Tine Reese Design Case Study

It’s human nature to try to appear bigger and stronger than we really are. It’s served us well for thousands of years. In ancient times we would thump our chests, wear huge plates of armor, and give the appearance of size and strength. It intimidated our enemies, kept fights and battles from starting in the first place, and ultimately, kept us alive. Today, many small businesses take that same chest-puffing approach to gaining clients and growning their business.

I’m here to tell you it’s a big mistake.

It’s the wrong thing to do for a number of reasons. However, for the purpose of this post I’m going to relate it to the Local Search side of Sears in a case study about Tine Reese Graphic Design.

Tell your prospective clients exactly what you offer.

Tine (pronounced “Teen,” short for Christine) only wants to work 2-3 days/week at the moment. The rest of her time is dedicated primarily to her family (son, dog, cat, and husband, plus prepping kiddo 2.0 that’s due in early March). She doesn’t want to pretend she’s a big design agency and quite honestly doesn’t want the stress of one. She’s a part-time freelance graphic designer with a passion for arts organizations and non-profits. Talk about a niche market! By the way, in the interest of full disclosure, I’m the husband in question listed just after the cat and dog (hey, at least I’m in the top 5).

So why does she need search engine optimization, anyway?

Too many small businesses think they need huge leaps in search traffic. While this may be important to some businesses, most small businesses should really focus on getting the right traffic. In Tine’s case, because her desired niche has such a small search volume in the Spokane area, she needs to have a laser focus to ensure that any local arts organizations or non-profits can find her online and view her portfolio.

The importance of relevance.

From a local search standpoint I made sure that her descriptions and categories were consistant, descriptive, and accurate in her Google Local Business Center (GLBC) as well as the many web citations I created. Many small businesses don’t take the time to add a complete description in the GLBC and local directories. And even if they do, many are listed under inaccurate or non-relevant categories. Don’t let this happen to you!

Tell it like it is – SEO

Her web site is very graphics driven with little text, so my options were a bit limited in terms of on-page optimization possibilities. I chose to focus on the term “freelance graphic designer.” While it has a much lower keyword search volume than “graphic design,” or “web site design” it much more accurately describes the search for an individual graphic designer. I also focused on the type of work she wants; web design, print, logo design, and invitations. Again, relevance was given much higher priority than search volume.

Tell it like it is – About/Description

She wanted her web site to primarily serve as an online home for her portfolio. However, I think she did a great job with the about page that really connects with her desired audience (I had nothing to do with this).

“Tine Reese is an experienced and passionate graphic designer who understands the communication challenges faced by nonprofits, foundations, arts organizations and small businesses. With a knack for simplifying complex ideas and conveying messages clearly and elegantly, she creates targeted communications that consider a client’s organizational objectives and, most importantly, budget.

Over the last 14 years Tine has worked at design studios in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco and co-founded a highly successful marketing communications firm whose clients include many of the most outstanding nonprofit organizations in California.”

I’m pretty confident that if a local non-profit, small business on a budget, or arts organization found her web site online that she’s going to get some serious consideration. Conversely, a big corporate entity would easily know that hiring her is probably not the right fit.

So what are the results?

Her web site hasn’t even been live a month yet and I’m already quite pleased with the search results. Here’s a list of Local Search results for her in the Spokane area:

freelance graphic design spokane
freelance design spokane
freelance print designer

But a couple of things just blew me away. The first was gaining an authoritative one box for the term “freelance graphic designer Spokane.”

I seriously doubt this will stay there very long (especially after this post). Another big surprise this early in the game was ranking 2nd overall in Google Maps for the term “freelance logo designer.” These results are certainly nice from an SEO standpoint (especially this early in a project) but the real results come from gaining new accounts. On that front, I’m happy to report that she has three new clients since her web site has launched and is really excited about the work. I honestly can’t take much of the credit, though. Her portfolio is awesome! That’s what really gets the work. Some people think that SEO’s have some secret sauce (I heard this from a client in a meeting last week) for success. We don’t. But we can expose your business to as many of the right people searching for your product or service as possible. The rest is up to you.