Questions about Contractor Gorilla, answered in the words of the people who did the work. The engagement itself is on its own page.
What was the first search tactic put in motion, and why did it move the firm toward page one?
Getting on Cision, the network where reporters look for people to comment. That came first and it was the most effective thing we did. A couple of reporters covering construction ended up calling us constantly for comments on stories they were writing. Our theory was placement and backlinks: every mention, wherever it lands, adds up. We once turned up quoted on a local news station in Ohio off something we had said in an article, and we have no idea how it got there. That was the point. Breadth of placement, built on real relationships with reporters.
How did the additional target phrases perform, and what did tracking them teach?
Once something worked, we did not change it. We built a system around reporter outreach and breadth of placement and listed our projects in as many places as we could. The key was sticking to the process. We tried other things here and there, and some just got more expensive. Design-build beat general construction because it was specific, the same way green building did, and that is where we first started buying AdWords.
What signal showed that design-build beat general construction?
Ranking performance, strictly from the analytics and our placement. We were one of the first to move to true design-build, where we could say we controlled every part of the process. The sales pitch was better, and because fewer companies did design-build the way we truly did, we ranked better too. It was also just a better way to do business.
What did working as the operator inside the agency allow that a normal client relationship would not?
Construction is all about control. The agency was focused on contractors, and we were a large one, so we were the use case and we knew the space. That gave us more autonomy than a normal client. We directed some of the strategy, and it was very open-book.
What strategy changed because open-book access showed the agency's first approach would not work for contractors?
Really just the sales narrative. You paint the picture of an outdoor assembly line, and if you control the design, you control the front end. You know how the project got started and where it is with the city, without relying on third parties. That narrative got better, and the pitch was different online. The pages used terminology we were very early to, so we were first to market with a good idea, very similar to when we were the first green building construction company in Southern California.
Which term were we early to, and what did it help prospective clients understand?
In-house design-build, with the architects on our own team. The term was brand new in LA when we started, so we built multiple websites around it, and it told a client that one company held both the design and the construction. Equating it to an outdoor assembly line painted that picture, and it worked because we backed it with visual collateral that showed every single step in the process and where it can go wrong.