Dehoff Case Study

Ohio Real Estate Company Gains Ground with Search Engine Optimization

Services: Web Design, Search Engine Optimization. E-Commerce programming

Product: Residential and Commercial Real Estate

URL: www.dehoff.com

Report Date: February 2003

Pruduential-Dehoff Realtors is based in Canton, Ohio and was challenged with creating a website that would be able to compete with other, larger companies. The goals of Dehoff.com were to provide visitors with the best user experience available, and help the agents make use of new technological tools available through the website. The main challenge was interfacing with the local multiple listing service and showing live search results - something that had never been done before.

New look, new technology

Early in 2002, the newly designed website went live, with the live property search fully functioning. The first real estate website with a live search feature in the CRIS MLS system. A month later, search engine optimization and site marketing began. The old site was averaging 1,500 visitors per month and 400 visitors from the search engines. 80% of the 400 search engine referrals were finding the site by searching for the company name, and not general real estate keywords.

Growing pains

Search Engine traffic in the following quarter increased by 60%. Unique visitors increased by the same percentage. In the third quarter, search engine traffic and unique visitors rose again by 67%, a total increase of 127% as compared to the first quarter. Regarding the quality of the site content and "ease of use," a good place to start is by measuring returning traffic. An average of 800 visitors return to the site each month and visitor sessions average over 13 minutes. Monthly, about 60+ users add the site to their Favorites file, or bookmarks.

More growing pains

In December 2002, DeHoff.com averaged 3,000 unique visitors per month with 57% of those visitors being generated by the search engines. Keyword searches (general search terms) have increased dramatically, as real estate related keywords are now 70% of search engine traffic. Prudential-DeHoff related keywords have remained consistent. The search engine optimization implemented Ohio based keywords that provided immediate results in traffic and name recognition.

Even more growing pains

By February, 2003, the greatest growth occurred as traffic rose to an all time high of 4,240 unique visitor and 31,000 user sessions! Over 80% of Dehoff.com traffic is a direct result of the search engines. This means that new customers are finding and using the site, as user sessions have continually climbed as features are added. The average user spends over 14 minutes on the site!

From a year ago,

• Traffic increased by 271%
• Search Engine Referrals increased by 867%
• User Sessions increased by 245%
• Average Session time increased by 175%