Google Page 14 to Page 2 in Just Three Months: How?

Bill Gates’s infamous “Content is King” essay is one of those rare pieces of writing that just keeps getting more relevant with the passage of time. This is especially true if your business or that of your clients relies on top search engine rankings, as does http://www.medicalinsurancequotes.com/, a medical insurance lead generation company.


What follows is a summarized case study demonstrating the effectiveness of a quality content campaign alone in search engine rankings. A link building campaign was not implemented for the entire three month duration of this case study.

Introduction:
The domain medicalinsurancequotes.com was purchased as a joint venture between ECOPYWRITERS and a third party. Our only goal was to take the domain from no-man’s land in terms of search results to one of the top 3 positions on Google and therefore turn it in to a lead generation power-house.

Methodology:
The design and development phase started in February 2010 and continued through to April 2010 during which time we added a 1,000 word splash page to serve as a holder while we configured the site’s analytics and completed the keyword research campaign. In May 2010, medicalinsurancequotes.com relaunched with 50 pages of original content, which was soon followed by an additional 35 more designed to attract long tail keyword searches. As with any good marketing campaign, tracking results and measuring successes and failures was vital in understanding if our marketing objectives were being met. The team tracked placement every 15 days and recorded where the site ranked for the keyword "medical insurance quotes".

Results:
As mentioned earlier, the content marketing campaign started out with a simple 1,000 word splash page which had been added to the website on or around March 15, 2010. Based on the above data, the team saw a substantial page rank increase moving from page 12 to page 7 by the middle of April 2010; an increase of roughly 50 positions over that time period. Another significant jump in overall placement occurred sometime between April 15, 2010 and May 1, 2010. Medicalinsurancequotes.com’s ranking increased from page 7 to page 3. This period also marked a significant content drop which included the addition of the 50 state pages being added to the site structure.

Summary:
Choosing a keyword domain was undeniably a smart move, but it was by no means entirely responsible for the impressive rise of medicalinsurancequotes.com in the search results. To influence Google ranking so significantly in such a competitive field, quality content supported by relevant keywords, especially long tail keywords, played a major role.

Discussion:
Barring a happy accident, no site is accessible to its core demographic without properly researched keywords. To compound matters, ineffective keywords ensure that those who do stumble across the site won’t convert. In order to drive the most traffic to a website as well as spur conversion, appropriate SEO site design practices must be combined with a consistent keyword content campaign. The trick here is that, as most recently emphasized by the Google Panda update, content must be informative and fresh in its own right. The balance between fresh content and keyword inclusion is delicate. Part of medicalinsurancequotes.com’s success was its ability to achieve a natural synthesis of relevant keywords and quality content. One cannot function to the best of its ability without the other.

Medicalinsurancequotes.com significant jump in Google’s search engine rankings based on content alone reaffirms what has by now become almost a maxim: content really is king.