grown by over 1,000%, jumping from 237 pages to 2,600 pages. The more pages indexed; the more chances of ranking for more keywords.
Search Engine Rankings
FIAM dominates search engine results for all the keywords targeted, and most are ranked #1 in Google NZ. FIAM has significantly more top 10 rankings in Google, Yahoo and MSN than its competitors (top 10 rankings mean FIAM is listed on the first page of the search results).
Traffic
Rankings in search engines are not an end-goal in their own right. They are simply a means to achieving the end goal of driving to your website increased targeted traffic that ‘converts’. Following optimization traffic delivered from search engines increased in both absolute and relative terms compared to all traffic sources.
