Success Stories

Here are some of our success stories with respect to work related to search engine optimization strategy and implementation:

Cognos
A world leader in business intelligence (BI) and performance planning software for the enterprise, their solutions let companies improve and direct corporate performance by enabling all of the key steps in the management cycle—from planning and budgeting, to measuring and monitoring performance, to reporting and analysis. This company supports all of these key management activities with a complete solution that spans all of the essential components of CPM—enterprise planning, score-carding, and business intelligence. Main project objectives are lead generation and brand management.

Search Engine Positioning Strategy and Implementation Activities:

• Provided expansion and evaluation of target markets through search engine keyword research
• Keyword segmentation and categorization
• Competitive analysis of market segments
• Log file analysis
• Creating and implementing cost effective lead generating search engine strategies
• Evaluation of all external search engine advertisers
• Creation of global search engine strategy for all non-North American web sites
• Implementation and management of pay-per-click search engine advertising
• Reporting and analysis of traffic and conversion rates to measure ROI for both natural positioning and search engine monitoring
• Setup and configuration of business rules for the Google search appliance for Cognos’ internal search engine

Project Outcome:

• Cognos receives well over 100,000 unique 30 day visitors every month.
• Cognos ranks well with high demand keywords and keywords that have greater than 20,000,000 competitive pages on Google.
• Cognos also captures approximately 3,000-4,000 sales leads through the web site every month.
• Cognos’ has a Google Page Rank of 7 achieved through a link strategy campaign.
• Cognos also has approximately 49,000 pages indexed into the Google database.

Human Resources and Social Development Canada
HRSDC is the lead department for the Government of Canada’s commitment to ensure the economic and social well-being of Canadians. The department administers over $180 million in benefits to Canadians per day, provides electronic services to more than 2.5 million Canadians each week, and interacts with more than 55,000 community organizations every year.
Search Engine Positioning Strategy and Implementation Activities:

• The newly created Human Resources and Social Development Canada required a search strategy and web development to update its Web presence internally / externally and provide a search function for the departments new and legacy research material
• Conducted search engine market research to map out and understand the demand for HRSDC information, behavioural interaction and level of web site information utilization
• Using the research, we worked with the different program leaders within HRSDC to formulate a new taxonomy which was more amenable to organizing the information disseminated by each program and also for categorization within the current internal search engine framework
• Web designs and search engine architectures were rationalized against the research to include the key elements required for search engine compatibility and positioning; content evaluation and augmentation was also performed
• A hot topics dropdown was researched and implemented on the front page to reflect the keyword terms chosen, along with individual sub-menu systems for the more than fifteen separate sub-sections of the site
• Website designs were created to reflect the Canadian need for consumption of HRSDC related policies and information
• A robust dual level navigation system was developed to allow flexibility within the program areas to control organization of information
• Search engine assessments were conducted based on a thorough needs assessment of HRSDC search capacity
• Recommendations for boosting the search capacity were submitted and approved, and are currently being implemented within the department
• The website was designed to be fully scalable and follows treasury board guidelines for Common Look and Feel, is W3C 4.01 transitional compliant and has disability viewing elements built into the coding of the website

Project Outcomes:

• Our search engine market research techniques helped to formulate a new taxonomy that is in-line with how Canadians perceive and look for information on HRSDC issues
• Our  project team pioneered new and effective web solutions which had a spill over effect in other areas of communications; for example, the keyword research and taxonomy work led to the development of a plain language thesaurus and an updated lexicon of issues and information to be used in preparing news releases, key messages and other publications / communications activities
• The new Internet focuses on improved navigation and usability for the more than 2.5 million Canadians who visit the departmental site each week (The site is currently pending final content approval for launch.)
• Interesting ways were developed to show new or featured informational elements that were designed to be ‘above the fold’ and pass the ‘3-click test’
• Benchmarking, performance measurement and web analytics are being planned for the new site in production
• The department’s intranet site is also being updated with the search engine strategy developed for intranet

OttawaKiosk.com
Ottawa’s largest and most popular city guides with over 1.5 million page views per month. It produces many official web sites for Ottawa tourist locations, including Byward Market and Preston Street. OttawaKiosk.com provides increased visibility for Ottawa representing various key sectors in Ottawa including tourism, conventions, real estate, business services and entertainment.

Search Engine Positioning Strategy and Implementation Activities:

• Mapped out online search demand and implemented strategy for acquisition of new visitors
• Application development of database driven directories and mapping systems
• Management of online advertising
• Log file analysis to quantify on-going performance
• Implementation of Internet growth and revenue generating strategies

Project Outcomes:

• Over 1.5 million page views per month
• Expansion of the portal into 30 major cities in Canada
• Google’s trusted online resource in Ottawa with top 5 search result rankings across key search terms