Storageblue.com formerly known as American Self Storage is a self-storage company located in the New York and New Jersey areas. StorageBlue was founded by Alan Mruvka the founder of Movie time Television which later became E! Entertainment. StorageBlue has 4 locations in Jersey City, Hoboken, Union City, and Newark New Jersey.
Challenge:
StorageBlue was plagued by a multitude of clerical and technical errors. The most dominant, throughout the development process there was no input from a digital marketing professional.
A technical SEO audit revealed duplicate content on various pages as a result of an archaic method of storing information. A deeper analysis of the website revealed miscommunication between ASP.net and PHP which caused 404 errors and 520+ dynamically generated inaccuracies.
Through the division of company assets, StorageBlue was left with local listings from the previous brand. This was coupled with incorrect company information created by another digital marketing firm.
Social Media Optimization was nonexistent as the company lacked the proper strategy required to make an impact in the self-storage industry.
Solution:
A SWOT Analysis provided comprehensive data on company health, the industry, and opportunities that could increase the organization's overall presence. With the valuable effort put forth by Swag Media Factory LLC, the website was unified by implementing one of the internet's top content management systems.
Pages optimized for the same keyword terms were improved with all new titles, descriptions, and alt text to ensure that pages were found for the keywords they were intended for. New location pages were expanded to include unique facility descriptions, features, amenities, and local qualifiers, i.e. landmarks, and zip codes increased visibility for hyperlocal searches.
Local landing pages were submitted to Google webmaster tools as separate entities and optimized to allow hyper-local visibility.
Additionally, Blog entries pertaining to trends, helpful tips, and audience behavior were favored over thin content.
Local Optimization presented a bit of a challenge as there were multiple instances of incorrect company information. The previous company’s branding was the main antagonist and proved to be the reason behind low placement in the search engine result pages.
An extensive effort was launched to clean up the previous local business directories by claiming, rebranding, and deleting where applicable. Extra emphasis was placed on Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, 4Square, and business.com local profiles.
With cooperation from the support team at yelp, I was able to close out each account for the 4 misbranded storageblue.com locations. Yelp required proof of closure or legal documentation.
Through the utility of Google Analytics and other online utilities, I was able to create targeted user personas. Each persona included basic demographics, user behaviors, affinity categories, and trending data. I then introduced an editorial calendar that employed content pillars that cross-referenced keyword topics vs daily and weekly trends.
Result:
Strengthened organic positioning came in the form of first-page rankings for plus 200 keywords terms traffic which resulted in an increased of 275% within the first 2.5 months.
Improved organic conversions (web portal to 13.80%, Social Media to 3.16%, and direct conversions to 9.97%). Paid Conversion courtesy of NJ Advanced Media
Social Media Optimization increased Twitter following by 99,900% in less than 2 months. Social added engagement and brand awareness: (Twitter profile data)
Social Media accounts for an 11% growth in direct-to-website traffic. Over 1 million weekly brand impressions.
Social Media added a new quality organic traffic and lead source: (Google plus local profile data)
The initial brand audit Identified Sparefoot.com as one of the main drivers of revenue and leads in the self-storage industry. After meeting and chatting with the team of 2015 inside the self-storage expo, an alliance was inevitable.
Sparefoot, organic and social optimization continues to assist in increasing overall occupancy across the four locations. Jersey City, Hoboken, Newark, and Union City increase 97%, 95%, 80% and 78% over the first 5 months respectively.
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Written by Tisho Richardson
Tisho Richardson has 13+ years of experience as an SEO, Content Marketing Specialist, and B2B Social Media Manager. He can track and measure large amounts of data to present actionable strategies to reduce marketing expenses and increase KPI.
My ‘Keep it real’ Statement: I am an affiliate of some of the utilities that I mention on this website. Which means I receive monetary compensation for promoting them. I will always denote this by (*) at the end of each Link.
