One of our longtime clients provides guided tours to the Grand Canyon, departing from Las Vegas. For over a decade, they went by the mouthful of a name LasVegasGrandCanyonTour.com (LVGCT). Those long, “keyword-rich” domain names were popular at one time, despite their drawbacks. Such drawbacks include poor consumer recall and user experience problems (cramming long names into lines of text for ease of reading). Despite those shortcomings, we’ve had very good success at driving business results for the client through Google AdWords. But organic search referrals were another matter. Like many companies who worked to achieve high search engine rankings in the early 2000’s when it was an easier proposition, LVGCT’s organic search rankings began to drop steadily after years of inattention.
The client knew we were one of the most effective paid search agencies in the world, but they soon learned that we integrate that service effectively with a web development capability that is rare in its laser focus on business outcomes. We weave search engine optimization into that same mix. Now, after working with the client for six months to devise an updated brand identity and marketing strategies to match, we’re thrilled to announce the launch of CanyonTours.com, the new name, face and home of LVGCT.
Times have changed. Search engines confer no special benefit on long, exact-match domains. It’s not free to find quality, shorter domains with marquee branding potential, but the ROI on such investments is strong, and the prices still within reach of serious business owners. It takes a bit of digging and negotiating savvy, of course. (And a shout-out to our friends Adam Eisner and Bill Sweetman, true savants in the domain name realm, and nearly as good as us at ferreting out great deals.)
To go with the name change, we created a new brand identity for the company, complete with a new logo, new design standards and a new website. To combat the slide in organic rankings, the website was rebuilt from the ground up with a new site architecture and a modern user experience. Search engine optimization principles were embedded in the new site architecture, and social media hooks were added throughout.
As a result of this initial effort, organic rankings and traffic have already begun to surpass the previous version of the site in just a few weeks. In addition to assisting with organic optimization, we’re advising the client on other forms of digital marketing like content strategy and social media, both vitally important for thorough visibility in a time when organic algorithms are harder than ever to influence and when social signals are widely seen to be an increasingly important organic ranking factor.
At Page Zero, we refer to the intersection of SEO, content marketing and social media as online “Findability,” because if a company isn’t visible in search engines or in social media, they’re not as “findable” as the competition surely is.
For a topic as sprawling as the Grand Canyon, we should have no shortage of content opportunities to help boost the company’s organic profile and brand awareness through social media connections.
If you’re planning a visit to the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, Death Valley, Red Rock Canyon or Las Vegas, check out CanyonTours.com first. By coincidence, my family and I have long planned to visit the Canyon this year, and yes, we booked our helicopter tour through CanyonTours.com!
Cory Kleinschmidt