How We Helped Dazmac Recover From Google’s Penalty and Achieve 150% Sales Leads Growth case study
Result Driven SEO initially helped us recover successfully from Google Penalty caused by a previous SEO agency. They, then, revamped the website and pushed our main keyword rankings from page 5, 6 to page 1 of Google. Our organic traffic has been increasing ever since together with our conversion rate
daryl mcintyre
Get your FREE consultation with Result Driven SEO

About The Client

Dazmac International Logistics is an international marine and automotive importing company that helps individuals and businesses become market leaders in shipping boats & cars into Australia.

Situation

In late 2013, Dazmac International Logistics was in hot water when its website experienced a sudden drop in traffic and ranking, despite having an SEO agency managing it. Sensing that something was not right, managing director, Daryl sought external help.

He did some research and found Result Driven SEO. After an initial audit, we found that his website was being penalised by Google.

It had a very bad backlink profile with low quality, irrelevant links from directories and dodgy sites from UEA, Middle East, India..etc.

The Results

In 12 months Result Driven SEO helped Dazmac to recover from the Google penalty and;

  • Increase the organic web traffic to Dazmac’s website 168.13 %
  • Increase the number of leads 150%
  • Increase the conversion rate from 2.0% to 6.0%
  • Achieve page 1 ranking for more than 20 national competitive keywords, 15 of them in top 3
traffic growth

Image 1: Traffic growth by traffic channels 2nd year compared to 1st year

ranking number 1

Image 2: Ranking number 1 for “import car from uk”

Technique 1: Immediately Get Out of the Penalty

After carefully auditing the site, we didn’t think that the old domain www.dazmac.com had any chance of a full recovery because of the high quantity of low and irrelevant backlinks built by previous SEO agencies.

We decided to quickly move this website to a new domain www.dazmac.com.au and get the new site indexed by search engines.

Technique 2: Keep the old domain but completely block search engines from indexing

We deindexed the old domain and removed all connections between the old and the new domains so Google could not see any association between the two.

We set up new accounts for the new domain—Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tool, social media account links —to leave no track of the old domain’s footprint.

Technique 3: Comprehensive Keyword Research For All Services and Blog Content

We extensively researched appropriate keywords for all of the service pages on the website and for all targeted suburbs, and we also did comprehensive long-tail keyword research to find out which search terms users use to search for information related to Dazmac’s main services.

The keyword research not only covered short-tail but also long-tail keywords for blog content development.

Technique 4: Research on What Strong Competitors Do and How They Do Well

Our competitor research is designed to gain a key understanding of Dazmac’s strongest competitors— their competitive advantages, value proposition, online marketing activities. We specifically identify;

  • Where their competitors advertise?
  • How their advertising is working?
  • Their biggest website traffic referral sources?
  • What keywords they are targeting?
  • Where they build links?
  • Where they promote their websites?

Gaining insights on what and how competitors are doing gives our team and the client, insights into how to surpass them.

Technique 5: Build More Pages

We gradually built more pages for Dazmac by creating a separate webpage for each suburb with unique content.

A website with 100 pages has greater traffic than a 10-page website, simply because it offers more topics that users could search on.

We applied this strategy to Dazmac’ service pages.

Technique 6: Highlight Dazmac’ Value Proposition and Key Differences from Other Logistic Companies

After extensive research on the industry and Dazmac’s biggest competitors, and also after interviewing Dazmac themselves, we were able to identify Dazmac’s strengths and value proposition—their key differences from their competitors.

We then highlighted these key selling points on the website home page and all subpages to ensure that their target prospects would be able to view it easily from wherever they landed on the website.

showcase best selling points

Image 3: Showcase best selling points for Dazmac

Technique 7: Implement On-site Optimisation Best Practices

We implemented best practices for on-page optimisation following the webmaster guidelines of Google and other search engines;

  • We rewrote benefits-driven copy so it placed users at the centre of benefits. Our goal is to create a website that users can quickly find the information they need more easily.
  • We ensured there was proper indexation using sitemaps, pagination, no-indexing tags and the reconciliation of all duplicate content.
  • We created individually crafted, uniquely written Meta Titles, Meta Descriptions, and Heading tags for all pages. By optimising the site’s title tags, meta description tags, heading tags and content to include targeted keywords, we were able to increase the search traffic.
  • We improved the website’s load times for proper SEO on both desktop and mobile devices. This is one of the key elements to increase the website ranking performance.
  • “No Follow” for unimportant links
  • Add image ALT tags to all images
  • Other technical SEO setups

Technique 8: Build a New Website to Increase Conversion Rate and Brand Perception

We rebuilt Dazmac’s website to enhance the look, functionality, user experience and conversion optimisation creating a website that was now well optimised for both desktop and mobile devices. According to our experience, no matter how much traffic you drive to the website, if it doesn’t sell, it doesn’t work.

mobile desktop view

Image 4: Mobile and desktop view of the website after the redesign

Technique 9: Build High Quality Links

Incoming links from other websites are an important SEO ranking factor to search engine optimisation. Poor quality links won’t just decrease your traffic or ranking, they also damage your domain and potentially attract penalties from Google and other search engines.

We take link building very seriously and we make sure that all the sites that we place links on are well screened before any placement. Some of the link building we did included;

  • Outreach to relevant blogs to feature Dazmac’s content
  • Participation in industry niche forums
  • Listing the website on business, industry niche and local directories
  • Submitting videos, and relevant marketing material to submission sites
ranking number 2

Image 5: Ranking number 2th for “American car imports”

dominating search results

Image 6: Dominating on the search results for “boat importers” – a competitive national keyword

Technique 10: Leverage Paid Advertising

Create Dedicated Landing Pages

We researched, designed and built specific landing pages for each Dazmac service offering, including; American car import and American boat import campaigns.

high conversion landing page

Image 7: We designed and developed high conversion landing page for Google Paid Advertising Campaign

Our Google Ads campaign for Car Importing resulted in a 55% conversion rate—an admirable rate for converting cold traffic to warm leads through paid advertising.

Conversion Tracking Setup

We set up conversion tracking: click tracking, mobile phone tracking and call tracking for the campaign.

We implemented A/B testing models and identified which elements worked better than others and we constantly tweaked the landing page elements to get the conversion rate higher.

Technique 12: Increase Website Conversion Rate

We constantly make changes on the website and landing pages based on our conversion optimisation activities, including;

  • A/B Testing
  • Click Map
  • Heat Map
  • Event Tracking

Boosting Conversions by Over 150 %

The results of our user surveys and split tests enabled us to develop a more efficient means of directing visitors to the products they were most interested in. The result? An 150% increase in conversions!

Result Driven SEO initially helped us recover successfully from Google Penalty caused by a previous SEO agency.
They, then, revamped the website and pushed our main keyword rankings from page 5, 6 to on page 1 of Google.
Our organic traffic has been increasing ever since together with conversion rate

daryl mcintyre

Daryl McIntyre
Managing Director, Dazmac International Logistics

Get your FREE consultation with Result Driven SEO

Our Clients

16 Ways to Increase the Conversion Rate Right Now

Learn More