Skintopia Case Study

Today I would like to highlight Skintopia by Lorrie Smith – a successful esthetician in Scottsdale, Arizona, considered by many to be an expert in the industry with a top-notch reputation!

Unlike most small businesses, Lorrie’s issue was not a lack of client volume: her appointment schedule was usually full, but she wanted to better promote her higher-end services. After doing some initial research, I found that the high-end services Lorrie wished to promote were not as mainstream or well known as a typical facial… (I didn’t even know what they were!) Believe it or not, this creates somewhat of a challenge for digital marketers like myself. It requires us to learn more about the services and their benefits, as well as take a deeper dive into finding opportunity areas for improvement.

In digital marketing, as in any improvement process, it is crucial to establish a baseline in order to recognize gains. In this case, creating that baseline involves research to decide which search keywords to target, who is already ranking for those keywords, and tracking all of that in the geographical area you wish to target (in this case, Scottsdale). This process is often referred to as position tracking, and it will be our core metric in determining success!

After conducting initial on-page SEO enhancements for the entire website (and in just a short period of time, about two to two and a half months,) we have seen the following progress:

Overall keyword rankings nationally (USA) have increased from 133 to 235. Keywords in positions 1 – 50 have increased from 67 to 109.
This equates to an estimated monthly traffic increase of 28 additional visitors, from 37 to 65.

When we look at the position tracking of all high-end services targeted keywords locally in Scottsdale, we see even more success:

The more visibility you have, the better! Visibility is based on click-through rate and shows skintopiaaz.com’s progress in the Google top 100. Having 100% visibility would mean that the domain being tracked is ranking in the first position for all desired keywords. Desktop visibility increased 4.27% to 14.62% and mobile visibility increased 2.61% to 13.91%.

The estimated amount of traffic skintopiaaz.com is receiving while ranking for the desired keywords is calculated by multiplying the average click-through rate for each position skintopiaaz.com has by its keyword volume. Desktop estimated traffic increased 0.41 to 3.96 and mobile estimated traffic increased 0.11 to 4.35.

Lower is better; we all want to be #1! The average position reflects the average ranking of all desired keywords. Desktop average position decreased 3.40 to 18.07 and mobile average position decreased 4.53 to 16.17.

Also, when looking at Google local pack (i.e. searching for services “near me”,) we see awesome progress as well:

Desktop visibility increased 8.76% to 24.91% and mobile visibility increased 7.29% to 24.23%.

Desktop estimated traffic increased 0.40 to 3.85 and mobile estimated traffic increased 0.11 to 4.22.

Desktop average position decreased 8.13 to 3.47 and mobile average position decreased 14.00 to 3.93.

Lastly, we have seen a dramatic improvement in Google My Business performance:

In the chart above, Direct refers to customers who find your listings searching for your business name or address, Discovery refers to customers who find your listings searching for a category, product, or service and Branded refers to customers who find your listings searching for a brand related to your business.

Year over year for the same period of October and November, website visits have increased 74%, phone calls have increased 233% and photo views have increased 2,904%!

All of this has had a profound impact on conversions, which in this case equates to more booked appointments and, even more critically, larger sales. Let’s dive into some of the performance changes we have observed for October, November and the first half of December:

Overall appointment volume rose an average 12% year over year for the same period, and high-end services appointment volume rose a staggering average 123%!

The average service price remained about the same year over year for the same period, and actually decreased when compared to high-end services; however, this was more than off-set by the increased volume of new clients coming in!

Lastly, and perhaps the most important indication of a successful job promoting Lorrie’s services, we look at revenue growth. From the charts above we see that overall revenue increased an average 10%, and high-end services revenue rose 52%!

In conclusion, over the course of just a few months, we have seen improvement in organic rankings, Google My Business visibility and customer actions, as well as an increase in appointments and overall revenue.

SEO is an ongoing effort, and quality results take time. As such, it is not advisable to ever pause SEO efforts. If you are trying to outrank your competition, consistently adding content coupled with a strong SEO strategy can be a game-changer! And to see how I may be able to help your small business, please feel free to contact me for a free consultation!