SEO for Business Strategy – Overview
Case Study (Part 1): Hamilton Door Company, Asheville, NC
My brother-in-law Jeff owns a custom garage door installation company in Asheville, N.C. Hamilton Door Company was named after his hometown of Hamilton, Ohio, where his family originally immigrated in the 19th century and began a tradition of high-end manufacturing, producing some of the finest products in their field. For the last two years, Jeff has worked hard to build a company from scratch that has grown to become the number one dealer of Carriage House Door Company products in Western North Carolina. A born salesman, Jeff’s hard work and dedication has brought him a great deal of success in this field, but when it comes to his online presence, he lags far behind his competitors.
Jeff Benninghofen of Hamilton Door Company
Like many small business owners, Jeff knew that he needed a web site but he knew nothing of HTML, PHP, CSS, or any of the other tools necessary to build a decent custom site. Instead, he signed up with his web hosting company and used their templates, along with some pictures of his family and his product to put up a website quickly and easily. Jeff was even savvy enough to contact customer support and get a quick lesson on keywords and META tags.
In spite of clever local radio ads, networking with builders and business groups, and forming tight relationships with purchasing decision-makers, every time a potential customer searches Google for “Asheville Garage Door,” they are presented with obvious results (Asheville Garage Door Services) – and Hamilton Door Company is nowhere to be seen. In fact, even if someone thinks they know the name of Jeff’s company and they do a search on “Hamilton Garage Door,” Jeff remains invisible.
I thought I had solved my invisibility issue, but alas, I am only promoting David Hall at Asheville Garage Door everytime someone searches locally. THAT P!$$ES ME OFF.
Now I’ve never been a fan of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – the practice of desiging web sites to maximize page ranking in search engine (Google, Yahoo, etc,) results. SEO always seemed to be full of voodoo and wierd practices to me – coming from the old-school online world, I still believed that “if you build it, they will come.” But the more I thought about Jeff’s situation – here was a guy who was doing everything right to create a business, working hard to build and manage customer relationships, giving back to the community he loves, and yet in spite of his best efforts, his online presence is virtually non-existent – I realized that search engine results pages (SERPS) are perhaps one of the last examples of pure competition in the business world.
Even when you include all of the sponsored links and AdWords ads (items which most people have learned to ignore anyway), Google still does a really good job of delivering relevant content to users who are searching for specific things. If a potential customer is searching for your products or services, they will be presented with thousands of choices grouped ten per page. Google has a complex and ever-changing algorithm they use to filter search results in such a way that the most relevant will rise to the top. If a user does a specific search for your goods and services and your business is not represented in the first or second page of Google results (and I’m being generous here by including the second page), then it may as well not exist. You have lost a potential sale and your competitors are waiting right there to take it from you.
No one knows exactly how the Google algorithm works, but you can read a brief description of the concept here. In spite of the fact that Google changes the algorithm whenever they see fit (always in an effort to present relevant content to their users), SEO experts strive to work the system in order to achieve the highest page rank possible.
Over the next couple weeks we will follow Jeff’s efforts as he strives to improve his page rank and ensure that his web site is working as hard as he is. Future topics will include Identifying Your Market, Evaluating Your Competition, Choosing Keywords, Creating Content, Building Links, and Promoting Your Business.
Tags:Case Study,Hamilton Door Company
Tags: 
This is very interesting. We have the same problem with my husband’s company. I can’t wait to read your next installments…finally someone who is writing, in easy to understand language, what I have been pondering.
Thank you, Marcie. I think this is information that is critical for all small businesses, but larger businesses as well may not be aware of these issues.
As competition becomes tougher, we should all educate ourselves about the tools we can use to promote our products and services and stand on at least an equal footing with our rivals.