Search Marketing Success: Brake Specialists Plus

This Austin-area car repair business has twelve stores in central Texas providing brake work, maintenance and auto repair, and routine services such as oil changes and state inspections.

Problem

Brake Specialists had a website built entirely in graphics. Without sufficient text to read, the search engine spiders had nothing to index. As a result, Brake Specialists wasn't even visible on an important version of their own name in the search engine results.

Solution

We built a new website for Brake Specialists that is both eye-catching and has plenty of text that integrates important search terms for their business. These terms have been carried throughout the site, making it a highly relevant result when someone in the area is looking for a place to service their car. Traffic-building coupons are integrated throughout the site, as well as maps for each location. Online appointment setting is another feature we made more visible. It's convenient for the customer and is a great management tool for the owners. They can track appointments and see which store managers are pushing people to the website.

Results

After the new site went up, Brake Specialists saw a 796% improvement in reach for the Total Available Search Market™ and a 300% boost in traffic to the site. They are now booking about fifty appointments through the site per month, up from zero per month.

The detailed charts on the following two pages show the before and after results from our search engine optimization (SEO). On Google, Brake Specialists went from 1 term in the Top Ten results (one version of their name) to 10 terms. What is significant about this is that there is little new business that results from someone searching on your name, but a lot of new business from people searching on the services they need, such as "auto repair service Austin" or "Austin brake repair."

The Total Available Search Market™ refers to all the people searching on terms relevant to your business. Being visible to these searches is critically important if you want new customers. 85% of people with Internet access use search to find products and services.

Summary Table, Change in Visibility of Keywords from Optimization by RefreshWeb
Number of Keywords Ranking in:	April 2006	January 2007
Google Top 3	1	3
Google Top 10	0	7
Yahoo Top 3	0	7
Yahoo Top 10	0	7
MSN Top 3	1	13
MSN Top 10	1	4
Percentage increase in visibility:		2400%