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Hartford Technologies is a global specialist in on-line booking of refuse disposal services. Its online booking engine offers consumers value for money by offering the lowest available price for refuse disposal services.

First Rate was contracted by Hartford to assist with increasing website visitors and online sales in key markets, including the USA where they operate as bookadumpster.com.

New Zealand, Search,

Pinnacle Life became the world’s first life insurance company selling fully underwritten policies online in 2007 and since then has gone from strength to strength.

For a business utilising both online and offline marketing channels, detailed analytics intelligence is vital. It is important that all marketing activities are accurately measured through to conversion, such as new customer applications. This allows an accurate assessment of marketing spend leading to maximum ROI from all marketing activities, with budget allocated to the most effective channels for continuous campaign improvement.

Pinnacle Life choose to use Google Analytics combined with First Rate’s analytics expertise to deliver this value.

Insurance/Finance, New Zealand, Search,

Fairfax Media are the largest integrated metropolitan, rural and regional magazine and digital media company in Australasia. Fairfax Media has publications and websites throughout Australia and New Zealand.

In October 2010 Fairfax Magazines, a subsidiary of Fairfax Media, engaged First Rate to plan and implement a Paid Search Christmas Campaign. Benchmarked against the successful results from the previous year, First Rate was challenged with the task of increasing sales and revenue by 20% for the campaign period (Nov - Dec).

As the result of First Rate’s paid search optimisation efforts and input from Fairfax Magazines’ Online Manager and Marketing Manager, the paid search campaign achieved a 188% increase in sales, 53% decrease in the cost per magazine subscription (CPA), and an ROI of 1,460%.

Corporate/Image, New Zealand, Search,

MetService, together with their international commercial subsidiary, Metra, is a global leader in providing relevant, timely and accurate weather information services, benefitting billions of people throughout the world.

A decision was taken in 2009 to re-launch the MetService website to make it easier for Kiwis to find weather related information, as well as driving increased website engagement from users.

As New Zealand’s 6th most popular website (Nielsen NetRatings, April 2011), it was imperative to ensure a smooth website re-launch for metservice.com. Obviously this also included protecting the substantial amount of organic search traffic delivered to the website.

First Rate worked alongside MetService’s other partners to manage the search risks associated with a website re-launch, including the correct migration of site content from www.metservice.co.nz through to www.metservice.com.

First Rate provided best practice search consulting services including consumer keyword search trend analysis, website content recommendations, information architecture, URL naming conventions as well as project management and auditing of the SEO technical implementation.

Corporate/Image, New Zealand, Search,

MetService, together with their international commercial subsidiary, Metra, is a global leader in providing relevant, timely and accurate weather information services, benefitting billions of people throughout the world.

metservice.com is New Zealand’s 6th most popular website according to Nielsen NetRatings (Market Intelligence Ranking, April 2011). First Rate has been providing hands-on pay per click search advertising optimisation for a number of years, working closely with their online team to generate maximum impact.

As a result of First Rate’s optimisation efforts, metservice.com has enjoyed an average increase in ad click-through rate of 121% and a decrease in the average cost-per-click by 64% for the same period*.

MetService is well positioned to continue to extend its online market leadership. Leveraging First Rate’s SEM consulting expertise ensures maximum traffic delivery and thus supreme value from onsite advertising.

Corporate/Image, New Zealand, Search,

Health Chemist is a leading online pharmacy and natural health specialist. Its natural health section has one of the highest sales turnover of any Health Shop in New Zealand and the website has won the Hitwise Top 10 site award several times.

In 2008, it was decided to take the e-commerce operation to the next level with the launch of a new website. First Rate was tasked with overseeing the redevelopment from a best-practice search engine optimisation perspective.

A strategy for targeting long tail keywords (product names and product categories) was developed and more than 30 relevant, popular and competitive search terms were identified and targeted. First Rate’s “on-page” e-commerce SEO recommendations were incorporated into the website redevelopment.

As a result of implementing First Rate’s best practice SEO recommendations, website revenue from non-brand natural search for HealthChemist.co.nz increased by over 630%.

New Zealand, Search,

First Rate took over the search engine marketing programme for SKYCITY Hotels in late 2007 and has managed the Google Adwords account throughout 2008-2009.

Since taking over the programme, First Rate has been engaged in ongoing optimisation of the Adwords account. As a result, hotel bookings from Adwords increased by 1,747% with only a 107% increase in cost*.

Obviously sales volume is not the only metric of search engine marketing success. During the same period First Rate worked hard to reduce the cost of each hotel booking, decreasing the average cost per booking by 88.8%.

* Data: 3 months period Sept 2007-Nov 2007 compared to Sept 2009-Nov 2009

New Zealand, Search, Travel/Accomodation,