Microsoft Windows, a business division of Microsoft, is the largest provider of client operating systems worldwide. The business provides content and service to customers through over 50 global websites. Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
“With Optify my international site managers won’t have to learn every single SEO rule for each search engine in order to get actionable insights increasing overall efficiency and resolution rate.”
Challenges
The MS Windows business team sought improved visibility of their sites nationally and internationally. For the designated site managers located in each of their native markets, SEO was just one of many management tasks. The sites were huge, there were numerous URL structures and content was often duplicated on multiple pages. Maximum complexity plus limited resources equaled a need for an internationally applicable SEO solution that spotted redundancies and prioritized fixes, enabling site managers around the globe to submit SEO requests to the internal MS bug system with ease.
Optify Solutions
MS Windows rolled out the Optify Inbound Marketing Software Suite in the United States with the ultimate goal of creating a process easily replicable across international markets. Three exportable solutions were identified:
- The Website Optimization application immediately highlighted duplicate pages responsible for diluting page authority. Removing redundant pages enhanced SEO.
- The Website Optimization application swiftly determined highly authoritative Microsoft pages outside the purview of Windows. By linking these Microsoft pages to Windows pages, the Windows pages were optimized.
- The Keyword Application allowed the Windows team to create a list of keywords they aimed to win at. The team then monitored the progress of these keywords, to ensure Windows site content used the same language as their customers searching for product information online.
Finally, the easy-to-use Optify dashboard displayed all SEO recommendations from least to most impactful. With little more than a cut and a paste, most suggestions could be entered into an existing Microsoft bug-fix tool.
Results
Since implementation, the U.S. Windows team has filed 200 bugs consisting of 800 SEO actions. These requests generated an 85% resolve rate, up from 25%, reinforcing the notion that the Optify recommendations are often easy fixes. Search engine referrals have outpaced overall visit growth, organic visits grew to the highest % of overall visits in over a quarter, and keyword queries, which landed Windows pages in the top three positions in Google, rose to 76% up from 55% less than a year prior.
In the fall of 2010 following on the heels of these successes, international implementation began in France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, China and Latin America. Site managers learned how to determine, with little effort, easily executable SEO improvements specific to their respective markets and local search engines using Optify.
“Optify’s easy-to-use, enterprise-class SEO software is quickly becoming a critical part of our business, helping us identify where to focus and what we can do to improve,” said Bob O’Brien, Senior Site Manager of Windows at Microsoft. “The new international features will further our ability to improve our workflow across our international teams, and help us reach our traffic and conversion goals for our Windows and Windows Live sites around the globe.”
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About this customer
Microsoft Windows is the largest provider of client operating systems worldwide. The business provides content and service to customers through over 50 global websites.
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Challenges
- SEO Underutilized
- International Complexity
- Limited Organizational Resources
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Solutions
- Keywords Application
- Website Optimization
- Dashboard
- International Capability
