CASE STUDY

GUARANTY BANK & TRUST

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

The StoryTeam SI has worked with Guaranty Bank & Trust

to create an SEO strategy to improve their

search presence. Founded in 1913, Guaranty

Bank & Trust is a bank with over 30 locations

in Texas. Looking to expand their visibility

online, Guaranty provided a list of service

areas and locations that were deemed to

be most important. Working with Guaranty,

Team SI developed a keyword list that works

as a guide to building content and tracked

keyword rankings. Below is a case study

looking at the first months of the campaign,

outlining improvements recorded in Google

Analytics and Conductor Searchlight, which is

the rank-tracking software Team SI uses.

Start of Campaign Data PullsThe start of our SEO campaign coincided with a complete rebuild of the Guaranty Bank & Trust

website, which hinders SEO progress as search engines re-index the entire website. Below are

numbers looking at website data before the site change and the month immediately following.

Post site change, we can see that there was a drop in page views and entrances, as well as a rise in

bounce rate and a drop in the average time on page.

In the preliminary rank tracking numbers, Guaranty Bank & Trust was only appearing on the first

page for 7 percent of the tracked keywords. The website change also detrimentally affected SEO

performance since URLs had changed and search engines did not have the correct information in

their systems.

Google Analytics Data Month Before Website Change (November 2017):

ģ 48,840 Pageviews

ģ 25,808 Entrances

ģ Bounce Rate: 45.78%

ģ Avg. Time on Page: 3 minutes, 17 seconds

Google Analytics Data First Month After Website Change (January 2018):

ģ 42,203 Pageviews

ģ 27,859 Entrances

ģ Bounce Rate: 79.08%

ģ Avg. Time on Page: 2 minutes, 3 seconds

First Conductor Keyword Data Pull

ģ 7% of Keywords Ranking on First Page of Google

ģ 3% of Keywords Ranking in Top 3 Positions

ģ Unique Ranking URLs: 17

ģ Avg. Search Rank of Ranking Keywords: 30

Current Data PullsSince the start of the SEO campaign, Guaranty

has seen improvements across the board.

Not only has traffic surpassed pre-website

change levels with more than 7,000 more

entrances in a month, there has also been

a significant drop in bounce rate. From

this data, we can see that users are

finding gnty.com more frequently

in organic searches and are

finding the content relevant

to their query.

In Conductor, the positive changes that are seen

are as dramatic as the ones that appear in Google

Analytics. Guaranty Bank & Trust now appears on the first

page for 34 percent of their tracked searches, with 18 percent of

those searches appearing in the first three results. Click-through rates

for the top three results can be as high as 35 percent, nearly 20 times higher

than ads that own the top spot on results. First-page results below the top three

average at around 5 percent, which is still significantly higher than content found on

the second page of results and on, which average around 1-2 percent. These high click-

through rates mean more traffic to Guaranty’s website, where users are shown content that is

relevant to their search.

Along with the overall search visibility improvement, more of the website, in general, is now

being indexed. There are now 81 unique URLs for Guaranty Bank & Trust that appear in searches

as compared to 17 at the start of the campaign. This means that more relevant content is being

more consistently served to users, encouraging better user experiences and potentially more

conversions on key goals.

Current Google Analytics Data (Date Pulled: March 18, 2019)

ģ 56,416 Pageviews

ģ 35,483 Entrances

ģ Bounce Rate: 20.17%

ģ Avg. Time on Page: 2 minutes, 10 seconds

(source: Google Analytics)

Current Conductor Keyword Data:

ģ 34% of Keywords Ranking on First Page of Google

ģ 18% of Keywords Ranking in Top 3 Positions

(source: Conductor Searchlight)

ģ Unique Ranking URLs: 81

ģ Avg. Search Rank of Ranking Keywords: 15

M Guaranty Bank & Trust is currently tracking 289 keywords that are currently ranking

(green line is the client)

TakeawaysSince the beginning of the SEO campaign, Guaranty Bank & Trust, with the help of Team SI, has

improved its search visibility dramatically in a competitive market and has regained and surpassed

the amount of website traffic they were getting before the site change. By creating a plan suited

to what is important to them, Team SI has been able to create the quality content that Google and

other search engines seek out when trying to provide users the best results, all the while providing

the information their visitors need.