61% OF PRIORITY KEYWORDS ON FIRST 2 GOOGLE SERPs

The Situation

Achieve Test Prep needed to find ways to rank more efficiently on Google for targeted nursing pages

Achieve Test Prep (ATP) offers credit-by-exam prep programs that help students test out of college courses, thus facilitating transfer credits – which are easier, cheaper, and less time-consuming than traditional coursework. While most popular with nursing students, ATP also offers many general education courses in order to help a wide range of students. But what they needed was to find ways to rank more efficiently on Google for those targeted nursing pages. Enter PMG.

The PMG and ATP teams decided that it was time to do a website keyword revamp to up organic search rankings. ATP’s goal of reaching as many students searching for alternative college options would fall short if they wouldn’t show up on Page #1 of Google. So then we began to do research.

The Approach

We got to work maximizing geo-modified keyword optimization

The PMG team knew that identifying keywords would be low-hanging fruit for ATP to increase visibility. Doing in-depth, high-volume keyword research would allow for each new page or updated page on ATP’s website to locally reach as many people as possible.

In our research, PMG discovered that ATP was successfully ranking for geo-modified words – for example, phrases with locations like “Alabama” tagged onto them. Some had high search volume, some had low search volume, but almost all of them were generating visits. We knew if we maximized that geo-modified keyword optimization, it might actually improve visits overall. So we got to work.

60% of the campaign's keywords ranked on pages 1 and 2 of Google within 4 months.

The Solution

PMG's takes an in-depth approach to localization

Beginning in May of 2016, the PMG team conducted keyword research to identify all of the best geo-modified keywords for ATP’s website and see what would work for their landing pages. But it went deeper. We had to customize each keyword experience to 75 city pages...

• Looking at each page to determine whether or not it was already ranking for a keyword
• Seeing if the page would benefit from a change in the URL
• Modifying any changes that needed to be made for already-ranking pages.

Each page was customized for a geographic location. And so was each keyword. On top of that, we created a template out of recycled templates already being used to keep costs down and sample page text and wrote up detailed implementation instructions so that ATP’s internal team could take it from there.

The Results

60% of the campaign's keywords ranked on pages 1 and 2 of Google within 4 months.

PMG’s long-term relationship with ATP has allowed for continued monitoring efforts to be just as in-depth as the initial keyword research. Because we know what works for the company and what trends tend to even out over time, we are able to use that knowledge to make ATP’s user experience as accurate and visible as possible.