Boats.com

Boats.com had some respectable rankings when they contacted SEO Inc. for SEO services. Still, they were not ranked in the Top 10 on Google for several important keywords in a few of their important product categories. While the site ranked very well for keywords like boats, new boats, etc., it had little visibility for highly competitive phrases like “boat insurance,” “boat loans,” and “boat warranty.” Their goal was to get more traffic for these product categories.

• #9 on Google for “boat loans,” which is by far the most searched phrase in the boat financing category
• Not Ranked in the top 50 on Google for “boat insurance,” which is searched more than boat loans

Boats.com was clear about its primary goal: to achieve a top 5 or 10 ranking on Google for its primary keyword. All other ranking increases would be considered a bonus.

Boats.com used Java server pages (.jsp), and the site was completely dynamic. In addition, they use SSL for security as soon as the user leaves the home page. This site structure posed two unique problems: First, it made the site’s interior pages inaccessible to search engine spiders. Second, these pages had very little text content and even less keyword density in the existing text content.

Since none of the website’s interior pages were getting indexed by search engine spiders, the chances of ranking for keywords targeted on those pages were minimal. So, the first part of the solution was to build out the site’s front end by using static URLs (like https://www.boats.com) so that pages would get indexed by search engine spiders. In addition, we added keyword-rich content at the proper density levels to each of the pages. Of course, SEO Inc. then completed a themed optimization of each page.