About Mott Corporation
Mott is a precision filtration company trusted by the world’s best technical and performance brands across markets including medicine, computing power, clean energy, and space exploration. Mott’s products can be found in everything from lifesaving medical devices to artificial intelligence to the Mars Rover. Established in 1959, and headquartered in Farmington, CT, the company is 100% employee owned.
Situation: Outdated PPC Ads Were Driving Low-Quality Leads While WEbsite Issues HIndered Organic Search Performance
Mott’s paid search program incorporated many keywords that had become irrelevant since the effort began three years earlier. Ad quality and resulting lead quality were poor. Mott’s team believed there was great potential to drive new business by investing in a cohesive digital marketing strategy. Their goal was to better align paid search with company strategy and increase form fills from paid campaigns. Windmill Strategy, initially through its Quick Start process and subsequently through an account audit, identified opportunities to address Mott’s concerns and modernize the company’s digital marketing.
A similar assessment process uncovered numerous technical and content issues hindering the Mott website’s organic search performance. These were concentrated in three areas: product landing pages, the blog section, and application pages. The product landing pages suffered from thin content and lacked clear keyword targeting and CTAs. In the blog section, most articles fell below the 500-word threshold generally considered optimal, and technical issues, including improper HTML header implementation and poor internal linking, compounded the problem. Adding to these challenges, the blog content was scattered across the root domain rather than organized in a proper structure.
Finally, and most critically, a key section of the application pages was entirely hidden from search engines due to an erroneous noindex tag. This purely technical oversight was particularly costly given that competitors were successfully driving traffic through similar pages.
Solution: New PPC Campaign Copy Based on Keyword Research Followed by a Search-Focused Website Optimization Strategy
PPC Campaign Strategy
Mott was committed to scrubbing the existing paid search campaigns aimed at its five main growth markets and completely overhauling them. In partnership, Windmill and Mott ran keyword audits for the existing campaigns, marking and eliminating keywords that were no longer relevant.
We used the Keyword Planner tool in Google Ads to forecast the performance of potential new keywords. Incorporating both new and relevant existing keywords, Windmill wrote all-new ad copy for each campaign. Because responsive search ads work by drawing from a pool of up to 15 headlines and four descriptions per ad, we used batched ad copy docs to send to the client for approval. Instead of sending each individual ad for proofing, this templated document, segmented by campaign and ad group, allowed for quick and easy review and approval.
To make sure that Mott’s desired audience of engineering/R&D directors in five main growth markets would be able to take action easily after clicking on an ad, Windmill performed a campaign landing page audit to make sure CTAs were prominently displayed. Now, anyone who clicks through can immediately understand what to do next.
Throughout, Windmill modeled best practices to help Mott modernize its understanding of how to cohesively pursue digital marketing strategies. Both Mott and Windmill were committed to timely action and feedback to meet an expedited deadline for this campaign overhaul, driven by the business objective of generating more leads and higher-quality leads as soon as possible.
Organic Search Optimization
On the SEO front, we implemented a comprehensive, three-pronged strategy to address the challenges we uncovered:
First, we undertook a complete overhaul of the product landing pages. This involved developing rich, conversion-focused content that thoroughly described key features and benefits. Each page was strategically mapped to relevant transactional keywords with proven search volume. We also implemented a robust internal linking structure, which immediately increased organic traffic to the linked pages.
Second, we executed a thorough blog optimization project. Our team conducted a “Keep, Edit, Kill” content audit to evaluate every piece of content on the site. Articles that aligned with core business objectives were enhanced to provide comprehensive coverage, with word counts ranging from 700 to 2000 words. We also implemented proper HTML heading hierarchies and strategic internal and external linking. A key technical improvement involved migrating all blog content to an organized “/blog” subfolder structure.
Third, we revitalized the application pages section. After removing the noindex tag, we developed substantial on-page content for each category page and implemented a comprehensive internal linking strategy. This brought the section up to competitive standards and aligned it with Google’s best practices.
Results: PPC and SEO Initiatives Both Resulted in Impressive Increases in Engagement and Lead Metrics
109% Increase in Paid Clicks
50% Increase in Paid Impressions
93% Increase in Paid Leads Since Launch of the Campaigns
39% Improvement in Paid Click-Through Rate (CTR)
6% Decrease in Cost per Paid Lead
47.1% Increase in Organic Impressions
29.5% Increase in Organic Clicks
97.9% Increase in Engaged Organic Sessions
63.6% Increase in Organic Form Submissions
Two months after the launch of the PPC PPC campaigns, leads had increased by 93%, while cost per lead decreased by 6%. Clicks and click-through rate (CTR) increased by 109% and 39%, respectively. Impressions were up 50%. Not only are the campaigns working well, the client now has more control over their paid search than they did with their previous agency partner, as well as a better understanding of what keywords and strategies are driving performance.
The success of the PPC process led to the next stage of the digital marketing engagement: optimizing the website for organic search. The SEO overhaul resulted in dramatic improvement in KPIs for the specific sections of the website that were optimized, as well as for the website as a whole.
For the website as a whole:
– Organic clicks increased by 29.5% year-over-year
– Organic impressions grew by 47.1%
– Engaged organic sessions nearly doubled with a 97.9% increase
– Most importantly, organic form submissions rose by 63.6%
The product landing pages showed strong improvements:
– 7.5% growth in organic clicks
– 25.2% increase in organic impressions
– 88.7% rise in engaged organic sessions
– 20.49% more organic form submissions
The blog transformation was particularly striking. From generating only a few hundred clicks per month initially, it now consistently drives more than 1,700 clicks and 155,000 organic impressions monthly. Form submissions have increased as a result. In September 2024, for example, the blog generated twice as many organic leads as it had during the previous September.
Finally, some of the most dramatic improvements came from the application pages section:
– Organic clicks increased by 67.2%
– Organic impressions grew by 19.3%
– Engaged organic sessions surged by 284.7%
– Most impressively, organic form submissions increased by 1,242%
The success of this project reinforces the importance of taking a holistic approach to SEO optimization, addressing both technical and content-related issues while ensuring alignment with business objectives. The remarkable improvements in form submissions—the primary conversion metric—highlight the fact that effective SEO can directly impact business results.
Windmill Strategy is a web design company & digital marketing agency helping B2B industrial automation manufacturing companies achieve increased visibility, higher quality leads, and greater marketing ROI through smarter digital marketing. Our website design and B2B digital marketing approach goes beyond “more traffic,” seeking out better traffic, by gaining the attention of the specific niche groups of buyers and influencers that represent your best customers. We help our clients communicate and sell their complex products and services to multiple audiences – be it through web design or digital marketing and SEO. Working collaboratively with your in-house marketing and sales team, we implement digital marketing strategies that drive leads and sales that result in overall business growth.