Gemini Car Care Case Study

Online Branding Campaign

Client: Gemini Car Care (A Division of Goodyear)

Services: Search Engine Optimization

Product: Car care products and services

URL: www.geminicarcare.com

Report Date: January 2006

Gemini Car Care, a division of the Goodyear Tire Company, provides routine car care such as tune-ups, tire change and rotation, batteries, diagnostics and preventative maintenance. They wanted to start a branding campaign to raise awareness of their Web site and services, as well as a way to drive traffic to their site, and ultimately, to their brick and mortar stores.

Strategy
Together, we set goals for the site: generating higher quality traffic, improving search engine rankings and visibility for relevant search terms, increasing URL (domain name) retention, and gaining a better understanding of key phrase development in order to begin a Pay-Per-Click advertising campaign. We proposed a course of action that would mean a major overhaul of the site, both in functionality and SEO. We also provided a Market Research Report to determine what steps were appropriate and when, including:

• Optimizing the database, making it easier to track visitors.
• Optimizing the site and rewriting copy; the better the content, the better the Search Engines are able to index the information found on the site.
• Submitting to directories and do a linking campaign to drive targeted traffic and enhance visibility to the Search Engines.
• Tracking and reporting, enabling us to see who was visiting the site, where they were coming from, what functions they were using on the site, thus allowing adjustments to the site and SEO to better serve the users.

Tactics
Our strategy included a detailed analytics report comprised of a monthly traffic report, user paths, exit rates, conversion monitoring and statistics, ranking reports, and more. The analytics report also included information on keywords and a search engine referral breakdown. By monitoring results and measuring success on a monthly basis, we were able to make changes to the site and optimization based on user traffic and needs. We also did keyword research, developing additional ideas for keywords to target as well as usability improvements and additional conversion points.

The link building campaign resulted in an increase in incoming links from about 50 to over 600 and growing. Not only did the link building increase Gemini's exposure from other sites, but it has also improved Gemini’s overall rankings in the search engines.

Gemini’s Pay-Per-Click campaign also generated highly focused, targeted traffic, particularly during the months of November and December 2004. Gemini averaged a 2.4% click-through rate (the percentage of users who clicked their Pay-Per-Click ad), which is well above the industry average (1%). Some of the top performing keywords were “car battery,” “oil change,” “Goodyear tires,” and “auto tires.”

Results

The optimization began in late 2004 and results were immediately measurable:

-Unique visitors and search engine referrals both increased by over 100%.

-Site traffic increased by 27% in one month.

-Unique visitors rose from 7,646 pre-optimization to over 29,000 by August 2005

-Search terms used went from 3,200 to 6,000

Printable coupons were implemented as an additional conversion point in November of 2005, and by December the conversion rate was 7.29% (industry average is 1.3%), with 1,861 coupons printed the very first month.