Website Content Strategy & SEO
// WM (Waste Management, Inc.)
WM’s Northern California-Nevada area needed a marketing and communications website to power campaigns, generate awareness, and drive business growth.
Role
As Digital Marketing & Paid Media Specialist with WM’s Northern California-Nevada Communications team, I was tasked with auditing all existing online assets and platforms, devising a content strategy to improve customer experience, and then operationalizing it. I worked under the supervision of the Director of Communications and the Senior Communications Manager to conduct the audit, present my findings, and get buy-in from relevant stakeholders.
I was also responsible for the development, testing, and launch of all site improvements (PHP, JavaScript, HTML and CSS), and implementing a tracking system utilizing Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Ads, and Adobe Analytics to enable full funnel reporting.
Strategy
Upon analysis, I determined that the brand was presenting a confusing web of options for users searching for its products, services, and locations. Many pages were relics of web updates past, out-of-date, not optimized, and in most cases, completely siloed from any other content. In order to streamline the customer experience and better enable discovery, I developed a content strategy to capitalize on the brand’s biggest organic search opportunities, simplify discovery by eliminating or optimizing existing content, and develop content/landing pages that could later be used for digital ad campaigns.
The biggest component of the project was creating a content type, template, layout, system of organization, and developing the php functions that would power a new centralized online database of company facilities. Previously, each facility had its own standalone microsite using old JSP pages. None of the facilities were connected and there was no consistency for how information was presented across the sites. I started by auditing each site’s “accepted materials” and “available services” to create a master list I could use to power the database, dumping them all into a spreadsheet and then working to standardize them from over 350 items to around 50 materials that each facility could either accept or not. I then created content templates for facilities pages and populated them with data and copy before building out all the necessary components using custom post types, custom php, and Wordpress' Divi Theme.
Finally, I executed the content strategy to develop 25+ pieces of SEO content to drive organic search traffic to the new facility pages.
Outcome
After launching the updated strategy in July 2023, the site saw over 750% growth in organic search traffic in the first 3 months, growing by another 455% by the 6th month. The site also saw a 1,400% increase in conversions, and a 950% increase in search visibility.
Year-over-year growth increased by +1,200% (traffic), +20% (engagement), and +55% (time-on-site).