Small Business SEO Experiment Results – Week 1

Week number one of my small business SEO experiment was nothing if not a success.

The first seven videos have launched on The Murray Group website and there has been nothing but positive feedback.

Let’s get straight into the superficial counting numbers:

• Total Traffic
• Previous Week = 77 page views
• Week 1 = 140 page views
• Percent change = 82% ↑

• Facebook Likes
• Previous Week = 107
• Week 1 = 124
• Percent change = 16%↑

I am also tracking reviews on three separate sites Yelp, Google, and Facebook (which technically calls their reviews “recommendations”) because reviews not only help with SEO but they are also very influential to consumers when deciding whether or not to contact your business.

Unfortunately I did not receive any new reviews for The Murray Group on any of the above mentioned sites.  But we have to remember this is an experiment.  So I didn’t expect all the success to happen in the first week.

Results That Matter

So all the information I’ve shared so far is well and good but I know you’re not reading this article to find out how many Facebook Likes I got last week.  You want to know if I made any sales…

This is what gets me Jacked-Up, this is why the Internet is such a huge part of our Agency’s marketing strategy moving forward… The answer to “Did I make any sales?” Is YES!

We received 3 inbound leads in week 1 of the small business SEO experiment.  Two of those leads were personal lines and one was commercial.

I closed one of the personal accounts last week for $170 revenue (Auto only).

The other personal lines account and the commercial account are still viable leads that we are working on.  Hopefully they will close as well.

I have spent a total of five hours working on the small business seo experiment so far.  Most of that time was prep in getting the questions together and getting them ordered the way I wanted.  Producing the videos, uploading them to YouTube, and embedding the videos on our website takes about 15 minutes per video.

I’ve produced 9 videos at 15 minutes per video, that’s two hours and fifteen minutes of production time to make $170 (so far).  Not bad considering these videos are going be working for me every minute of every day of every week from here on out.  Even on Holidays…

What I’ve Learned So Far

The very first change that I am going to make to the video series is simple but I think important and was brought to my attention by the wonderful Nicole Waerzeggers of Harms Insurance Group.  I do the video’s in batches because as we all know there is only so much time in the day.  So it looks like I’m wearing the same thing in every video and that is because I am wearing the same thing in every video.  So I’m going to mix up my apparel to give the video’s a more personal feel.  Great suggestion!  Much appreciated.

Second, I’m working on how to format the blog post in a way that the Review call-to-action is better positioned.  I truly believe that customer reviews are a key to small business revenue generation online and I want more of them.

Last, the blog posts themselves are not the most appealing piece of online real estate.  This is a longer term project but I want to update the WordPress Theme that The Murray Group uses to something that is a little more aesthetically pleasing.

Week 1 Words to Remember:

Thank you.

written by: Ryan Hanley

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