Yokohama Tire Corporation is a Japanese wheel and tire manufacturer that has a strong presence in the aftermarket scene worldwide.
The North American division contracted Metamend to assist with the redesign of their 3 product websites (yokohamatire.com, yokohamatruck.com and yokohamaotr.com).
We also provided onpage optimization, content strategy and link building strategy for all 3 websites.
The Process
To improve their visibility in a competitive online space, the Metamend team focused on increasing organic traffic to the 3 Yokohama websites via content creation, link building, UX redesigns and onpage optimization.
Site Planner
Our site planner services helped these websites transition from static, informational websites to dynamic websites with a tire finder, product pages and major content sections. Our job was to work with the development team to ensure that all post-launch issues were cleaned up. This included auditing all 3 sites, redirecting old content and fixing indexation issues.
Search Engine Optimization
Once the websites were ready for re-launch from an indexing and UI/UX standpoint, we began working on optimizing the content. We performed keyword research, wrote meta tags and updated onpage content to ensure we were targeting the most valuable search phrases.
Content and Link Building
We used the tires 101 section to create a content strategy around keywords that could not be targeted with product or category pages. This section was used to build articles that, along with an outreach strategy, would gain high value inbound links. We also created a content to promote the sponsorship of the Chelsea football club. A link building outreach strategy was put in place to gain high quality backlinks from tire distributors worldwide.
The Result
First Page Rankings, Improved Organic Visits and Increased Conversions
The old websites did not have any non-branded keywords ranking on the first page in Google. 6-months after launch we had obtained 30 #1 rankings, 47 top 3 rankings and 53 first page rankings for high value keywords such as generic terms like “all season tires” as well as product names, size/type of tires, fits models, etc.
With the new websites and improved SEO we were able to more than double search traffic year over year to the otr and truck domains (259% and 125% increases respectively), while adding nearly 20% to the already popular tire domain.
Aside from traffic and rankings, the main KPI’s for the website re-launch were to increase use of the tire search function and the dealer locator features on the websites. Much of the UI/UX optimization was aimed at making these the primary conversion points. Engagement with the dealer locator feature improved 22% while the tire search was used 78% more often post-launch.
A Better UX
The redesigned website created better user experience with accessible calls-to-action. The conversions mentioned above were driven mostly by the re-location of CTA’s and improved user flow throughout the website.
Increased Visibility of Content
Both the Tires 101 section and the Chelsea Football Club landing page gained exposure. Tires 101 articles gained traffic for top-of-funnel search terms. The Chelsea landing page gave users that saw the Yokohama logo on the teams uniforms a place to understand the company and its sponsorship.
