How To Get International Customers
Overview
An award-winning, bare metal server hosting company in the Netherlands wants to attract customers in neighboring countries and the US.
The company already has some organic search visibility for Netherlands based search terms and some very specific terminologies around bare metal servers.
How can this small, Netherlands based web hosting company carve out a niche online against larger competitors? How can that niche reach the United States and other countries with strict DDoS rules? Can this web hosting company reduce their PPC spend, where keywords cost $30+ per click? And, can this company be successful in establishing an international brand for their target keyword, of Netherlands dedicated server?
Challenge
Web hosting companies face steep competition online. Keywords demand a high cost per click via PPC (pay per click) advertising. Companies who occupy first page search result have well-established brands with high domain authorities.
So how does a small web hosting company with 1 employee attract international customers?
Can leads legitimately by generated by an overseas hosting company in need of US based customers?
And on top of it all, the website was experiencing a steep downward trend in search traffic due to a previous agency building bad backlinks. How could we reverse that downward trend to get back in the good graces of search engines?
Solution
Our solution was three-fold: to build quality backlinks, create content targeting the right keywords, and fix website issues via technical SEO.
For content generation, we found what content was already ranking for the site. We found that some of the best content was around a technology that combines multiple independent hard drives into a single larger volume – also known as RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). We also found variations of less competitive keywords that still attracted traffic from international customers looking at Netherlands-based hosting solutions.
And, we swapped “Netherlands” based terminologies for terms like “offshore.”
Our philosophy was that we first fix the foundational structure of the site. Then, develop content targeting the right keywords. Promote that content by building quality backlinks. And finally, as content ranks and drives traffic, reduce the PPC spend for related keywords to reinvest more into what’s working with SEO.
Result
Initially, the web hosting company continued to see traffic decline for the first two months of our engagement. Tensions were high. But then, the downward trend in traffic reversed and traffic increased 4x by achieving first page positions for desirable keywords like “offshore vps” “netherlands dedicated server,” and more.
In addition, the “value” (the equivalent value of the organic search traffic, should that traffic have been acquired via PPC) of the traffic was increased more than 10x. Before the engagement, the organic traffic was valued at about $150 per month. While there is some fluctuation in traffic value, at one point the value reached $2,500 per month. This shows that we ranked for some valuable keywords, which helped us slash the paid advertising budget in half. We no longer needed to pay for keywords where we had organic visibility.
Our client was able to attract the international customers they were looking for. The business grew. And everyone was quite happy with what was achieved through our approach to SaaS SEO.
