Morrison Homes

How Inbound Interactive Helped Morrison Homes Sustain #1 Rankings for Key Terms Over 3+ Years

Morrison Homes is a large production home builder which builds 400-500 single family and multi-family homes every year in Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta.

“With Inbound Interactive’s help, we use remarketing more strategically, our AdWords campaigns are targeted based on our needs, and our online spending is more strategic overall .”

– Sam Hudson, Director of Marketing at Morrison Homes

Sustained #1 rankings for key local search terms

1,500+
new sales leads
in 2017

128%+ AdWords conversions year-over-year

50% decrease in Cost Per Conversion year-over-year

Challenges

Improvements Stopped Under Previous Vendor

Back in 2014, Morrison Homes had already been making a name for itself as one of Calgary’s premier home builders. Their hard work and dedication had won them 12 CHBA “Builder of the Year” awards for the Calgary Region, and the time was ripe to grow their online reputation and expand into other parts of Alberta.

The problem was that they’d reached an impasse with their SEO provider. As Sam Hudson, Director of Marketing at Morrison Homes, recalls, the account manager assigned to them eventually stopped adding value.

“We worked with a reputable company for about a year and a half,” Sam thinks back. “They did great work for us, but our relationship went a little off track. It started to feel like we weren’t on the same page.”

Even though their SEO provider had done everything they could, Sam knew that Morrison Homes still had room to grow.

“Our search results in new markets weren’t meeting our expectations. Our previous vendor couldn’t move the needle any further,” Sam says.

These problems prompted Sam to seek help. Sam knew that Morrison Homes needed an SEO expert who understood their niche and who could keep up with seasonal trends, such as changing price structures, seasonal campaigns, and appealing to new audiences.

Most importantly, Morrison Homes’ new SEO expert needed to have a strategy that would help them penetrate a new market.

“We had a few different priorities—we wanted someone who was easy to work with, and who had a senior level of knowledge in the area of online marketing,” Sam recalls. “But our primary concern was improving our visibility online in the city of Edmonton.”

With these prerequisites in mind, and their sights set on attaining higher rankings in Calgary and Edmonton, Sam reached out to Inbound Interactive for help.

 “Our search results in new markets weren’t meeting our expectations. Our previous vendor couldn’t move the needle any further.”

Solution

Onsite Optimization & Local SEO Audit

“We reached out to Inbound Interactive because their website’s content and Google rankings impressed us and made us confident that they knew what they were talking about,” Sam remembers.

Morrison Homes and Inbound Interactive tested out their new partnership with a site audit. After rigorous keyword research and a thorough audit, Inbound had come up with a number of suggestions on how Morrison Homes could improve their SEO.

“Their audit uncovered a lot of opportunities we could use to improve,” Sam remembers. “They listed priorities, and their suggestions were great, so we told them to go ahead.”

Inbound Interactive started helping Morrison Homes by implementing site-wide SEO improvements. They dug into keyword research and learned everything they could about Morrison Homes and their niche, then they began mapping target terms to specific pages on the Morrison website.

Next, Inbound Interactive conducted a complete local SEO audit and set about optimizing Morrison Homes’ location information, local citations, and Google My Business account. They even created a custom strategy that would help Morrison Homes identify and optimize existing show home locations.

“We made some good early gains in local results,” Sam says. “But we were still missing opportunities, so we asked Inbound Interactive to help us manage our AdWords campaigns too.”

Google AdWords Optimization

“One of our early challenges was that we needed more detailed reporting; I don’t think we were uncovering enough new opportunities for improvement,” Sam muses.

To solve this problem, Inbound audited Morrison Homes’ Google AdWords Account. They set target conversion points and integrated the account with Google Analytics for more comprehensive reporting.

Inbound Interactive also restructured Morrison Homes’ Google AdWords account and launched new campaigns for key terms. These ad campaigns, when coupled with new targeted ad groups, allowed Morrison Homes’ to compete for extremely competitive terms in the home building industry.

“With Inbound Interactive’s help, we’ve gotten a lot more sophisticated,” Sam says. “Now we use remarketing more strategically, our AdWords campaigns are targeted based on our needs, and our online spending is more strategic overall.”


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