When you have no access to a site with a Content Management System (CMS) and you’re trying to build awareness and visibility of a business there are limited routes to go down when it comes to Search Marketing.

Why I Decided To Do Offsite Optimisation?

I am currently a Marketing Executive for an insurance broker in Manchester which does have it’s challenges when it comes so search and social media as insurance is not something people generally have light-hearted conversations about with friends or peers or tend to want to get involved with unless absolutely necessary. As we have a new site currently under development and or existing site is static with no CMS I decided to take on offsite optimisation in order to increase awareness until the new site was up and running and fully optimised.

One of the insurance products we provide is very specific; cover for those training within the conflict management and physical intervention sector. In laymen’s terms, people who train professionals in the security industry; security guards, door supervisors and so on. So what we have to offer is for a niche audience making our product unique.

I was up against two main problems which lead me to offsite optimisation;

1) Because the product is niche it was not visible on many platforms so few of the necessary audience knew us.

2) The site itself had and still does have little to no SEO, impacting even more upon the first problem as it was rare that our site appeared in any relevant Search Engine Results Pages (SERP’s).

What I Wanted To Achieve With Offsite Optimisation

I wanted to make us noticeable and known within the conflict management and physical intervention skills sector in order to generate more enquiries and hence new clients. Due to the lack of knowledge we had of the existing web developer the easiest and quickest route seemed to lie with offsite optimisation.

How I Used Offsite Optimisation

Optimising the existing site as much as possible before getting a new fully optimised one built took a lot of time and work. In order to get out name out there and build product awareness I began by setting up a twitter account specifically for the product (because the audience is niche and a world apart from our other clients and prospects) this allowed for all messages to be specifically tailored to the industry, their interests and their needs. We follow prospects and clients, keep up with industry news, network with industry press and generally do what we can to get to know everyone.
In tandem with this I was busy working on getting us up Google rankings, still with no on site optimisation. I felt this best way to do this was via web business directories both general and insurance industry specific in order to increase the chance of conversions plus gain credibility and the conflict management training industry. Some of the directories are very helpful as they allow keywords to be entered and so on, if used properly a free listing can be maximised. The web directory listings are updated on a monthly basis depending on how we are performing on each key term, determined by my own weekly monitoring.
Along side this press releases we sent out to industry press, associations and posted by myself on forums this too helped to generate link building.

What Have I Achieved With Offsite Optimisation?

We now dominate the first page of Google on many key search terms not only with business directories but our site itself has also been pushed up the rankings due to the number of and the quality of the links, this is crucial to gaining offsite optimisations as suggested by Revisions Media Group, as you can see above and below.

Due to our increased visibility the number of enquiries on a daily basis has increased as has the number of prospects previously deciding not to take cover with us now getting in touch and deciding we are the right choice for them.

As a number of our prospects know us from twitter they are receptive to e-shot campaign material which having not known us may have been deleted without even reading the title of the email, figures show that a large proportion are being read and images clicked on. Social media has also resulted in both prospects and clients approaching us with more ease and on a more regular basis.

The outcomes above have given us a good platform to build upon when the new and more interactive site is launched.

Have you had an experience which has limited you to offsite optimisation? Leave a comment or follow me on Twitter.

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