ENDORSIVE
SEO CASE STUDY
HOW WE INCREASE THE AVERAGE DAILY LEADS FOR a local LICENSED MONEYLENDER BY 311.5% IN 30 DAYS
Hightlights
- Increase average daily lead from 2 to 6.18- 311.5% Increase in lead count compared to last month (Excluding Calls)
- Exceed previous month’s high by 58 leads (Excluding Calls)
- Page view bump from a daily average traffic of 55 to 101.2
Problems We Faced
- Inconsistent lead flow to justify daily opening hours + Staff + Expenses
- Digital presence is weak, can’t seem to compete with most/bigger competitors
- Standardized legal guidelines, they have 2-3 unique offers but nothing that makes them a preferred brand
- No user experience in mind, users bouncing all over the site and can’t find what they are looking for
What We Provided
- Competitor research
- MAS legal regulatory research
- Trend analysis (COVID-19)
- KW optimization for existing posts
- A/B testing for branding angle
- Improve user experience/user navigation
- Disavow spam links
- Re-write copy for sales pages
Client
The client runs a legal licensed money lender firm located in Singapore. The firm has been around for more than 10 years, providing legal financial loans to the citizens at affordable and transparent rates.
(Client’s business has been anonymized due to the nature of the niche.)
Challenges
Competing in an oversaturated market
The firm has engaged various SEO service providers in the past but didn’t quite fit their needs. The service provided was catered to the mass market (1 size fits all solution) it didn’t help improve the site’s traffic and ranking.
This issue was exacerbated by the COVID-19 Pandemic, where more of their competitors started putting more effort into their online presence increasing the competitiveness of the niche.
SEO for that niche became even more competitive, they found themselves dropping in ranking on google, they also experienced a decrease in more than half the amount of leads they received.
With the industry being understrict enforcements and guidelines, everyone competing in the same niche has the same terms. There is no edge other than branding itself.
Solutions
Initially, we were hesitant about bringing them on as a client because they were in a grey and extremely competitive niche. But after doing some research, we spotted various keyword opportunities that aligned with our own database. At that point, we were 80-90% sure that we could deliver results, so we moved forward.
Firstly, we cleaned up the site’s backlink profile which was heavily spammed by competitors impacting the rankings.
The previous vendor took no action regarding the negative SEO spam, claiming everyone else has it.
The main traffic driver was solving the misalignment of intent and how they structure their content.
The goal was to improve their site standing and their inflow of leads by optimizing specific keywords for their sales pages.
“At first we were skeptical about the team's ability to deliver ... however, we were impressed by how transparent and accountable they were. They came down to our office to explain and firm up the traffic plan for the site, set realistic goals, and deliverables. We felt that they were sincere and transparent so we decided to engage them."
We optimized the keywords for those content and the traffic started trending up over the next 10 days. However, the owner of feedback that there wasn’t an improvement in the number of leads coming in. This was a strong indicator that there might be a conversion issue with the site.
The next step was to map out the user experience when navigating the site and find holes in the sales funnel. Some of the issues addressed were:
- The menu wasn’t intuitive. The users were directed to broken pages or loans that weren’t offered which resulted in a high bounce rate. A new service directory was created and loans not offered were removed.
- There were many redundant pages and duplicates. I.e to multiple “about” pages. It was removed as it was causing keyword cannibalization.
- Created new sales pages for loans offered with optimized keywords.
- The copywriting for the sales pages were generic and didn’t quite evoke emotional responses or direct the user to take a specific action. We rewrote the sales copy with more emphasis on empathy.
As the site was built 5 years ago, there were parts of the site that started breaking due to the code, hence a high bounce rate is inevitable. We did our best to plug the holes in the sales funnel.
Results
Tripled the amount of average daily leads within 30 days.
Started SEO work on the 5 Sep. Traffic continued to trend up after keyword optimization. (High Volume on SEP 16 due to to support work)
“Our call applications track very closely to the amount of email inquiry leads. The increase in the amount of traffic also doubled our phone enquiries."
Before (Month of Aug 2020)
Total monthly leads of 62 and an average of 2 leads per day. The highest no. of leads per day is 5 while the lowest is 0.
After (Month of Sep 2020)
Total monthly leads of 119 and an average of 6.18 leads per day. The highest no. of leads per day is 8 while the lowest is 0.