MorrisAnderson & Associates

MorrisAnderson is a financial and operational consulting business based in Chicago, IL. Their goal was to better understand the state of their SEO and identify growth opportunities through Digital Marketing. Up until our campaign, they had not invested in Digital Marketing before.

Our approach consisted of 3 phases:

Phase 1 (proposed): Establish a Healthy Foundation

• Key objectives:
  • Technical SEO Audit
  • Content Audit
  • Keyword/topic Research
  • Optimized Meta Data

Phase 2 (Proposed): Brand Lift and Website Redesign

• Key objectives:
  • Create new branding and identity guidelines (this was rejected)
  • Design a cohesive website based on new branding
  • Launch website with new features to prepare for Phase 3

Phase 3 (Proposed): Authority and Differentiation

• Key objectives:
  • Authoritative content creation
  • Thought leadership and industry awareness

Proposal Rationale

For MorrisAnderson, Mike felt that phase 3 was the most important to their growth. His thought was that the way to grow their business through Digital Marketing was through content that would differentiate them from their competitors and showcase their team’s talent and experience.

Additionally, Mike’s research suggested that in the finance industry, the primary way that companies find and hire businesses like MorrisAnderson did not start with a Google search – it looked much more like a “who you know” situation.

That in mind, it made sense that the traditional approach of ranking conversionary blog content for commercial/investigational intent search queries would likely yield low ROI.

Thus, Mike’s content strategy aimed to drive new business via thought leadership and industry awareness.

Content Marketing Strategy

Our proposed content marketing strategy centered around monthly white papers similar to the reports that MorrisAnderson had already been producing, except we would double down and make them full experiences. A common mantra of Mike’s is that great content happens when you can read it, watch it, or listen to it. Our marketing strategy would involve the following:

• Professionally designed PDF templates aligned with updated branding
• Article versions published to their website
• Roundtable style podcasts (monthly) featuring the team
  to discuss their findings the outlook for the industry (MA Insider)
• We would then integrate the podcast episodes into the website version

Promotion

To amplify this content we proposed:

• Digital PR – Press coverage and links from popular websites in the financial industry would increase exposure and traffic.
• LinkedIn – With the team posting frequently and individually growing followings, this would both grow their thought leadership and increase exposure to the podcast and content
• Email – Develop a monthly subscriber base

Strategy Re-Alignment: Fast Track to Marketing

• During our Technical SEO audit, we found that many foundational aspects of the old website itself were causing Technical SEO problems. Rather than try to fix them, it ended up being easier and more cost effective to simply start fresh with a new website.
• Our content audit also revealed several problematic findings. Service page content was thin, and while unintentional, the way the site was organized resulted in many instances of duplicate content.
• It was decided that the most effective way to fix the problems would be to re-build the site with an optimized structure and create new service page content during the process.
• After launching the new site, we would proceed with the Phase 3. Marketing strategy

Results

After launching the new website with baseline optimization and technical SEO issues resolved, we saw a positive increase in organic traffic and rankings.

In summary, we addressed the following:

• Poor Site Speed
• Unoptimized meta data
• Crawling/Indexing problems
• Page Rank dilution
• Duplicate content/thin content

A screenshot of the uptick in organic traffic post website launch

A screenshot from SERPWatcher showing the queries that received the largest increase in ranking.

Some other keywords we were tracking that showed big improvements in ranking.

Website Redesign

MorrisAnderson’s logo features a sextant – which is navigation instrument primary used to measure the angle between an astronomical object and the horizon for the purposes of celestial navigation. Their previous site’s theme was around navigating troubled waters. We chose to make a shift towards a sleeker, corporate design to add a professional feel while retaining elements of the nautical theme.

The homepage, depicting shooting stars over a calm ocean at sunrise is intended to convey stability, optimism. This compliments essence of quality and assurance captured by the more corporate aesthetic.

View full site: MorrisAnderson.com

Case Studies Before/After with enhanced search and filter functionalities.

Future Outlook

MorrisAnderson has not yet decided to move forward with phase 3 of our proposed roadmap. The campaign will require a significant amount of effort from the MorrisAnderson team, and would be a large investment. However, when executed properly we firmly believe that it will produce results for many years to come.