Foundation Building Materials (FBM) is an NYSE-traded building materials distribution company with over 180 locations across the U.S. and Canada. The previous website was outdated, lacked content and detailed service offerings, experienced poor performance and user engagement, and was lacking an optimization strategy that focused on improving search visibility and user engagement. From the beginning, FBM wanted the website refresh to have a focused strategy in mind that aimed to resolve the issues of the previous website while also imparting their core company values. From “safety first” and “customer focus,” to valuing their employees, it was important that the new website convey these company principles while also projecting key messaging to their audience to educate on the services and locations they serve. In addition, location data (NAP) was all over the place due to previous acquisitions and account owners, or held under personal manager accounts. Solving this was paramount by aggregating all these digital properties such as Google My Business into a single account for the 180 locations.
FOUNDATION BUILDING MATERIALS
Improved Search Engine Optimization (SEO) And A Fresh Website Design & Content Strategy
PROJECT BREAKDOWN
There were several aspects of this project which required a phased approach using an agile methodology for strategy, design & development, a heavy dose of search engine optimization, and some location optimizaton love.
Responsive Web Design (RWD)
SEO Audit & Research
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
User Experience Design (UX)
Location Aggregation & Optimization
Ongoing Support & Maintenance
Content Management System (CMS)
Reporting & Analytics
Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaigns
“As a digital marketing partner, Visual Identity Group has had a positive impact to our online presence. They've engineered our website rebrand, executed SEO and store localization strategies, and are beginning to work with us on outbound marketing. Their SEO and location optimization efforts have resulted in measurable organic performance increases, significantly improved accuracy with online directories and maps, and an increase in search traffic.”
Bryan Vigue
Director of Marketing
NEW VS OLD
As an industry-leading company with locations across the U.S. and Canada, the project was a major update over their previous site, with a lot riding on its success. Major improvements to the overall design and usability were essential to branding goals and simplifying the user experience and navigation. It was important to communicate what services are offered, what products were distributed, and the locations they serve as the previous site lacked content, let alone SEO optimized content that worked towards a strategy. Site visitors needed to funnel to the intended result efficiently, with key calls-to-action to increase leads and quote requests, all measured by a digital scorecard that tracks Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
RESULTS
Also key to the success of the project was improving site performance and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Site speed is crucial for good SEO, and a large portion of their traffic is mobile visitors looking for the nearest location. Getting this information to users quickly and efficiently was paramount. As a result of optimizing page delivery and load times by reducing render blocking css / javascript, introducing advanced object and page caching such as Redis and Varnish; page performance increased by over 26%.
A major part of the project was aggregating 180+ locations in Google My Business and then into Moz Local, a location management platform that helps track and sync location data (name, address, phone; otherwise known as “NAP” data) to ensure accuracy online. Previously, location accounts for services such as Google & Apple Maps, Bing Places, etc., were either missing due to previous company acquisitions and mergers, outdated or owned under other accounts. It was crucial to aggregate these locations into a single platform that consistently tracked, monitored & synced name, address and phone (NAP) data and customer reviews. Moz Local syncs NAP data across multiple directories and data bureaus, which is crucial for top positions in local search.
Imagine having to change just a single phone or fax number for a location across all directories and databases with location data… without a centralized database solution to manage this effectively, this very simple, common change could take days to weeks to manage and track. This consolidation effort has resulted in measurable SEO performance increases with 975+% growth in New Users and 778+% in Sessions, in addition to significantly improving accuracy with online directories and maps.
As a result of consistent NAP data and optimized descriptions for each location in Google My Business, search traffic to location pages on the FBM website soared, and over half a million dollars in value has been added since the project was completed in March, 2020.
Additionally, the large amount of fresh traffic to the optimized website boosted rankings across the board, as you can see by this table of Google search rankings, comparing March 2020 to July 31.2020. Of particular importance is the high-volume search terms we targeted, such as building materials and construction supplies.
Highlights March-July 2020 YoY for Location Pages
The process yielded over +975% increase in New Users.
Sessions grew by over +778%.
Conversions quote values rose by +6.2 million
Along with other improved rankings, the YTD record shows improved visibility vs. FBM competitors, starting in March, and a resulting surge in search traffic share.
Each month, on-going optimizations and adjustments are made and tracked via KPIs and reporting which is reviewed with the client, along with strategy for the coming month. This includes on page optimizations, as well as content creation and strategy.
The overall ranking improvements since the site relaunch in March 2019 are substantial:
QUOTE
“From strategy to execution, their team has been highly engaged throughout the process and great to work with, I would highly recommend them as a resource.”
Bryan Vigue, Director of Marketing
INDUSTRY RECOGNITION
Foundation Building Materials received industry recognition by winning awards including The Communicator Awards, AVA Digital Awards, and Hermes Creative Awards.
We’re proud to partner with FBM on their digital marketing needs and look forward to helping them make their mark as the largest building materials distributor in the industry.
