5x Session Increase In Topic Clusters And Pillars
Qualified Leads Increase By 295%
Average Sale Price Grows
When we first met Manhattan Miami Real Estate, they were working through an outdated WordPress version of their website that was riddled with errors and causing performance issues across the site.
Ricardo Mello and Anthony Guerriero, the co-owners of Manhattan Miami Real Estate put a lot of trust in us by sharing their concerns and realistic need for results.
"We don't have time to waste," Ricardo shared on one of the earlier calls while exploring options.
As a company in the real estate industry, Ricardo and Anthony had a major need to showcase their business in organic search results, specifically the markets of Miami and Manhattan — two of the most saturated and most difficult markets to break into in terms of search ranking.
SEO meant a lot to them from the start of the relationship, and it was clear that this was an intrinsically important facet of their company's growth goals.
"Buyers in these markets are not simply searching on Zillow for something in their price range," we were reminded by Ricardo in the early stages of our journey with them.
These buyers are looking for top-of-the-line luxury, class, and amenities, and expected the company they work with to deliver an experience to them that matched this same level of sophistication — something the team at Manhattan Miami were complete experts in.
Showing up in relevant searches for what their unique buyer types were seeking was not only a priority, but it was a necessity for Manhattan Miami Real Estate to grow. The problem was the website just missed the mark for this experience.
As you can see above, there was a lot going on just on the homepage alone, not even exploring interior of the site. For new visitors, there was no clear path for what they should be doing or where they should click or explore.
"I want my website to show the luxury," Ricardo and Anthony shared with us.
It can be easy to distract visitors unknowingly because the message is not clear. This was a user experience problem that needed to be addressed and clarified.
So what's the problem? Seems simple right? Increase the organic search volume make the website prettier, and, voila! An over-the-counter solution to fix this brand's need.
We had our work cut out for us. Knowing this was going to be an intense project that would bear the weight of either being a complete success for our client or end in massive failure, we did not take the project lightly. Here were the biggest problems we knew we needed to solve in order to help them grow their business:
At Web Canopy Studio, we have a proprietary process we use called "The Foundry," which is how we start virtually all of our engagements with clients, regardless of size and scope. Why is this important?
We learn the audience.
We learn the brand voice.
We research what has worked, and what has not.
We define the goals.
We build a strategy to hit those goals.
The Foundry is imperative for our team to find success with our clients. In our eyes, this is what sets us apart from so many other companies who build websites and perform marketing tasks.
What good is a beautiful website if the right audience doesn't see it? What good is a beautiful website if the message is not perfectly designed to be on point with how that audience needs to feel, helping them find solutions to their complex problems? What good is a beautiful website if it keeps suffering from the same mistakes performance-wise as it has for the last 5 years?
As we started working through these foundational components of the project with Ricardo and Anthony's team, we started to see some patterns emerging that were quite fascinating.
Did you know that real estate in Manhattan is one of the safest investments you can make, especially if you live in a foreign country where the markets can be unstable?
We uncovered not only that Manhattan Miami Real Estate's best clients are foreign buyers who are looking to invest in these markets (in many cases, in order to preserve their wealth), but that Anthony and Ricardo's team have an immense knowledge of the US Tax Code, how foreigners can navigate this code, and effectively purchase their property safely, securely, and efficiently — one of the most compelling reasons for why people don't end up making that purchase decision.
This was also one of the most compelling reasons why people would talk to Anthony and Ricardo in the first place. They were experts at this level of discussion, and knew how to not only deliver that knowledge, but deliver an entire experience of class and sophistication that wowed their buyers and gave them a sense of comfort, ease, and professionalism.
To back that up, we discovered in an SEO audit that the best performing content on their site, surprisingly, was not about the properties they sold or the beautiful and luxurious amenities that came with them. We use SEMRush as a way to breakdown keyword performance and visibility for all of our ongoing client research.
The best performing content, as it relates to site visits, interaction, and engagement, was a blog post around a simple question: "Can foreigners buy property in the USA?"
(ranking history for the foreign buyer related content above)
Even with a current website that was struggling with performance issues, struggling to get site visits, and struggling to convert any real leads, this content was surpassing all the setbacks and shining through in search performance.
This was an "aha" moment for us. It told us we had potential to build on what was working, tie that in with an overall strategy with the buyer personas, build out a buyer's journey, and help guide this website to success.
We first focused on helping their potential buyers understand they were in the right place. Aside from telling the story about investing in the hero section, we call out specifically the different kinds of buyers that are exploring the site. Each one of these buyer types are buyer personas, and they all have a corresponding offer and piece of content tailored specifically to their precise need (talk about targeting!).
We created subpages and case studies for each of the buyer personas, describing their problems and issues in detail, with steps, strategies, and checklists on how to fix their problems.
We built beautiful pillar pages around the issues the prospects were facing, each having their own unique approach solving problems and delivering awareness, consideration, and decision stage information, almost as a serving platter for visitors to engage with the level they needed most.
Of course, we highlighted searchable components in these topic clusters that were the primary pains of the buyers coming to the site.
We knew we had to introduce the properties in a unique way without them feeling like some kind of standard MLS listing. These properties are so much more than your simple MLS, and need to be highlighted and featured in ways that describe the amenities, the features, and the luxuriousness that comes with Manhattan and Miami lifestyles.
We highlighted the neighborhoods and areas of focus for middle and bottom of funnel content, telling the story of luxury and class of each of these real estate markets.
We also highlighted, property-by-property, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, the features and benefits that come with choosing these locations. So many of these buildings were filled with such rich history that they needed to be highlighted in a special way. We utilized native image galleries as well to highlight the beauty of these properties.
Throughout the site, we tastefully implemented guidance for answering questions — including the idea of why the prospects might need a realtor to help them. Primarily, we were focused on removing the form from meeting with people, and engaging directly in either a chat window or booking a meeting.
We also helped tailor their natural deal closing process by implementing the Meetings app. The team, dealing primarily with international buyers, often travels around the world to set up meetings with prospects. As opposed to emails and calls back and forth as they have in the past (losing many people along the way), they now are able to simplify that process and serve their calendars when they are scheduling meetings in various countries.
So, have you been singing Bruno Mars this entire time like we have, too?
Well, then we've officially done our job. And now, for our favorite part... The results!
We don't have to share much more than the video from Ricardo above to show that we've helped this company grow by implementing this new website.
Here are just a few of our favorite highlights.
Since the launch of the website in October of 2017, they've increased traffic by over 145%.
They've increased their leads by over 295%. What's important to note about this number is that these are not just random people engaging with their foreign buyer tax policy information for purchasing multi-million dollar properties in the US. These are highly qualified candidates.
The "customers" graph is of course empty. But, we're not ashamed to show it, which is why we aren't trimming it out here. Manhattan Miami is not yet tracking their customers in HubSpot. This is the next project to help them move into a sales enablement strategy, and to help close the loop on the reporting (and officially use all aspects of the software!). This is why we're showcasing this project as a website example, and not sales enablement. Perhaps that is coming in the near future :)
This chart shows their pillar and topic cluster performance over time. You can see after the website was built it took some time to get things up and running; however, once the SEO issues were able to be resolved, their pillars and topic clusters literally took off, averaging almost 6,000 visits per month just to their pillar content. That pillar content was a lift into the remainder of the site.
We have loved working with the team at Manhattan Miami. They've been great partners, and have proven that an open and collaborative environment are what makes a project like this grow to become a huge success.
"Their team understood everything we were looking for. I was extremely happy with the results. It came out much nicer than I thought. I couldn't believe this was my new site"
- Ricardo Mello, Manhattan Miami Real Estate
