Local SEO and PR Elevates Cisco-Eagle’s Brand Reputation
Strategic backlinking strategy paired with long-term SEO and PR bolsters manufacturing brand’s reputation and improved organic search results.
Overview
Cisco-Eagle, a turnkey provider of automated material handling systems, had built a respectable lead generation machine via its website and organic search — and these efforts had translated into millions of dollars in sales. However, the Cisco-Eagle marketing team knew it needed to develop a more strategic approach to its SEO and PR efforts to further elevate its brand.
To achieve this outcome, Cisco-Eagle approached Walker Sands looking for a partner with specific expertise in the industrial B2B sector and an understanding of the longer sales lifecycle associated with their business. Over the next three years, the teams worked together to build and implement a robust link-building strategy that improved Cisco-Eagle’s brand awareness through organic search and SEO-focused optimizations.
quality links across 1,337 sites
increase in organic search referrals YoY
growth in organic traffic
The Challenge
With an in-house marketing team at capacity, Cisco-Eagle needed a partner that could help them reach their demand generation goals. They aimed to leverage SEO and PR to broaden their audience reach and maintain competitiveness.
With these factors in mind, Walker Sands and Cisco-Eagle identified three key objectives for the program:
- Raise Cisco-Eagle’s presence in the industry through strategic PR
- Increase its local organic search presence for its branch offices
- Identify usability and SEO enhancement opportunities for Cisco-Eagle’s website
The Solution
Walker Sands worked with the Cisco-Eagle marketing team to develop and execute their SEO and PR strategy, focusing primarily on acquiring relevant backlinks, securing article placements in industry publications, optimizing geo-specific webpages and applying content optimizations across the entire site.
Industry outreach
Walker Sands kicked off the program by evaluating the warehouse automation industry to develop an insights-based backlinking strategy. After researching industry blogs, trade publications, social media and Cisco-Eagle’s existing manufacturing customer base, Walker Sands created a list of potential linking opportunities. The final list delivered to Cisco-Eagle included over three dozen relevant manufacturers and industry publications.
Walker Sands then supported the Cisco-Eagle team in contacting these target publications with pitches for guest posts that the company would provide. Cisco-Eagle had previously struggled with acquiring backlinks in the industry because many manufacturers didn’t want to link back to a distributor.
The Walker Sands team worked to overcome this challenge by finding innovative ways to raise Cisco-Eagle’s presence in the industry. One approach involved using Twitter strategically to share content created by target companies. As awareness of Cisco-Eagle grew among these organizations, they began to share Cisco-Eagle’s content on their platforms.
Just one year into the program, the Cisco-Eagle site had 800 inbound links from new domains and had published nearly three dozen articles across industry websites and on their blog.
Making a great SEO program even better
Although Cisco-Eagle had a strong organic search presence at the start of the program, the company wanted to enhance the presence of its regional offices in local search results. Walker Sands worked with the team to create and launch optimized geographical pages for the website while also implementing other local search tactics.
While the company’s lead generation pipeline was strong, the Walker Sands team identified a few key areas for improvement. For example, Cisco-Eagle needed support generating more inbound leads from key content pages on the website. So, Walker Sands recommended improving call-to-action buttons and banners, and then placing these on product category pages and other relevant content pages across the site. This strengthened their SEO value and optimized for higher conversions.
The Results
The teams’ SEO and PR efforts led Cisco-Eagle to realize 26% year-over-year (YoY) growth in organic search traffic, which represented the largest percentage of YoY growth in three years, and over 180,000 more organic search referrals.
A year into the program, the Cisco-Eagle website had 1,500 inbound links, with 800 of these links from new domains that hadn’t previously linked to Cisco-Eagle’s site. Additionally, notable PR placements secured during the program included Manufacturing.net, Chief Executive, and CamCode. The program’s culmination saw over 12,000 quality inbound links created across 1,337 websites.
Cisco-Eagle’s local search presence saw similar improvement through the creation of quality, geographic-focused landing pages that continued to drive traffic and leads for the entirety of the program.
Ultimately, the collaborative SEO and PR program empowered Cisco-Eagle to significantly elevate its brand presence and growth in the competitive manufacturing landscape.
