I recently had a client relationship go bad because I could not “prove” that setting up Accounts and Properties correctly with Google actually improves search results. Now I have the proof.
This was an accident. I do not normally setup a client with the correct Accounts and Properties on the search engines while doing nothing else. Usually there are too many moving parts in the SEO game that prevent measuring the results of this single aspect of the job. This means I never get to measure this one SEO task’s results in isolation. Only by accident, due to a delay of the new live website was I able to measure the effect of only updating the client website relationships with search engines.
And here is the proof – a 53% increase in visits. This is the result of nothing more than cleaning up, or organizing the business’s relationships with search engines so they better index (understand the product and location, etc). This “house cleaning” requires deleting years of crap (many logins that have unknown admins; incorrectly linked accounts (Webmaster Tools with Analytics with Adwords) – but very thoroughly!
Nothing else changed. No new websites. No on site-SEO. No change in PPC campaigns – Produces a 53% increase in visits.
In some industries it could be called a “make-over” or “refurbishing”. Either way, it works better than most things you can spend money on to increase your natural search performance.
I have posted a PART II to this story – 160% Increase in traffic with the new website online