Using Natural Search to Stand Out in a Crowded Market

Acquia

Acquia is a Boston-based company that provides commercial support for the open source Drupal social publishing system. Drupal is both a CMS and a social software platform, enabling users to publish and manage all types of editorial and user-generated content on the web—for example, a corporate website, a social networking site, or a multi-user blog. As a commercial vendor for Drupal, Acquia helps organizations large and small meet their web-related business goals using Drupal-based websites.

Problem

In March of 2008, Acquia launched their company and website in preparation for their eventual product release. This start-up company faced the challenge of entering an already crowded field, and was virtually invisible to the communities they were trying to reach on the web. They recognized that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was essential from the get-go. In order to improve a website’s presence in the search engines, there are two common methods:

1) Paid search engine advertisement
One benefit of paid search engine ads is that results are immediate. The downside is that results are typically in direct proportion to how much you spend, and last only as long as the cash flow. This method also does not impact the customer experience since it is not driven by the content of the website.

2) Natural SEO
Results will take longer to achieve, but rather than paying for each person that clicks on your link, it is a one-time investment that involves improving the relevancy and quality of your website content, leading to a higher ranking and longterm credibility.

Solution: Volacci SEO

Acquia’s goal is to be a trusted source of information and support for Drupal. Enter Volacci, an internet marketing firm that specializes in natural SEO. Volacci partnered with Acquia in May of 2008 to provide content optimization, conversions consulting, and link-building solutions for Acquia.com.

To optimize their site’s content, Volacci provided Acquia with a customized Drupal SEO Checklist that advised the implementation of specific Drupal modules for SEO. These modules included Pathauto, XML Sitemap, and others. Then, the site’s content, html, and structure were modified to better communicate to the search engines that Acquia is an authority on Drupal. Consequently, its attractiveness to both visitors and search engines was enhanced.

Volacci also provided recommendations to maximize the conversion rate. Increasing the rate at which visitors to the website download or purchase Acquia subscriptions directly affects the bottom line, so this was an important consideration. Successful websites construct an optimal path for visitors to follow to conversion by understanding their usual visitors and their expected behavior. Volacci worked with the Acquia team to identify high quality content and improve its utilization on the site to maximize conversions.

Finally, to introduce Acquia to the internet community, Volacci launched an extensive link building campaign. Links are what search engines use to determine the importance of a website. The core of Volacci’s link-building techniques revolves around the utilization of best practices, methodologies, and processes. Acquia press releases, special content, directory submissions, and link-exchange were all utilized to benefit the project. This resulted in a significant increase in the number of sites that link to Acquia.com, improving their overall site ranking with search engines.

Results

Volacci provides its clients with detailed tracking reports on a weekly basis to measure progress. When Acquia was ready to launch their product in September, they had achieved a significant increase in market awareness with the help of a drastic increase in their Google ranking. If we look at the search ranking of two highly-competitive terms over the first six months of the campaign, the results are striking: