Michigan-based marketing agency develops 3 new products and doubles the number of retainer clients

Prior to 2017, Oneupweb had struggled with finding a reliable keyword research tool; the agency used Google Adwords’ Keyword Planner and described it as a cumbersome process with inaccurate results.

“The tool, now Google Ads, wasn’t built for organic search. The only valuable metric we were really getting from the Keyword Planner was search volume. We would then use Bing to gather information on demographics,” shares Freddy Hunt, director of SEO and content marketing at Oneupweb. “We knew we had to make a switch after Google began rounding off search volume: we would get ranges like 10K-100K for a keyword - that’s a large spread, and we couldn’t take that to a client.”

The Oneupweb team relied on Google Search Console – another search engine product – for position reporting. “We were never fully confident in the data. At that point in time, we had to regularly export 90 days of data in order to compare year over year. The process was inefficient and the data was unreliable,” says Freddy.

The agency was lacking a seamless workflow: everyday tasks were divided between a number of free and paid tools for research, tracking, technical SEO audits and reporting; their interface wasn’t intuitive.

In 2017, Oneupweb set a goal to develop new SEO and content marketing products in order to provide better service to existing clients and attract new clients. This required a new tool that provided a seamless workflow, accurate data, and addressed the existing struggles at the company.

“We chose SEMrush because the keyword tracking was much more accurate than our previous tools and the interface was very intuitive for tracking by zip code, which is important for us since we work with so many multi-location brands,” shares Freddy. SEMrush replaced Oneupweb’s several legacy tools for keyword research and site auditing/monitoring.

Next, supported by SEMrush, the company developed three new SEO products. The Keyword Gap tool allowed Oneupweb to develop its Content Gap Analysis.

“Many of our clients offer a range of services. It’s clear to us that not all services are represented on their websites, therefore, our clients are not ranking in search results when customers query these services,” explains Freddy. “Using SEMrush’s Keyword Gap tool, we can streamline the keyword research process and quickly map out a plan for filling content gaps. Building pages for service-related keywords has proven to be one of the most effective ways of increasing organic leads by taking organic leads away from the competition. It’s a really quick way to find some big wins for our clients by comparing their search representation to their closest competition.

“For example, Mr. Rooter had only one page on their website for plumbing installations. With SEMrush, we identified that they were not ranking strongly - or at all - for important specific keywords like ‘kitchen faucet installation’ or ‘toilet installation’. We built child pages for all those specific services and since then they’ve received a ton of traffic.”

SEMrush has been crucial to the success of Oneupweb’s proprietary content calendar platform, Condario. “Using the Keyword Gap tool in combination with the Keyword Magic Tool, we can effectively develop blog topics that are ripe for organic search – and, more specifically, featured snippets. The Keyword Magic tool allows us to filter keywords for questions that are likely to show featured snippets in Google search results. This keyword research informs the blog topics and social content in Condario. As content is being produced and promoted throughout the year, we use SEMrush to monitor the number of featured snippets we hold and the projected traffic we receive from them. No tool does a better job of tracking featured snippets than SEMrush. For us, it’s important to show clients what we’re impacting not only on their website but also on the SERP,” concludes Freddy.

After two years with SEMrush, Oneupweb increased Condario revenue by 185%.

Local Content & Keyword Tracking was developed by the Oneupweb team for their biggest clients - franchise companies. “Using SEMrush’s keyword research engine, we can identify geo-specific keywords for local franchise pages. After optimizing the local homepage for hundreds of locations, we then track the keywords by local zip codes. This allows us to more accurately measure the impact of our local content projects.”

“These products have achieved excellent results for our clients and have provided the growth we’ve experienced at Oneupweb,” says Freddy. “SEMrush helps us show the return our clients get on their investment in Oneupweb.”

“SEMrush has been huge in the sales process. Comparing a prospect to their competition in the Keyword Gap tool is a very strong motivator. So, if we can show someone that they are not ranking for all of these terms but their competition is, it usually gets them interested in engaging with us.”