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Quicksilver Interactive's Search Engine Optimization Portfolio
Quicksilver Interactive's Web Site Portfolio
Quicksilver Interactive's Printed Media Portfolio
Quicksilver Interactive's Logo Portfolio
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{ Search Engine Optimization Portfolio }

 

AllAboutRivers.com, Rafting.AllAboutRivers.com & LocalLodgingGuide.com
 
Monthly Traffic On Our Websites
Who: AllAboutRivers.com is the premier online river guidebook for whitewater kayaking and its partner site, Rafting.AllAboutRivers.com is the most popular site for whitewater rafting. Started in 1999, it is the original online guidebook. It's interactive tools allow site visitors to review trips, contact trip providers, suggesting new content, and chat with other users about their experiences. Between the two sites, there are tens of thousands of pages of content...and growing monthly.
Desires: Based on the combination of attractive design, ease of use, and depth of content, this site is arguably the most useful for rafting and kayaking on the entire internet. However, that doesn't automatically mean it will be the highest traffic. We ensure this by implementing search optimization and link building strategies on a regular basis. Our goal is to maximize the number of top 5 placements in the organic results of the top search engines every month. Our measurable goal is to continue growing our traffic and get 1,200,000 visits in 2009.
Results:
We completed a massive overhaul of the database, design, and functionality of the site in February 2005 which included some search engine optimization. Since that time, we've been working on creating new content, optimizing current content and maximizing inbound links. We're seeing good results and have experienced a 2x increase in traffic each year from 2004 to 2007. In 2008, we are on course to achieve a large increase in traffic again. In 2007 we received more than 350,000 click thru's from search engines based on the tens of thousands of top 20 natural search results in google.com and other search engines.
>> More info about traffic on allaboutrivers.com <<
 



AllAboutRivers Online Kayak and Book Store
 
Monthly Traffic on store.allaboutrivers.com
Who: The AllAboutRivers Online store is owned and operated by Quicksilver Interactive. It is integrated into the main allaboutrivers sites. Some of the inventory that we sell is stored and shipped by Quicksilver Interactive and some of it is stored and shipped by partner businesses.
Desires: We originally launched our online store in 2005 and used it to process orders for the advertisements sold on the site. To capitalize on the many thousands of visitors to our site each month, we wanted to expand the store to include guidebooks and eventually find some partners to offer more items.
Results:
In June of 2006, we launched the online book store with a small selection of guide books. Over the following year we increased the titles of books that we carry and optimized each category and item for natural search engine results. Based on this success, we were able to find a partner in Alder Creek Kayak and Canoe to offer a full selection of kayak gear. We launched an updated online store with the kayak gear in August of 2007. We found a partner for footwear and in January of 2008 we started offering men's and women's footwear for sale on the site. As we've added products for sale on our site, the traffic is increased significantly. However, since we didn't start tracking the traffic on our store subdomain separately until April of 2007, the traffic graph won't show the progress from the beginning. However, the sales graph does show that we've been growing at a steady rate.



AlderCreek.com and Shop.AlderCreek.com
 
Monthly Combined Traffic on the Alder Creek Sites
Who: Alder Creek Kayak & Canoe is the largest paddle sports retailer in the Pacific Northwest with 3 locations in Portland Oregon. They carry core kayak and canoe gear as well as Stand Up Paddle equipment.
Desires: Alder Creek already had an online store through monster commerce. They updated the inventory manually and as a result weren't able to put much of their inventory for sale online. They also did not have the ability to optimize the store for natural search results. They wanted an e-commerce system that was integrated into their point of sale system and that would significantly contribute to their overall sales.
Results:
We began hosting their main website in December of 2006. At that time, we also started building a custom e-commerce application that would be integrated into their point of sale system. We finished in the spring of 2007 and launched it in late April. The store had many SEO friendly features built in. At that time they had the majority of the inventory they carried in store on the site. Over the course of the summer and fall of 2007, they continued to add inventory to the site. We optimized their main site and added new functionality. Their traffic has increased exponentially and will continue a strong growth curve in 2008 because of the search engine optimization techniques that we use.



NortonShoes.com and Store.NortonShoes.com
 
Monthly Combined Traffic on the Norton Shoes Sites
Who: Norton Comfort Shoes is an independently owned comfort shoe store in Colorado Springs Colorado. They are recognized as a leading provider of state-of-the-art foot health products that offer immediate relief from painful foot conditions.
Desires: Norton Comfort Shoes had a very simple website and it didn't receive very much traffic. They wanted to invest in an e-commerce system that was integrated with their point of sale system so they could offer their entire inventory for sale online. However, their biggest challenge was their inexperience with using the internet as a tool for commerce.
Results:
We launched their online store in late November 2007. They started receiving orders in December and have had orders every month since. Their traffic has increased by about 17x since the launch of their store. Their online store synchronizes on a regular basis with their POS system and they are able to sell their entire inventory online. The Norton Shoes staff has been able to manage the product photos and descriptions in the online store using an administrative back end. Because their e-commerce application is built using high quality search engine optimization techniques, their traffic and sales will only continue to increase.



Smoky Mountain Outdoors
 
Annual Traffic on smokymountainrafting.com
Who: Smoky Mountain Outdoors is the largest outfitter on the Pigeon River in Tennessee near Smoky Mountain National Park. They are also one of the largest rafting companies in the U.S. However, they were being outdone on the internet by smaller companies and as a result they were losing market share.
Desires: They were spending alot of money on traditional marketing and felt they weren't getting the most out of their marketing dollars. Admittedly, they aren't the most technology savvy people and they needed some help. They wanted to dominate on the internet the way they dominate the local rafting market.
Results:
Their previous website hosting company didn't have good traffic reports for them so we didn't have traffic history until we moved the site to our hosting environment in February of 2006. We finished optimizing the site in March of 2006 and immediately Smoky Mountain Outdoor Center saw an increase in business. In 2006 they saw a 30% increase in business which moved them into the top 5 largest rafting companies in the U.S. Since this initial optimization we haven't done anything new with their content. We have worked on getting them more inbound links. Their site traffic has continued to improve in traffic and in 2007 they have seen a 30% increase in site visits.



Wilderness Adventures
 
Monthly Traffic on WildRiverTrips.com
Who: Wilderness Adventures runs rafting trips on several rivers in Northern California and Southern Oregon. They run excellent trips with great food and have a great group of guides. However, their website had several missing pages, information was out of date and the site wasn't really driving business. A very high percentage of their customers were from repeat business and referrals. They felt like they were being left behind in the internet marketing world and wanted help getting into the game. So they turned to us to help them out.
Desires: Wilderness Adventures wanted a complete site overhaul. They wanted to increase their organic search results so they could boost business. They aren't a big company and don't have a big advertising budget. In addition, they don't have the time, money or technical expertise to effectively manage a pay per click campaign. They wanted to find a trusted partner that would help them increase business through internet marketing and they wanted to be fairly hands off. They also needed reliable hosting with good website traffic reporting software. That's where we come in.
Results:
The biggest issue with their old site was the use of graphical links instead of text links. As a result, search engines didn't even know that many of their web pages existed. We implemented text links to each of the pages on their site so that it fit in well with their current look and feel. We also optimized the content on each page to get better natural search results. We helped them get links pointing to their site as well. We created some new content and cleaned up old content that needed a face lift. We finished the site and launched it in May of 2006. Because we didn't have good historical data for their traffic, it's difficult to say what the exact improvement was but we can see that the traffic increased by 70% immediately after launch and much of that increase was a result of the enhancements we did. We've added some new functionality in May of 2007 and we've done some minor SEO work as well. Now that we have some historical data to work with, we can see that their website has experienced a 102% traffic increase for 2007 . We expect that trend to continue for the near future requiring a minimum of effort.



Chaffee County Visitor's Bureau Website
 
Monthly Traffic on coloradoheadwaters.com

 
Who: The Chaffee County Visitors Bureau (CCVB) is a county supported organization to promote tourism in Chaffee County. Chaffee County includes the towns of Salida, Buena Vista, Monarch, and Poncha Springs Colorado. This county has the most 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado and the most popular whitewater rafting destination in the U.S. This area relies heavily on tourism and wanted to compete first regionally, then statewide, and finally nationwide for tourists. They've found that the internet is most cost effective way to do so.
Desires: The site visits had fallen significantly in 2004 compared to 2003. After our successful redesign in July 2004, the CCVB found that the site was much better than the old site but the traffic wasn't quite back to 2003 levels. The goal was to reverse the trend of decreasing internet traffic on their site and compete with other tourism locations like Aspen, Vail and Summit County Colorado. Measurable goals were to increase site visits by at least 2x.
SEO Results: We started optimizing the site in February of 2005. As of the end of May 2005, we had only optimized about 10% of the site but had seen a 2.7x increase in site visits. The CCVB also did paid online advertising through the summer months which helped boost traffic. However, once the paid advertising stopped, the traffic dropped significantly. We continued with more site enhancements through 2005 and 2006, however no further search engine optimization was done until April of 2007.

The CCVB saw the benefits of the SEO work of 2005 and those positive results carried over into 2006. However, near the end of 2006 while the traffic was much higher than it was prior to the seo work, it started falling again from '05 levels.

In the spring of 2007 we were contracted to reverse the slow but steady decline in website traffic. We worked on optimizing the rest of the site and completed the work in March of 2007. We've been able to turn things around and the traffic continues to grow in 2008.

Overall, since we took over the management of this website the traffic growth from 2004-2008 has quadrupled.



A Wanderlust Adventure
 
Monthly Traffic on AWanderlustAdventure.com
Who: A Wanderlust Adventure runs rafting trips on the Cache La Poudre River in Northern Colorado near Fort Collins. They have been in business since 1982 and have a large number of repeat customers. They have a very experienced team of guides. Their website and domain name are mature and they had decent search engine results for a limited number of search terms. The meta tags and content were not focused on a broad range of terms and as a result they were missing a good deal of people who were searching for rafting trips they do.
Desires: Wanderlust thought that they were doing okay and didn't want to mess up their current search engine results. However, they also felt they weren't getting the most out of their website that they could. They have someone in house who does their website design and maintenance so they needed someone who could work with that person. They also didn't want to spend alot of money and since pay-per-click advertising can be expensive we focused on search engine optimization. They understood that search engine optimization would give them the best cost/click by far.
Results: We started on this project in late January and finished it in early February of 2006. We researched a broad range of search terms related to the river they run, the towns near them, and implemented a different set of terms on each page. We didn't create any new content, we just optimized the content they currently had. We also worked on link building and increased the number of links pointing to their site. The result was a 31% increase in traffic for February and a 40% increase in traffic for March. They now have many more top 10 results in google.com and other search engines. Over the next couple of months, they should see even greater increases in traffic.



Dinosaur River Expeditions
 
Monthly Traffic on dinoadv.com

 
Who: Dinosaur River Expeditions runs rafting trips in Utah and Northwestern Colorado. They are a small company that specializes in multi-day trips on the Greem River and Yampa River. They also run day trips on the Weber River near Park City.
Desires: They had a nice looking site that was designed by another company but felt they would like to get more traffic to their site. They didn't want to move the site or do any design changes.
SEO Results:
The initial optimization was completed in July of 2005. Initial results were difficult to measure because there wasn't a solid history of traffic to measure against. Since the first SEO work we've continued periodic optimization efforts with good results. In the two years since we first worked on the site, the traffic has nearly doubled.




 
Other Websites That We've Optimized
Columbine Quillen Jewelry
Etched In Stone
Middle Fork Wilderness Outfitters
Moxie Rafting
All Star Rafting
Destination Sports