I am working in Bb SEO company. I am SEO Specialist. I have done Pre SEO-Audit for a client called HB and then made a report. The report contains the headings SEO Overview, Technical SEO, On page Optimization, Backlink, Keyword Analysis, Competitor Analysis. You can find the report below. Now the client HB is asking me to do a schedule and plan for the upcoming 9 months from April to December 2024. So, I am creating a schedule in Excel with recommendation and tasks. I have created sheets with the name of the month. I have to prioritize the issues that gives results very easily and early. Because I think some of the things like keyword need at least three months to get results. Also, sales of products in HB company varies according to the season. For example, horse show season in spring. So, I have to prioritize the issues according to seasons also. My boss allocated 60 work hours for a month. Help me. Give me an example plan. I want all the SEO steps like Technical SEO, On page Optimization, Backlink, Keyword Analysis, Competitor Analysis in every month. I need tasks under every heading. I have also attached the transcript from the conversation I have with HB. In the conversation we have talked about the business goals, kpi and much more. Spekar 2 is hb and speaker 1 is myself. So create a schedule using transcript and the pre seo audit report.






Speaker 1
Okay. So here, the first first question there is still what is so we can understand the Hodges better, right? So here is the first. But.


Speaker 1
So. So what is the what are the top three business goals for the this year.


Speaker 2
Starting from sales or, or targeting a 12% increase in sales from over last year?


Speaker 1
Okay.


Speaker 2
Some of that comes from a price increase. So it's not all in traffic. Okay. So traffic in terms of SEO is I'm looking for you guys to tell me what you know. We know what the traffic was in 23. What traffic increase can we get? So I need some help on that one. But basically the next goal, specific business goal is to increase our customer acquisition rate from the Web significantly.


Speaker 2
And that means 15% plus. We're doing different things to do that. Like this relationship that we're getting for with smart recognition, which we're getting a lot of email addresses from people who have come to the site. But from an SEO perspective and I really look at the goals by looking at what I have in SEM rush that were identified, the keywords related to ribbons in our positioning, they increase our positioning specifically in that segment to be about it should be above crowd.


Speaker 2
We have a better product offering a focus. So I know it's not going to be at the level of Amazon because there's a lot of other variables at play there. But to me, the next most important thing is to increase our visibility and customers it, because that is our key or key product category. Right? And secondary to that is to start building our presence in that in the metals category.


Speaker 1
Okay.


Speaker 2
Yeah. So yes. Yeah. The metals category, we secondary. So it's really on the ribbons in rosettes and to maintain and grow that significant growth in the metals category because we have such a little presence, because we have a I feel we have a competitive product line there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.


Speaker 2
So from a business point of view, the sales growth, customer acquisition, significant increase there. And then focus on from an ACL perspective, you know, just buy building out the keywords in the metals in increasing. And I look at that as the measurement of that, right, that how we rank and summarize compared to our competitors for each one of those categories, that the target audience is.


Speaker 2
First, major target is equestrian. And again, these are a variety of different people that are buying awards for equestrian events. Well, these could be people who own a barn and or holding a local event up to, you know, major players in the market. We're getting larger and larger orders on the website, and a lot of them are from equestrian accounts.


Speaker 2
Those people are most of our top level accounts are still going to prefer to buy through the phone because they want to just because they're spending, you know, $10,000 plus. So.


Speaker 1
Okay.


Speaker 2
Okay. But basically, our primary target on the Web and our most productive segment is equestrian. Okay. The secondarily you know, so that's above, you know, roughly 55% or 60% of our business. Okay. So that's that's how important that is. The second is the dog show market. Now, in here, we specialize in small and medium size events. We don't like, you know, the events that are on TV, the Westminster Dog Show, that's not in our you know, that's those are served by other people in the market that provide full service there, including, you know, setting up for the shows and things.


Speaker 2
Our our key target is and this has been a growing segment for us, one of this has been our over the last three years or four years, our fastest growing market segment. Okay. A lot of is because we're mailing catalogs to them as well. So but basically, they're very important to us and they're they're our fastest growing segment overall for the business.


Speaker 1
Okay.


Speaker 2
The third target audience is fairs and livestock related events. Okay. This could be like county fairs, state fairs, but there's a lot of other events that people have. Small groups, you know, could be students as well that are holding shows for their livestock. Like any and you can pick almost any any animal and there's an event for it.


Speaker 2
You can you can look at our fair catalog, their digital appeal, just to get an idea. But those have been our specialties. And I think the reason why those drive our business is because online no one else is focusing on like those markets online that I can tell us. We complement the online focus with the strong catalog focus, and that's been our history.


Speaker 2
So those are the markets we we mail to leads and customers consistently and they produce results for us. So those are the top now, the ones that we have focused focus on and do and we really haven't spent much effort on have been in the sports related. We haven't spend much related to schools online or general business recognition.


Speaker 2
There's a lot more competition in those segments. And that's not our forte. And it doesn't mean we shouldn't try to expand into those segments because I think, you know, it's always good to have a good portfolio of of customers. You know, as one market goes down, one can yeah, maybe going up. So I'd like to expand from our narrow focus, but I'll I'll give you more specific products that are purchased for each one of those markets so you get an idea.


Speaker 2
But basically, you can look at our paid advertising, too. We've focused mostly on ribbon related keywords and equestrian related keywords in our return. Investment is fantastic because of that. It's a very niche focus. So we can we do have some room to expand beyond that to test these other segments, although when we've tested them through paid search in the past, you know, it really drags down the dry considerably.


Speaker 2
So I just questioned the total value of that because but we do have product lines that if we have a specific strategy for it, we'll spend some money on to try to get some foothold out there. Yeah, we have a very big win of silver awards or silver plated products that's better than any of the competitors that you looked at.


Speaker 2
it's, it's not, you know, it's not like, yeah, we sell 100 ribbons that we may sell two or three silver products to the same event. Right. But we have a, I think a selection advantage there, although it's a smaller part. So, so because it's a smaller part, you know, we have a limited resource and so we haven't really spent much time on.


Speaker 2
So I think in our strategy moving forward is time to see how we can expand its keywords in those categories and see what we can get out of it, because we do have something to sell there. Yeah. So speaking of promos, total, you know, just a search perspective again. Yeah. expectations. I'm kind of wanting to look at your, your report and seeing what you can do.


Speaker 2
But my, my priority should be prioritization just from listening to, you know, going through all these reports and coming into this, I'll just kind of give you that, you know, the overall, you know, the first priority, you know, let's fix all the technical issues and errors and or, you know, the H1 tags and things like that that are typically the things that we can do relatively quickly and get a good result on.


Speaker 2
So that would be the first priority. Okay. The second priority to me is and there's some of these can be done in parallel, but to improve the the mobile experience in related SEO. I still have a question as to the, you know, what you can do from an SEO perspective for mobile that has a significant payback, but mainly because what you see today is Google's prioritizing all the paid ads, you know, So but if there's a way for us to get up in the rankings and also you point out some performance limitations, those would be things I'd like to nail down first.


Speaker 2
Okay. Okay. That'd be the second priority. Okay. The third one to me is improving the content overall site. And you've pointed out several areas where we can do that.


Speaker 2
To me, I think, again, we have a limited resource. You can see where we focus our attention on content. It's mainly been on the collection pages. Yeah, and I think that's given us some results. So by doing that, yeah. So we need to go through the rest of the collection pages to have some kind of content on the collection pages.


Speaker 2
And then once we have that done, look at the product pages to see we can what we can do. Okay. In there we may need to rearrange some things and we may need to do some AB testing to see how that works. Okay. Well, I would be interested to know also from a tactical point of view is if we can have in their product description section tabs where yeah, we display what we have there today and one tab is the second tab that can open that has more, I call it embellished content that would be picked up by the search engines.


Speaker 1
So what is incidentally is a.


Speaker 2
Yeah, yes. But the user could still read it and use it as usable. Right. But still, you know, I agree with what you said as far as the level of content and that would allow us to probably make the pages more unique in Google's eyes because we have so many pages, as you've pointed out, with duplicate content, that maybe by doing that we could start differentiating that content more.


Speaker 2
It was really we have a lot of ribbons. We have a large selection of ribbons that anyone has, but that results in a lot of duplicate content. Yeah. So, so maybe that's a way that we could, you know, really differentiate some of those products so that Google will see those as not as duplicate as duplicate content.


Speaker 2
In need your feedback in that regard. But yeah. And then the last priority just given, just because of the limited resource that we have, would be looking at the links upfront in the first priority, the technical. we like to get rid of all of the links that are broken, but then really spend time on that. Yeah, but here the this priority, the fourth area would be link building.


Speaker 2
Okay. You know, getting, putting together a strategy that's relevant to our markets to get good links, you know, into our site and the social media part. To me, I've deprioritized myself. I don't think it's as important, you know, I mean, I think the other things that we I just went through to me in my mind are more important than that.


Speaker 2
That's all. Okay. Number four here in the seasonal trends, we have an artificial trend that we create every year. As you probably see, if you look at the Shopify numbers, basically there's a a significant increase in sales in February. Yeah, and that's because our winter sale ends in February. So people, you know, buy early. And so we have said builds our manufacturing backlog.


Speaker 2
So it's really good for us. Yeah. Plus they pay for the product, which is good financially. So that time of year, it's not because of us. People have a lot of events, it's because they're taking advantage of the sale. And so then from here on, March is less is lower than February because of that. But then it comes back in April, May and June and July builds significantly so.

Speaker 2
So the benefits, anything that we do, we're going to see the biggest benefit in the summer months, spring and summer, which starts it starts it'll start ramping up in April, but May, June, July and August, that timeframe are key months for us. And then after that, after September, I think it's kind of lower that it comes back a little bit in October, but then November and December are lower months as well.


Speaker 2
So what we do there too is we cut back on our paid advertising in those months because of the seasonal, because not as many people are really they have less events because most of the events that we service are outdoor events and there's just less of those in the fall. And then in the winter, you know, December again is when our winter sales starts.


Speaker 2
It starts on December 1st, it ends on February 15th. And so some people will order early in December for the new year. Now, again, I'd say a lot of our events are outdoor events, but like in the in Arizona, for instance, or California, they could be having early year events. And we have some associations that, you know, by end it's in December for, you know, January events.


Speaker 2
So but the heart of the seasonality is really, you know, May, June, July and August are peak months. And I can send you a chart to show that.


Speaker 1
Okay. Okay. It will be relevant.


Speaker 2
I'll give you some information related to the markets this and then also on the two key product categories for each market, give a little bit of a matrix. There. Yep. Okay.


Speaker 1
So that. Yeah.


Speaker 2
So I don't have. okay. Go ahead.


Speaker 1
Yeah. As you said, your priority on the social media is very low, right?


Speaker 2
Yeah. Right now there's, it's low priority but we post pretty frequently to Facebook and Instagram. I want to increase that. We're looking at using Hootsuite so that we can lock down some of those same posts to LinkedIn and Pinterest as well. So we will be doing that shortly to start that process that the problem is that we have limited content opportunities that we've developed internally and we'd like to be doing more stories with people in our products, but we really haven't generated the excitement internally to do that in our manufacturing in Missouri and we're in Rhode Island.


Speaker 2
So it's like I haven't been able to get people to do that and I think that will increase. So I think even if we spent more time on social media, the the social media posts that get the most following are about our people or are about our, you know, some product features that are real things. They're being manufactured, you know, in our shop as they go through.


Speaker 2
So those get the highest following. A lot of people. Yeah, we make several posts related to our contests as well. What we're working, what we're working on is leveraging that we have roughly, you know, ten one or ten winners a year for the contests in three markets. That's 30. You know, 30 related posts where they give us a little story on their their horse or their dog or their ID and then we use that.

Speaker 2
You can see that in in when we ask for photography and we leverage that quite a bit in our catalog. So you can look at the online catalog.


Speaker 1
Yeah, I saw that catalog. Yeah.

Speaker 2
Yeah. So one of things we're going to be doing next year is expanding that to the sports and school arena. There's other issues related to that because we have to get sign off on use of there, you know, for kids and stuff like that. But basically that we use to generate a lot of really some good photography actually that stores are very, very into their animals and their events and they take very good pictures and we're using that.

Speaker 2
Plus they each have a little story. So that's one of the things we're going to leverage more this year than we have in the past. That's one of my objectives.

Speaker 1
Okay.

Speaker 2
Yeah. Let's see. Tracking performance in reporting is the most important indicator of sales right now. But but basically, that's kind of a it's hidden because we've been doing price increases which have naturally increased the sales. So so I look at sales, I look at orders from the well, okay, I look at conversion rate, you know, which puts the concept of, you know, the visits to the site, how many are converting.

Speaker 2
Yeah, Yeah. And those are, those are the biggest ones. Now I also want to see this year a significant increase in new visitors.

Speaker 1
Okay.

Speaker 2
Okay. Specifically, you know that there's a lot of other things you can track, but in the end they lead to these things. To me, that's one of the things like when we get customize are in place, I want to be looking at, you know, the time that they're spending on the pages and if, you know, potentially if we can figure out how to single out those people to see if if they have a different conversion performance than the non customizer users.

Speaker 2
Right. Or so there's going to be some specific things I want to point out in the tracking. Okay. We do Yeah. We use are going to be using. Yeah. For more I think the numbers are more or you know more reasonable in line now with what they should be. We're still not tracking everything but the other thing I look at is what products are selling the product performance and it's a year to year.

Speaker 2
A lot of the comparisons are same time versus same time last year. You know, and Google helps us do that. Also, I use the Shopify reports to do that.

Speaker 1
Yeah, I think in the previous report I think we have a table over what are the best selling products that exist.

Speaker 2
Yeah. Now you know, so that's what I'll give you. That information is going to to get the market related product information, I need to go to our legacy system, do some queries there, visits where we categorize customers to the markets where but for the product reporting, actually just the sheer product reporting you can get just by going to Shopify.

Speaker 2
The product reports are very good. Yeah, Yeah. So basically I'll get I'll send you that information on products and I'll give you a one set that's related to the different markets. So you can see the import side. It's going to take a while to put that together, but I'll do that. Okay. The promotions, the major one is the winter sale, but we're going to be doing promotions on specific products through the summer and into the fall.

Speaker 2
Typically, we do a short summer sale.

Speaker 1
It's like introductions.

Speaker 2
No, actually we do two. It depends on what our capacity is. Okay, We do Memorial Day and Labor Day related sales.

Speaker 1
Okay.

Speaker 2
If we have capacity and that's a sitewide.

Speaker 1
I understand that. That is also a major hit. So we are focusing on the brands and or assets and also we have to consider the fact the ability to create medals of trophies out of that site.

Speaker 2
Yes. Now, yeah. So what we do in our email strategy is we kind of rotate through the different product lines so that people are seeing what we conquer and then content, strategy and resources, you know, basically they are experts at holding their events and we really can't tell them anything more about their events, but they expect us to be the product experts and provide, I think, kind of content we can do is provide different information about the products that they may be interested in.

Speaker 2
And I think potentially product videos and things like that because we're really into telling them how to hold a dog show is not what we need to do. They know how to do that. Yeah, right. And tell you I'm going to hold an equestrian that there they already know how to do that now. So what we can do is help them with the product choices.

Speaker 2
What do other people do? Like if you look at the Silver blog, that's an example of going through the whole silver product line, summarize it and hopefully try to make it simple so they can see the major types of products that we have and what you know, what and when you know how to use them, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1
Gary Actually, I that is a I think that is a very good plan because the because in market dog show market people know each each and every thing we can create content related to works silver medals or other products that is not getting a lot of clarification.

Speaker 2
Yeah. So yeah, because I keep on you know every time I prioritize my resource, I always go back to equestrian dog and ribbons. Right? Then we could be doing a lot more in the other categories to incrementally build up our traffic and sales potential Now.

Speaker 1
Yeah, I think, yeah, we should. I think we can focus on that. We should focus on that. But also I think the fine example, if you are writing in content regarding that, I think maybe one or two or that may be related to our simplicity because maybe the B2B people are know, not a lot of information as regards the question of dollars, but we can get traffic regarding that.

Speaker 1
Okay. For example, in in India, we don't have the martial arts, right? So when I am researching about this things, I have found out that blue ribbon is the pearl cluster faster than nothing. So maybe we can create content. For example, for a lot of companies we are creating ten content. Maybe we can do that because maybe we can provide the information to the new customers or maybe we can get a lot of traffic.

Speaker 1
Traffic? We got it that time so people can visit our website. Maybe in the future they can convert that into customer.

Speaker 2
Well, what I think what you just said is a good point that especially as Google and Bay and, you know, Microsoft tried to figure out how to incorporate more AI in their search results. Yeah, it's going to be in the format of asking questions, I think. Right. Yeah. So one of these I was thinking and going through this new SEO new AFAIK, you know we're going to be using it looks like is that on product pages two or collection pages.

Speaker 2
So I'm thinking some of the content could be in the form of FAA here is which could be beneficial to the customer and give us some say SEO leverage so that if you agree that's one of the things like we should talk about more about. To me, how do you think, given what you've seen with that if you tool that that's possible.

Speaker 1
Yeah. Gary Actually, yeah, I think the are in the market are normal. I think when we are doing the page report I have found that if U.S. is good but maybe we can use that a lot of people absolutely. If it needs to be in the visible area. Yeah because when I'm analyzing the heat map of the people, I give them about the heat through like orange.

Speaker 1
I have found out that the most of the linguists say, send the officials. Yeah. Plus, to get the button are button is sales. And second thing is if you think maybe we can create content in the affected section, maybe we can display the is in a more visible area. I think we need to be doing a B testing to and optimize their fake you for that I think.

Speaker 2
Yeah. I think there's potentially a little leverage in that fake you kind of format from both the customer and the SEO perspective and that yeah. Basically on the fake is that's one of the things that you know, I can get an internal resource working on. She actually is our works on our creative but she has experience in manufacturing so she knows the products.

Speaker 2
Okay So that's one of the things that she's going to be working on the fake once we go live with that. And then one thing I was thinking of is the first thing is to get, you know, replace our current F excuse with what we do, But seems like there is opportunities to leverage this from SEO and especially it looks like there is features in the product where we could serve a specific set of epic cues that we like up here at the bottom of the Rosette collection page.

Speaker 2
You know, things like that. Yeah. Which, which gets back to Yeah, we don't really have any content expertise internally anyway as a people because we don't like write content. We have people that know the product, we have people that, you know, related to email in the product, but we don't really have a content writer who knows who can be.

Speaker 2
And to me, I think that's one of the most difficult things there is to do for our business. And I tried for six months with this other company and there are issues with it just because a think, you know, it's only a different person every time. But the other was that they were trying to write about how to tell people how to hold a dog show.

Speaker 2
I told, You can't do that. We don't that's not our expertise. Right. So trying to find a content creator that this is tough, I don't know exactly that was never been successful doing this on the outside. I don't have anyone on the marketing team that can consistently write good content. They're all doing other jobs, right. So, so that's kind of been always the issue and trying to find the right resource.

Speaker 2
So in 2023 I was using this other company and know we kind of came up with an agreement of how many, how many pages to do a month and, you know, establish a price for that. And basically we got through some of the collection pages, which you can see it's already been implemented and we had some pretty good results on some of that.

Speaker 2
The problem was I had to rewrite most of it.

Speaker 1
wow.

Speaker 2
That is you know, they were like they did a blog or Copyblogger or because I couldn't publish because they included, you know, photography, which was great of the product, but it wasn't with our product. Okay. So there were several things that were wrong with that. It's just on the content strategy. I'm still up in the air is how to deal with that directly.

Speaker 2
One of the things that I have been thinking about is just hiring someone who has writing, you know, capability on a contract basis to come to the office like a day, a week to spend time with our people to learn. You guys spend time learning the product, to write content for us. And, and yeah, we have like, for instance, we have a lot of mentors, but they all don't have same characteristics.

Speaker 2
You can't group them together. So any case on the content strategy, I still believe it's best to do the collections first.

Speaker 1
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2
That's it. If, if on the product page you can add a tab, then we can start adding selective content on the top products there. And then this fake news thing, if we can, you know, expand that and then we can kind of work on the fake news ourselves. You know, we have the expertise with those that will be product knowledge related fake news, which we can handle.

Speaker 2
No problem. Okay. Anyway, those are the things that I still think, you know, the priority again, on the collections and then the blogs like writing more things like the Silver blog. Well, I think would be helpful from what you've said. And I think that's that's something where we have the expertise, you know, with a content writer, you know, to write those on that one.

Speaker 2
I gave a very explicit outline and they followed it in the matter of going through the And the reason we picked Silver was because we never spend any time talking about silver. Right. And that's that's a product area that we're we have a that that's one of one of the things that we do well although it's a smaller product line right now.

Speaker 2
Yeah. Anyway, so that's, that's where I'm in and this is the content strategy is the thing I've struggled with the most basic. I had to figure out how to get that done.

Speaker 1
Yeah. From I think I understand.

Speaker 2
What.

Speaker 1
A lot of guys that experience I think I have a better understanding about that because as you said, if there is a content writer who is writing content, they must understand your market where you are coming from. And I just history and all of their customers, they I think yeah, when it comes to creating text to content or something, I think it's a lot of effort.

Speaker 1
I think, yeah.

Speaker 2
Yeah, it's tough. It's love. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So like seasonal trends, I went through that a little bit and that. Yeah, competitor strategy. I'll give you the highlights here and I'll send you some things, some thoughts basically on the competitor strategy. I look at the different markets here and the different product lines that are, you know, the top sellers in those markets.

Speaker 2
And I'll give you a top level just a quick review. Okay. Okay. Okay. So for equestrian, again, that's our biggest market. That's where we sell the most rosettes because it's a very profitable product. You know, a lot of people cannot compete with us at the volume we can do, right? Yeah, right. And they're much smaller. So we have competitive advantage in equestrian because we know equestrian.

Speaker 2
We have a lot of equestrian, very loyal customers or continue some of our competitors or are not producing well and so we have manufacturing capacity. So we spend the most money in the equestrian market trying to get more equestrian customers and keeping the ones we have happy. Really when you look at competitors, we have a few that are specific, but none of the ones that you've mentioned online or vocal are really significant threats to sell process.

Speaker 2
We have other companies that don't really even have an online presence that are that are presence, but they don't have a significant online street presence for producing custom rosettes. So for so our forte for for the equestrian market, custom rosettes, custom sashes, riders, numbers and we spend we sell a variety of others, I'll give you that. But the competitors that do that are very few and many of them are not on that list that you provided online because they are more traditional competitors.

Speaker 2
They have, you know, a U.S. manufacturing facility for ribbons, you know, small to medium size that we compete with in different ways. But they're online competitors. That's why it's been interesting that the online competitors are a totally different group.

Speaker 1
So they are selling for what we have on our partner.

Speaker 2
Yes.

Speaker 1
Okay.

Speaker 2
Yes.

Speaker 1
You playing online or there?

Speaker 2
Yeah, there or there. Through this, there are word of mouth relationships. They developed. There's a lot of competitors not that have been around as long as us, but nearly been around 40 or 50 years. 30 years. Then people turn to you to the event. So what happens is people tend to be very loyal on the rosette side. Yeah, Yeah.

Speaker 2
Okay. So that's so the competitors in for equestrian, there's very few direct competitors online for custom. Do I look at for custom rosettes. Well now for stock products, stock rosettes and stock ribbons, there is quite a few that's a smaller part of what we do as Hodges. But we're starting to sell a lot of those products on Amazon stock off the shelf products.

Speaker 2
And we're competing with a whole group of, I think, Chinese competitors that are just creating a storefront Amazon and, you know, shipping them for FBA. And so some of our competition is coming from Amazon on stock ribbons on rosettes or is there a pro or major competitor there? But there are marketplace for us too.

Speaker 1
So Chinese competitor also I think in the US.

Speaker 2
They are not I don't know if well they're all in the US I think basically because the Amazon need to have a call center either because people are is right. So if you have products, I think what's happening is you know the ribbons are being made and manufactured in China, shipped into the Amazon warehouse in the so there's a lot more competitors that you have listed there, but they never pop up on the radar screen that you you know for a typical because they don't compete with a an independent website themselves, right?

Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah. I just kind of point out there's a group of competitors out there that that are invisible kind of accepted design that actually they're selling a large number of stock ribbons and rosettes. So we compete with them directly on Amazon and we have a decent business stock business within. Hargis. Okay. So then going into the dog market, you know, the competitors most of the competitors are off line competitors, just like in the equestrian market, the top product line sold to dog market are rosettes and I would actually sell even more elaborate rosettes to the dog shows.

Speaker 2
And now here dog shows, most of them have lower volume requirements for us, as you know, the order of 5000 versus thousands. So I see you'll see a lot of people making rosettes and small scale, but very highly customized rosettes. And we really don't compete in that category. The customized stuff we don't do, it doesn't fit our our profile, our manufacturing profile.

Speaker 2
But one of the other set of competitors in the dog market is not strong, though, in online and in that is they are called dog show superintendents. So there's a small group of companies that will make the rosettes and they'll go to the event and hold the event for people to do a dog show and doesn't want to take a promotion.

Speaker 2
Yeah, well, it's like it's like this. They outsource all the work. So if a club is holding a dog show and they really don't want to do any of the work, they'll also do a company that does everything. It's turnkey, right? Yeah. Yeah. So what's happening though is I think we think that it's a smaller and smaller part of the market because they charge quite a bit for the rosettes.

Speaker 2
And so that's where we have a leverage that we have large lists of leads we build catalogs to where we have a superior online presence to most of the competitors in the dog market, but in most of the competitors are offline and they are online. So like, for instance, well, I can't give you a too many that on the list here, but basically dog shows, that's what we sell, primarily rosettes of beers.

Speaker 2
We sell a mix of products, but we sell a lot of flat ribbons. That's where we sell a lot of flat ribbons, you know, fairs, forage agricultural events. And there we have a lot of competitors. They can go to a number of competitors to buy these flat ribbons. We spoke with our 40 is customization of those ribbons them.

Speaker 2
And so basically there's a there's a come a competitor that is not on their list that they don't I don't think they do much online. I get them in the the ribbon comparison list under some rest. They're called stats stats Awards.

Speaker 1
Yes that's yeah.

Speaker 2
They have a full range of products and they sell rosettes as well as flat ribbons on them. Their online presence. They can't be selling a lot of them online, but they do have a decent website and so they're kind of a competitor. There you know. So you notice I haven't mentioned Crown yet in any of this. Right now they have a very broad product line.

Speaker 2
But when it comes to special sizing in these niches, you know, your comments on them are correct. We're much more in depth in those niches than they are. So that's unfair. So we sell a lot of medals to fairs, we sell some trophies, we'll have ribbons and rosettes. If you look at our spherical, we have a big number of rosettes there, but it's really the flat ribbons that really kind of are the big seller for that market.

Speaker 2
And then for schools. So now those are the top top ones for schools. Now we sell medals and flat ribbons primarily. Okay. Those are the top two product lines. And Jones is the major school like a dedicated competitor. But really, schools can buy from any of those. It's really you know, Jones has some specific medal designs related to schools, but so does Crown.

Speaker 2
So their crown competes a lot in all, the trophy companies have a very full line of diecast medals and that's what the schools buy. Primarily. If a school comes to us, they may want a customized medal, but it's a much lower volume. And we do sell a lot of flat ribbons to schools. And that's all these other guys, right.

Speaker 2
And we have several stock ribbons related to schools. Is this Jones? Is this correct? So it's not as much of a niche. They go anywhere that they can get the best price. So that's the characteristics of that market, though. They're shopping on best price and in some cases it isn't out of the school budget. Teachers are buying things themselves because they don't have a budget right?

Speaker 2
So then after schools, you know, it's the other sports we've we have a we've we mail catalogs to swimming in gymnastics or gymnastics slash dance. So within the sports we have a stronger foothold in swimming and gymnastics, particularly in swimming. And there we compete with Hastie you mentioned on the list is strong and some of those events like swimming and gymnastics, but then so is everyone else.

Speaker 2
Like the ones you saw there, They can buy, they buy a lot of metals and they buy a lot of trophies right now. They'll buy some trophies from us. But Crown has better pricing and better delivery. So that's where all the sporting events is. The forte for like Crown Awards, Trophy Depot, all the trophy related companies have medals, plaques and trophies.

Speaker 2
And most of all, I think most of what they sell are into those sporting events, a variety of sporting events. And that's our that's probably our weakest segment. We have products to offer to them, but we don't focus on them. And then the last subsegment is business recognition, which is more like our, you know, people in the human resource department buying awards for service anniversaries or specific events within the company.

Speaker 2
And so we have called a list of, you know, people we mail all the time and we do get, you know, a variety of people from, you know, business or, you know, nonprofit organizations led by small volumes of products there. There is a larger mix of products here, as you would imagine. But we still sell a lot of rosettes into the businesses because I see them and it's, you know, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2
So the competitors there are all the ones you have on the list plus more. Any best are typically looking for a good price looking in. A lot of them are though for the employee recognition we say we think they're you know all of this being organized or run by the the h.r. Departments a lot or they're giving a budget to certain you know, certain business department managers are making their own decision on awards.

Speaker 2
So they asking how much.

Speaker 1
Sales is happening. We are.

Speaker 2
Motivators. I'll give you those numbers. It's like compared to the top three area really falls off dramatically. And the problem is there for us as a Kellogg heritage is that's a very large market, so hard for us to directly address. And there's the the largest number of competitors are in that market. There's a lot of businesses, right. It's hard to target.

Speaker 2
So we aren't as successful because we're very successful. Then we can target a niche market and focus on them. But there's too many. Yeah, we haven't found a good niche within business. We do a little bit, you know, some sales which is good and we want to do more. But it's like it's they're not typically if you look at our website and our product line, it's oriented toward equestrian fare and you know, in animal events, right?

Speaker 2
So we've, we've done that because that's where the money is for us or else we participate in those markets. But and we've participated in those markets for 30 years plus, but they never have grown significantly off line. So we really have a spare resource just based on our forte and our competitive strengths are, you know, our whole manufacturing plant in Missouri, about 85% of it is dedicated toward manufacturing rosettes and ribbons.

Speaker 2
Yeah, we have a smaller department related to engraving products and things that in metals, okay, But that's where our investment has been and that's where our forte is in some of these other markets. It's not what they want, Right. So we have some some products that they may want, but we don't spend as much there because the return on investment isn't there because, you know, they can go to Crown and get hundreds of choices for dye care smells.

Speaker 2
So if they're looking for a diecast metal, we really can't compete with that. They're looking for a customized metal. We can compete with that pretty well, right?

Speaker 1
So, yeah, Gary, I have a question. Yeah, about so we have seen equestrian related auction material for livestock, right? Yeah. So I think and also I think for later you also happen in a certain thing like certain or something. So seasonal something.

Speaker 2
Yes. So yeah yeah yeah. Schools right now our top seller on Amazon our field day ribbons which is the spring school event. Right. And schools have a high, you know they they buy a lot in the spring as they're getting ready with schools closed and they do the field days then in the fall they start buying again with their budgets get started.

Speaker 2
So they have a little bit different seasonality than what I told you or, you know, the horse shows in the dog shows and fairs. Yeah.

Speaker 1
So what about the business customers each? Is there a season for that so that they're buying season up?

Speaker 2
Not really. Yeah. It's it's pretty consistent through the year. Yeah. The exception is that at the end of the year which a lot of times happens and they, they do end of year stuff. Yeah. So that's, you know they do those kinds of things, so you'll see a blip there. But other than that, it's pretty consistent through the year.

Speaker 2
And actually in the fall and winter weeks, you know, there's good business there that it doesn't go through the strong peak like our other markets. Okay.

Speaker 1
Okay. Yeah. I think the been creating content something maybe we can target different type of people because yeah as we as we spoke that means Silverman's maybe a business later that people don't know about this detail about website we might start something related to our website maybe they seek information from website for how to buy, what to buy, how to select that kind of thing.

Speaker 1
Yes, maybe. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2
I agree. The the one blog article, the other of the two is about employee recognition. So.

Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see that. Exactly.

Speaker 2
So that was the idea there. And a lot can be probably written around that theme is giving people ideas I think, you know. And along that line too, we can probably give teachers, you know, school teachers ideas about awards and show the different. So there's, there's things that we can do there. I think definitely.

Speaker 1
Yeah I think if if we capture of the business market maybe it is stuff but I do that for very yeah they have many competitors there but if that if we've got the business I think you just throw out the right.

Speaker 2
Yeah.

Speaker 1
Even though if other business are the market are doing well, I think this is super conscious of sort of consistent business. I think.

Speaker 2
Yes. Yeah. It's, it's just there's a lot more competition there. You know why the competitors have much broader product line. So in putting together the whole strategy, the manner of you know, how much time you spend on the core markets, so delivering their return, how much further can we take them? And so we spend the money there versus developing these other markets.

Speaker 2
I think we need to do a mix of things. It comes down to where we spend our time and effort. That should be the discussion, you know, in the final report. So yeah, yeah, yeah. So this, this, this last item here, customer reviews and testimonials. Yeah, we show it the testimonials in a few places on the website, primarily in the home page.

Speaker 2
I think people click on those or we also show them in some of the emails that we send out, you know, just kind of sprinkle them in. So we have one email that I can share with you. I can show you a that is two leads people haven't bought for the smart recognition. I'll send you guys a copy of that.

Speaker 2
So you see it's it's in kind of introducing them to Hodges and customers testimonials are a big thing there.

Speaker 1
Yeah yeah yeah Gary and also I think if we are if we're focusing on the business like could, maybe we can use LinkedIn also because for me when I am analyzing social media as LinkedIn is a large market for the business and later even the business related things, right? I think that has a lot of potential to gain new customers to to business and that I like and that kind of marketing thing.

Speaker 2
Yeah, I think so too. It's just yeah, just again, you know, when we look at a lot of competitors with a lot of products they're buying from distributors, which are all the same. So it's like it's hard to differentiate in that world too, whereas it's easier for us to differentiate from the competition with what we have in the other markets, I think.

Speaker 2
But we have shied away from it in the past, mainly because, you know, it came from a a catalog marketing strategy where we really couldn't effectively target these people. So we had we had low response rates on our catalogs. And so we not translate that to the web. There could be a bigger, much bigger opportunity here that we are pursuing.

Speaker 2
So I think that's part of the strategy. It's worth seeing if we do something there.

Speaker 1
Yeah, as you said, I think even with the ribbon, its market there is opportunity because we are providing customized solution. But I've said maybe if you weren't promoting to business, we are linked to that something the customers, etc. but I think it is more effective.

Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Very good. Well it was up pretty late here, so I think that's you need some information on the markets and the product. So you have that to get an overall feel for the mix.

Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

Speaker 1
Yeah. I think I got off, I got a lot of information, I got, I got a lot of understanding. Just having a discussion with you. yeah, Yeah, please. Yeah, please. And then that detail regarding the course.

Speaker 2
I will do that. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1
So if you have any questions or anything later, please pre sent to us.

Speaker 2
I will do that. Yeah. Yeah. I'll let you guys go now with this. Probably getting really late your time. Yeah. It's okay. I think it was a very good meeting. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you. Yes. Yeah, that was a very good.

Speaker 1
Yeah. Thank you.

Speaker 2
Yeah, thank you. You guys have a good night. 
SEO Overview: 
Current Performance:
1.	SEO Performance Analysis:
A.	Review organic traffic trends, click-through rates, and Engagement rates
Inference: Our current focus is predominantly on optimizing keywords related to ribbons, neglecting other product categories.

Sales via Channels with Engagement Rates (Last Six Months):
Inference: There is a lack of focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Traffic Based on Device category (Jan 1 2023-Feb 24 2024):
Inference: While 39% of users access our website via mobile devices, the mobile experience does not meet Google's benchmark standards.
B. Assess the effectiveness of existing SEO strategies
1.	Title and Meta description
Inference: Notably, high-ranking pages such as "Equestrian Awards" lack relevant keywords, compelling titles, and descriptive meta-information.
2.	How is the product segment performing in relation to keywords? 
Inference: Keywords associated with ribbons demonstrate effectiveness, while those linked to other products show less traction. Google does not recommend the site due to issues such as mobile responsiveness, insufficient quality content on pages, and a lack of keywords for products beyond ribbons

2. Performance indicators and historical seasonal analysis:
a.	Analyze historical sales data to understand past growth patterns
Inference: The conversion rate has shown a significant increase compared to the previous year.
Inference: Examining our strategy for acquiring new customers.

b.	Examine the effectiveness of past seasonal promotions
Inference: Identifying the referring channels and customer types responsible for driving top sales.

c.	Top Selling Products:
Inference: The Ribbon and Custom Rosette collection stands out as the top-selling collection.  
Errors:
1.	Technical SEO and performance issues:
a.	Technical issues related to JavaScript mentioned by Gary

  Inference: Our analysis revealed 6,228 issues related to unminified JavaScript and CSS files, along with 692 issues pertaining to uncached JavaScript and CSS files
b.	Evaluate overall site speed, crawlability, and indexing
Sitemap:	Number of pages
Products	1305
Collections	630
Pages	161
Blogs	6

Inference: Our investigation revealed a total of 2,102 indexed pages.

c.	Meta Descriptions
Inference: A total of 459 pages have been identified
without meta descriptions.

d.	duplicate meta descriptions
Inference: As an illustration, two pages have been found to share duplicate meta descriptions.
Source: google

e.	Not Optimized Pages related to HTML
Inference: A total of 2,295 pages exhibit an excessively large HTML size.
Source: SEMrush


2. Backlink Audit tool:
Inference: The presence of top toxic links linked to the Hodges Badge Website is negatively impacting its authority. Additionally, evaluating the current status of favorable backlinks and the overall backlink profile in comparison to competitors.

3. UX Assessment:
a.	Identify any usability issues affecting user engagement
Complex navigation:  
Inference: The "Contact Us" section is not positioned prominently, and it may benefit from increased visibility. Additionally, considering elevating the "Top Selling Products" section higher in the user interface for enhanced accessibility.

Slow loading times:
Inference: The website experiences extended loading times, particularly on mobile devices.
 

Mobile-unfriendly design: 
Inference: Text size is inadequate, buttons pose challenges for tapping, and the overall layout is not optimized for smaller screens.

Visibility of social proof section: 
Inference: The social proof section lacks clear visibility on both desktop and mobile platforms.


Rankings:
1.	Keyword Prioritization and Competitor Analysis:
a.	 Current Search engine rankings
Inference: This analysis aims to determine the position of the Hodges Badge Website concerning individual keywords and identify
top-ranking keywords.
Inference: Hodges Badge holds a higher ranking on organic keywords compared to competitors

Inference: A notable 28% of users are in the research phase for ribbons and other products, while an impressive 38% of users are actively prepared to make a purchase.

b.	Analyze competitors' strategies to identify strengths and weaknesses
Crown awards: 
Strength: Hodges Badge boasts a strong online presence with a significant number of backlinks. The company allocates a substantial budget for advertising, indicating a robust marketing strategy. Moreover, their commitment to a mobile-optimized site enhances user experience across devices.
Weakness: Crown Awards diversifies its focus beyond ribbons, diluting its brand identity. Keywords target various products, and the sales approach prioritizes individual products over a broader market strategy.

c.	Evaluate the current rankings of custom rosettes and ribbon pages
Inference: Hodges Badge holds a high ranking on the top 3 keywords compared to its competitors.

Inference: Crown Awards' estimated paid traffic ratio is 8%.


2. Content and Collection pages review:
a. Implement a thorough review of collection pages:
i. Top-selling product pages necessitate additional descriptive text for enhanced product information.
ii. Many keywords lack corresponding content and require attention.
iii. The sales collection page would benefit from the inclusion of description text.
b. Evaluate the relevance and quality of content on custom rosettes and ribbon pages
i. Collection pages lack user reviews with photos, impacting trust and credibility.
ii. Main collection pages such as Dog Show and Equestrian Awards boast well-crafted descriptions and high-quality content.
iii. Certain collection pages, like Equestrian Awards, would benefit from incorporating more relevant keywords. 
3. Audit using Gary's Insights
a.	 Evaluate past SEO efforts targeting custom rosettes and ribbons, analyzing their impact on rankings.


Inference: Data from Universal Analytics and Shopify consistently shows that custom rosettes and ribbons are perennial top-selling products.
Source: Universal Analytics and Shopify

Inference: SEO efforts directed at custom rosettes and ribbons exhibit a predominantly positive impact, with some keywords experiencing negative effects.

b.	Assess the effectiveness of the current SEO strategy in expanding beyond top-selling categories.

Traffic for the Keyword Medals:

Inference: The traffic for Hodges Badge is comparatively low when compared to competitors for keywords related to medals.


Keywords related medals and position of Hodges Badge compared to competitors:

Inference: There is a high keyword density related to medals.


4. Paid Search Campaign Analysis
1. Analyze the effectiveness of paid campaigns in complementing organic SEO efforts.
Inference: For Paid Search, the engagement rate stands at 50% for 2021 and 2022, increases to 54% in 2023, and significantly rises to 72% in 2024. Meanwhile, the engagement rate for Organic Search is 60% in 2021, 62% in 2022, peaks at 77% in 2023, and maintains a robust 70% for the current year. 

2. Identify opportunities for refining the keyword strategy in paid campaigns to align with organic SEO goals.
Inference: There is no conflict observed between the keywords used in Paid Campaigns and those associated with Organic Search. However, to drive more sales in other product lines, particularly Medal products, it is recommended to intensify the focus on keywords related to medals.


 
Technical SEO:
1.	Crawlability and Indexing Assessment:
a.	4xx and 5xx status codes:

Inference: The presence of 404 errors in 819 pages can hinder search engine crawlability and indexing of the affected pages, potentially impacting the website's visibility in search results and user experience.
b.	Duplicate content:

Inference: The presence of 835 pages with duplicate content can cause search engine confusion and hinder indexing efforts. It can also negatively impact SEO performance by contributing to a phenomenon known as "cannibalization," where multiple pages compete for the same ranking, potentially weakening overall visibility.
C. Indexing:

Inference: While Google is aware of these 96 URLs, they haven't been indexed yet. Further investigation is required to determine the cause and prioritize indexability efforts, especially for crucial pages like product listings.




2.	Site Structure Analysis:
Inference: The Hodges Badge website's clear and logical structure likely contributes to both improved search ranking and enhanced user experience. Notably, the shallow website depth of three levels allows users to easily reach their desired content.

3.	URL Parameter Handling:
Inference: The Hodges Badge website contains 835 pages with highly similar content, primarily differing only in product dimensions and names. While the current approach might be intended to cater to various product variations, it creates significant duplicate content issues, which can negatively impact SEO efforts

4.  XML Sitemap Inspection
Inference: The current XML sitemap appears to be functioning effectively, facilitating faster indexing and enhancing website discoverability. While the inclusion of additional top-selling pages could be considered, it is crucial to conduct a thorough analysis before implementing any changes to the sitemap.
5. Image Optimization Review
Inference: Initial analysis suggests well-optimized images on the Hodges Badge website, employing proper filenames and formats. However, incorporating relevant and keyword-rich alt text descriptions could further enhance optimization.
6. Mobile-Friendly Analysis
Inference: Our testing revealed that the website's mobile page load time exceeds optimal standards, potentially causing users to wait longer than average to access desired content. Despite this, the website maintains a stable layout during loading, avoiding potential user frustration caused by sudden layout shifts.


On-Page Optimization:
1. Keyword Mapping and Density Check:
Inference: The current keyword strategy might not fully align with user intent. For instance, the keyword "custom medals" generates 17,320 impressions but only 138 clicks, despite the website lacking any content or targeting for this term. Additionally, keyword usage is inconsistent across pages, with some featuring a high density of specific terms like "custom ribbons" while others lack any relevant keywords. This inconsistency, along with a focus solely on "ribbons"-related keywords, overlooks potential opportunities to target other valuable search terms and attract users searching for "custom medals" and similar terms.
2. Title Tag Optimization
Inference: Several title tags are identical to H1 headers, hindering the inclusion of relevant keywords. Additionally, over 1,000 pages exceed Google's recommended character limit for titles, while approximately 400 pages have titles with insufficient characters. Furthermore, more than 100 products share highly similar titles, potentially impacting their individual visibility.

3.	Meta Description Optimization:
Inference: Many collection pages lack high-quality meta descriptions, potentially hindering their SEO performance. Additionally, 220 pages utilize identical meta descriptions, which can negatively impact search engine ranking. Furthermore, 480 pages exceed Google's recommended character limit for meta descriptions.

4. Header Tags Optimization:
Inference: Over 100 pages lack header tags entirely, while over 1,000 pages contain duplicate header tags. This hinders the incorporation of relevant keywords and negatively impacts both search engine understanding of the content and user experience.

5. Content Quality & Gap Assessment:
Inference: Many product descriptions lack detailed information and explanations addressing relevant market needs. This can negatively impact search engine rankings, as search engines prioritize content that comprehensively addresses user search intent.

6. Schema Markup Implementation:
Inference: The majority of pages lack schema markup implementation, hindering search engines' ability to understand the website's content effectively. Additionally, even the pages with existing schema markup seem to lack relevant data, further limiting their potential benefits. 
7. Canonical Tags Implementation:

Inference: Several collection pages are currently not being indexed by search engines due to issues with canonical elements. To address this, we need to identify the top-performing collection pages and implement a solution, such as different content or different headings to ensure proper indexing by search engines.

8. Mobile Responsiveness Check:
Inference: Slow loading times and improperly optimized elements are hindering mobile responsiveness, negatively impacting user experience. This can lead to higher bounce rates and potentially affect search engine rankings.
9. Conversion Element Evaluation:
Inference: The location of conversion elements, such as "Add to Cart," is not readily visible in the vicinity of the quantity and price sections. This necessitates user scrolling to access the description, deviating from the user-friendly approach observed on the Crown Awards website. This discrepancy creates confusion and potentially hinders conversion rates due to poorly designed user experience.

10. User Engagement Metrics Analysis:
Inference: Collection pages attract greater traffic compared to product pages, highlighting their potential as traffic drivers. However, user engagement time on mobile devices remains low across both page types.



Backlink Report:
1. Identify the total number of backlinks pointing to Hodges Badge website:
Inference: Hodges Badge has 5,077 links and 697 connected domains. However, 109 of those domains are broken and 318 page links are also broken. This could potentially impact the website's authority and search engine rankings, either positively or negatively.

2.	Analyze the referring domains:
Inference: 19% of the links are categorized under 'Business and Industrial,' which could potentially generate organic traffic. However, the majority of backlinks possess a lower authority score, potentially affecting trustworthiness in Google's eyes. Notably, a significant portion of anchor texts in these backlinks includes 'Hodges Badge,' suggesting strong brand awareness and recognition. Additionally, over 400 pages are associated with horse shows.

3.	Analyze the anchor text of backlinks:
Inference: A notable number of backlinks utilize the keyword-rich anchor text 'Rosettes.' This suggests that users may be actively searching for these specific keywords, indicating the relevance of your website to their queries. The quality of backlinks is commendable, featuring a mix of branded, keyword-rich, and descriptive anchor text. Importantly, generic anchor text such as 'click here' is absent, as these generic terms have the potential to diminish the SEO value of the associated backlinks.

4.  Analyze the quality of backlinks:
Inference: Over 650 domains exhibit a domain authority below 40%, potentially exerting a negative influence on SEO. Additionally, 500 links originate from school-related websites, suggesting a positive impact on brand reach and trustworthiness.
5.  Identify broken backlinks:
Inference: Our analysis identified 318 broken pages within the backlink profile. These pages contain a mix of valuable and detrimental backlinks. Of these 318 pages, 262 are broken due to unavailable images. This means that users clicking on these backlinks might encounter broken image links.

6.	Compare Hodges Badge backlink profile with competitors:
Inference: Crown Awards boasts 1.1 million backlinks, Jones Award has 18,000, and Hodges Badge has 11,100. This indicates that Hodges Badge may need to prioritize acquiring additional high-quality backlinks to remain competitive. The Hodges Badge website exhibits lower authority backlink domains compared to its competitors. However, Hodges Badge possesses superior anchor text when compared to Jones Awards, potentially resulting in increased traffic relevant to the business.
 
Keyword Analysis Report

1. Current Keyword Analysis:
Inference: The current traffic primarily originates from existing customers who search for the Hodges name on Google. The Hodges Badge website maintains a high ranking for keywords related to horse shows, while custom ribbons prominently rank within the product category.
2.	Analyze Keyword Performance and top-performing keywords related to ribbons, rosettes, medals:
Inference: Hodges Badge holds the top position for 'horse show ribbons,' and the landing page prominently features Equestrian Awards. This indicates that users searching for horse show ribbons can easily find what they are looking for.
However, Hodges Badge is positioned at #4 for 'custom ribbons' but lacks long-tail variations such as 'custom printed ribbons for graduation.' The absence of these variations in top rankings suggests potential long-tail opportunities.
HB Company faces challenges in breaking into the top 10 for 'custom medals,' despite receiving a significant number of impressions. This suggests a potential lack of content related to the keywords on HB Company's website, which may be hindering their ranking for this keyword.

3. Analyze Keyword Competitiveness:
Inference: 
Branded terms such as "Hodges Badge," "Hodges Badge Company," and "Hodges Badges" consistently demonstrate a high Click-Through Rate (CTR), indicating robust brand recognition and loyalty among users. Keywords like "horse show ribbons" and "custom award ribbons" maintain a competitive position with a high CTR, suggesting effective optimization. Although "horse show ribbons" exhibits a high CTR, there is potential for further growth, indicating broader competition and potentially more users in the research phase considering multiple companies.
Long-tail keywords like "dog show prizes" and "horse show back numbers" exhibit a decent CTR, indicating potential opportunities for capturing niche audiences. However, keywords such as "custom medals" and "medals" show lower CTR, suggesting intense competition in these broader categories.
Anchor text variations like "Hodges Badge discount code" and "HodgesBadge" demonstrate a good CTR, indicating user interest in specific offerings.

4. Keyword Trends and Gaps:
Inference: Lower CTR for generic terms like "custom award ribbons" and "custom ribbons" suggests a keyword gap that we can exploit to reach a wider audience searching for these products.
While there is interest in fair-related terms like "fair ribbons" and "fair awards," the CTR is moderate, suggesting a potential gap or room for improvement in capturing user attention.
Keywords related to trophies, plaques, acrylic awards need more optimization

5. SERP Analysis:
Inference: While the website's meta titles and descriptions for "Hodges Badge" are compelling, many Hodges Badge pages currently lack the domain authority necessary to appear in featured snippets. 

6. Analyze Search Intent:
Inference: Understanding search intent enables the creation of content that satisfies user needs, improving the chances of ranking higher and delivering a positive user experience.
1. Hodges Badge" exhibits a high click-through rate (CTR) and a dominant position, suggesting strong transactional intent and likely intend to visit the official site for purchases.
2. Long-tail keywords with higher CTR "custom horse show ribbons" often indicate higher purchase intent and potentially less competition compared to broader terms like "horse ribbons".
3. “Custom horse show ribbons" (CTR: 9.36%) suggests users are actively looking to buy. "Horse ribbons" (CTR: 4.05%) might be a broader search, so optimize content to target users at different stages of the buying journey. 

7. Long-Tail Keywords Investigation:
Inference: The page titled "Perpetual Trophy Base" received 10 clicks and 1697 impressions. Despite having a high impression share, the low click-through rate is attributed to the absence of proper long-tail keywords.
The search query "Year-End Awards for Horse Shows" garnered 12 clicks and 371 impressions.
Some identified long-tail keywords with potential include "custom ribbon with logo," "Hodges Badge Company coupon code," "custom printed award ribbons," "back numbers for horse shows," "dog show ribbons and rosettes," “horse show champion ribbon” and "custom horse show awards.
 
Competitor Analysis report
1.	Competitor Info:
Scope: Identify Hodges Badge's top competitors and collect info using a combination of keyword research, industry reports, social listening tools, and customer review analysis.
Inference:
1. Market Positioning:
Crown Awards: Crown Awards positions itself as the industry leader in awards for youth sports and corporate events. They boast a wide range of products, from trophies to crystals, and prioritize both high quality and convenient purchasing options through catalogs, websites, and retail stores. 
Personalized ribbons position itself as the customization king in the ribbon world. They offer a wide variety of ribbons (badge, rosette, full color, etc.) and extensive personalization options to cater to both personal events (weddings, birthdays) and business needs (branding, advertising). Their focus on exceptional customer service ensures customer satisfaction and strengthens long-term relationships.
McLaughlin Ribbon Awards positions itself as a niche player in the awards industry. They focus on quality, personalized service, and unique, creative award ribbons, especially for those in the horse industry. This caters to customers who value handcrafted products, family-run businesses, and a focus on equestrian events, rather than mass-produced generic options.
Jones School Supply Co. positions itself as the go-to partner for schools recognizing student achievement.  They leverage their vast product selection (medals, trophies, certificates, etc.) to cater to diverse academic and sports awards.  They prioritize offering competitive prices and excellent customer service, making them a reliable choice for budget-conscious educators. 
2. Target Audience:
Crown Awards:
Youth Sports Organizers, Corporate Event Planners, Businesses seeking awards for branding/promotion, Customers who value brand recognition, convenience, and diverse award options.
Hodges Badge:
Horse Show and Equestrian Event Organizers, Schools and Educational Institutions, Sports and Recreation Leagues (broad and potentially niche), Fairs & 4-H Organizations
Jones Awards:
Schools and Educational Institutions (primary target), Budget-conscious educators and administrators, Customers who prioritize value, a wide range of academic and sports awards
Hasty Awards:
Sports related events like diving, football, gymnastics, etc…

Key takeaways:
Crown Awards focuses on convenience and brand recognition, while Hodges Badge emphasizes customization and potentially caters to niche markets like Horse show events.
Jones Awards specializes in the education sector with a focus on value and academic awards, while Hodges Badge offers a wider range of awards and potentially caters to a broader audience beyond schools.
While there's some overlap for business customers, Personalized Ribbons caters more to personal events and a wider range of event types.
Hasty Awards targeting sports events more than other events and getting traffic in ribbons and medals.

2.	Competitor Website Analysis:
Inference: This analysis uncovers both the strengths and weaknesses of competitors in technical SEO and on-page optimization. It allows for the identification of areas where Hodges Badge can excel and areas where improvement is needed.

1. Identifying Technical SEO Issues:
 Hodges Badge has several broken links compared to competitor websites like Crown awards, Hasty awards, ribbons galore.
Compared to Crown awards Hodges Badge has H1 missing in many pages. 
“Crown Awards” mobile page loads significantly faster compared to others. Additionally, Hodges Badge boasts a commendable SEO score in comparison to its competitors.

2. Uncovering Mobile Responsiveness Flaws:
We utilized page speed insights and manual review to compare Hodges Badge mobile experience with competitors.  While Crown Awards offers a mobile-friendly website, competitor hasty awards have some navigation difficulties on their mobile product pages, making it harder for users to find specific awards. Hodges Badge has better mobile-friendly website than Hasty awards. This highlights Hodges Badge's advantage in mobile responsiveness over hasty awards and jones awards, ensuring a seamless user experience for customers browsing on smartphones or tablets.

3. Analyzing On-Page Optimization Practices:
We analyzed competitor product pages and blog content. Mclaughlin ribbon awards excels in on-page optimization, using relevant keywords throughout their content and crafting compelling meta descriptions. However, Hasty awards seems to be neglecting meta descriptions on product pages, potentially missing out on valuable keyword optimization opportunities.  By incorporating these learnings, Hodges Badge can refine its on-page optimization strategy for product content and pages to improve organic search ranking.

4. Assessing Competitor Backlink Profile: 
While Crown Awards appears to have a strong backlink profile with links from reputable industry publications, Hasty awards and others seems to have a weaker backlink profile. This presents an opportunity for Hodges Badge to develop a targeted link-building strategy to acquire high-quality backlinks and improve its overall SEO authority.
 

3.	Product Offering Comparison:
Inference: Identifying differences and similarities in product offerings helps the Hodges Badge refine its positioning, pricing strategy, and highlight unique selling propositions. This comparison helps identify product gaps Hodges Badge can fill, unique selling points they can leverage, and potential areas for improvement in product presentation or pricing strategy.

1. Addressing Competitor Advantages in Product Selection:
We analyzed competitor product lines. While Hodges Badge offers a strong selection of custom ribbons and medals, Crown Awards seems to have a wider variety of pre-designed trophies available for purchase. Hodges Badge offers more ribbons and rosette compared to competitors like Mclaughlin ribbon awards, hasty awards, Personalized ribbons.
2. Identifying Gaps in Competitor Product Information:
 We conducted an analysis of competitor product descriptions and found that Ribbons Galore and McLaughlin Ribbon Awards offer comprehensive descriptions for their ribbon products. However, Hodges Badge could benefit from additional descriptive content beyond mere specifications. Unfortunately, Hasty Awards lacks sufficient product descriptions altogether.

3. Assessing Competitor Visual Content:
We conducted an analysis of the quality and quantity of product images across competitor websites. Hodges Badge stands out with high-quality photos featured on both its product pages and collections page. Similarly, Crown Awards and Ribbons Galore also employ high-quality product photos. However, Hasty Awards and McLaughlin Ribbon Awards fall short in this aspect, as they showcase low-quality images. 

4.	Exploring Competitor Customer Reviews:

We conducted an analysis of customer reviews for Hodges Badge and its competitors across Google My Business and product pages. While Hodges Badge and McLaughlin ribbon awards has garnered customer reviews, Crown Awards lacks such feedback. On the other hand, Ribbons Galore's product pages feature individual product reviews.

4. Content Evaluation:
Inference: Evaluating competitor content helps identify potential content gaps Hodges Badge can address, understand what resonates with the target audience, and inspire new content ideas for Hodges Badge's website.

We have reviewed the blog content of competitors and found that Crown Awards, Hasty Awards, and Ribbons Galore lack a dedicated blog section. This reveals a gap in content targeting the specific needs of award buyers, such as "choosing the right custom medal" or "creative award presentation ideas." By creating informative blog posts addressing these topics and more, Hodges Badge can attract organic traffic from potential customers actively searching for award solutions.

5. SEO Strategy Overview:
Inference: Understanding competitor SEO strategies reveals their approach to link building, keyword targeting, and paid advertising. It allows Hodges Badge to refine its own strategy, identify keyword opportunities, and improve search engine visibility.

1. Keyword Targeting Strategies:
We analyzed the keywords competitors seem to be targeting on their websites and in content.  While both Crown Awards and Trophy Depot target broad keywords like "awards" or "trophies," they might be neglecting long-tail keywords related to specific award types or customization options.  By incorporating these long-tail keywords into Hodges Badge SEO strategy, it can target a wider range of search queries with potentially lower competition and attract more qualified organic traffic.

2. On-Page Optimization Practices:
We analyzed competitor product pages and collection pages for optimization practices. While Hodges Badge seems to be effectively using relevant keywords throughout their content, ribbons galore might be neglecting to optimize product keywords for some of their product pages.  Crown awards are using generic keywords like awards or custom ribbons in their product pages. By ensuring Hodges Badge website has well-optimized product pages and blog content with relevant keywords and compelling meta descriptions, it can improve organic search ranking and visibility for valuable search terms.

3. Internal Linking Structure:
We analyzed how competitors internally link their web pages. Almost all competitors, including Hodges Badge, maintain a depth of three, which aids Google in crawling and indexing more efficiently. However, none of the competitors have a dedicated blog or article section, and they do not strategically link content and product pages together. This presents an opportunity for Hodges Badge to create or repurpose content and strategically link it to relevant product pages, enhancing the overall user experience and potentially improving search engine visibility.

4. Mobile Optimization Strategies:
We reviewed competitor websites and compared them to Hodges Badge to assess the user experience for customers. While both Crown Awards and Trophy Depot offer mobile-friendly websites, Hasty Awards' mobile product pages present usability issues, hindering user navigation and completion of actions. In contrast to Jones Awards' website, Hodges Badge is performing well in terms of user engagement. By ensuring that Hodges Badge's website provides a seamless user experience on mobile devices, it can effectively cater to the expanding mobile browsing audience and potentially enhance conversion rates.

6. Social Media Presence:
Inference: Crown Awards has garnered a significant number of views on Pinterest, leveraging product links attached to pins to drive traffic to their website. This presents a valuable growth opportunity for Hodges Badge.
Furthermore, Crownawards.com extensively utilizes YouTube, boasting a library of 183 videos, a feature notably absent among competitors. Recognizing YouTube as the second-largest search engine, Hodges Badge can capitalize on this platform to generate content, mirroring the success seen by Crown Awards.
Additionally, many competitors have not actively utilized LinkedIn for content creation. Hodges Badge can leverage this platform to engage with B2B customers and establish meaningful connections

7. Traffic Sources Analysis:
Inference: Understanding competitor traffic sources reveals which channels they rely on most to attract visitors. This helps Hodges Badge identify potential areas to focus their own traffic acquisition efforts for a well-rounded strategy.
1. Organic Search Traffic Potential:
We utilized SEMrush and similar tools to estimate organic traffic for competitors.  While Crown Awards seems to be receiving a healthy amount of organic traffic, Trophy Depot might have lower organic search visibility.  This highlights the importance of a strong SEO strategy for Hodges Badge to improve organic ranking and attract potential customers searching for awards online.
2. Analyzing Paid Advertising Strategies:
We analyzed Hodges Badge's competitors to determine whether they are utilizing paid advertising. The absence of paid advertising on Hasty Awards' end could present an opportunity for Hodges Badge to leverage targeted ads. This strategy would enable Hodges Badge to reach potential customers who are actively searching for award solutions related to sports-related activities. It appears that none of the competitors are utilizing social media advertising.
3. Identifying Referral Traffic Sources:
We analyzed competitor websites for backlinks from relevant industry publications or award association websites. Strong referral traffic from these sources for Crown Awards suggests they might have established partnerships within the awards industry.  While Hodges Badge might not have the same level of established partnerships yet, focusing on link-building efforts and industry outreach can potentially increase referral traffic in the long run.
4. Direct Traffic Analysis:
We analyzed the percentage of direct traffic for competitor websites. A high percentage of direct traffic for Hodges Badge suggests that they have a loyal customer base returning directly to their website. Despite Hodges Badge not yet having the same level of brand recognition as Crown Awards, their high percentage of direct traffic indicates the presence of very loyal customers.

8. Customer Reviews and Feedback:
Inference: Analyzing customer feedback helps identify common pain points, strengths, and weaknesses, guiding improvements to the client's product or service.
1. Google My Business Analysis:
We reviewed positive reviews on Google My Business for Hodges Badge, Mclaughlin ribbon awards, Crown Awards, hasty awards, ribbons galore.  Trophy Depot has many negative reviews citing Poor Customer Service, Order Fulfillment Issues, Order Cancellations. This highlights the importance of maintaining excellent product quality and customer service for Hodges Badge to ensure customer satisfaction.

2. Amazon Store Analysis: 
 Hodges Badge is competing with Crown awards, Ribbons now and other third-party companies in Amazon.  Mclaughlin ribbon awards and Trophy depot is not Amazon. This highlights an opportunity for Hodges Badge to emphasize diverse way of strategizing according to the platform.
3. Identifying Missed Opportunities for Customer Engagement:
Almost all of the companies failed to respond to both positive and negative reviews on Google My Business. This underscores the significance of implementing a dedicated customer service strategy for Hodges Badge. It's essential to ensure prompt and professional responses to all customer reviews, irrespective of their tone.
4. Other Platform reviews:
We conducted a review of competitor websites to assess the presence of customer testimonials. Hodges Badge is notably absent from platforms such as Yelp, BBB, Sitejabber, and Worthepenny, unlike Crown Awards. Having a substantial number of reviews on review websites can significantly enhance trustworthiness from an SEO perspective.

Crown Awards effectively showcases customer testimonials on their product pages, which has the potential to foster trust with prospective buyers. Conversely, Hodges Badge appears to lack customer testimonials on their product pages. This situation presents an opportunity for Hodges Badge to capitalize on positive customer experiences and testimonials to cultivate trust and credibility within their target audience.

9. Promotional Strategies:

Inference: Understanding competitors' promotional strategies helps the client stay competitive and develop effective promotions that resonate with their target audience.
1. Analyzing Discount Codes and Coupons:
 We reviewed competitor websites for promotions. Crown Awards and Trophy Depot frequently offers discount codes advertised on their homepage. While Hodges Badge might not have the same level of brand awareness as crown awards, strategically offering targeted discounts or coupons during specific periods is incentivizing purchases and attracting new customers. For example, winter sales.

2. Identifying Free Shipping Thresholds:
We analyzed competitor shipping policies. Trophy Depot appears to offer free shipping on orders above $95, while Crown Awards provides free shipping for "Trophy and Plaque" orders over $100 within the Continental USA. In contrast, Hodges Badge does not offer free shipping, which may impact potential new customers. This underscores an opportunity for Hodges Badge to potentially implement a lower free shipping threshold or introduce free shipping promotions to incentivize purchases, particularly for first-time customers.