SEO Case Study: Drew Hartanov
Drew and Linda Hartanov
Drew and Linda Hartanov are San Clemente real estate professionals. Their site was recently featured in Smashing Magazine’s April 2009 “30 Beautiful Real Estate Websites.” After discovering their site through Smashing Magazine, I decided to do some digging on Google to see where they ranked for keywords related to their locale.
Not Just Another Pretty Site
To make a long story short, they rank very well (#1) for “San Clemente real estate” (27,100 searches in February 2010 with an average cost per click of $3.96) and (#3) for “San Clemente homes for sale” (22,200 searches in February 2010 with an average CPC of $4.08). As evidenced by the search volumes and cost per click values, both of these terms are extremely valuable from a search ranking perspective.
Upon noticing that, I reached out to Drew and arranged a short interview. You’re about to listen in on that interview while looking over some supporting “evidence” of SEO’s potential value below.
Enjoy the podcast and/or video, and remember to share your thoughts.
The Hartanov’s Site
Here is a screen capture of their home page (sweet, isn’t it?):
Front Page of Google, too?
And here’s the obligatory screen capture from Google to show they ranked #1 for “San Clemente real estate” at the time of the interview:
And here is a screen capture of “San Clemente homes for sale” on Google:
The Value of San Clemente Real Estate Search Phrases
Looking at the potential search “universe” from those two phrases alone, you’re looking at 49,300 searchers at an average cost per click of $4.02. Let’s say you wanted to capture just 5% of those searchers (2,465) through a PPC (pay per click) campaign, it would cost you $10,057.20 … PER MONTH!!!
Potential SEO ROI
Taking things a step further, let’s (conservatively) assume you convert just 10% of those 2,465 visitors into leads (247) to which another 10% become paying customers (25) over the course of a year. Remember: we’re only looking at one month’s search volume to the site … starting to see the big picture a little clearer?
According to Zillow, the average home price in San Clemente is $608,300 (see screen capture below). Assuming a modest 3.5% commission, those 25 new customers would produce $532,262.50 in potential income.
Think a top search ranking doesn’t have tremendous value? Even at $10,057.20/month ($120,686.40/year), there’s a tremendous ROI to be had from search engine traffic!
- Source: Zillow.com
A typical organic SEO campaign for something like this with The Search Engine Ninja would currently run you $11,964/year ($997/month; subject to change without notice) so the ROI for our ultra-conservative paid campaign example would be 44.5 times your investment!
Even the expensive PPC campaign delivers 4 times ROI so either way you’d make out like a bandit. Keep in mind, we’re only taking one month’s traffic and conversions into account for this example …
Full Disclosure Statement
The Hartanov Team and/or its representatives are not clients of The Search Engine Ninja or Roger Bauer.
