The Trusted Homebuyer Web Design & SEO Case Study

screenshot of The Trusted Homebuyer homepage

The Trusted Home Buyer is a real estate solutions company based in Phoenix, Arizona.

They buy houses in any condition, location, or situation, including inherited homes, properties with liens or violations, and homes facing foreclosure. Their offer is a hassle-free selling experience, and they can provide cash offers within 24 hours. The company also emphasizes its commitment to transparency and ethical business practices.

Overall, The Trusted Home Buyer offers a solution for homeowners who need to sell their homes quickly and without the hassle of traditional real estate transactions.

Led by Martin Boonzaayer, an American judoka who was a member of the United States of America Judo team at the 2000 and 2004 Olympics. He was a three-time World Team Member, Seven-time National Champion, and won Bronze at the 2003 Pan American Games. 

Under Martin’s leadership, The Trusted Homebuyer has grown into a multi-state homebuyer that operates in Arizona, Florida, and Michigan.

The Trusted home buyer team
Duration:
Ongoing since 2019
Client:
The Trusted Homebuyer
Service:
Webdesign & SEO

The Problem

We initially got in contact and started working with the Trusted Homebuyer in 2019 after finding their website. 

Even though they ranked well in Google, their website lacked a cohesive design that promoted a clean user experience. They previously had a site built through Investor Carrot. Investor Carrot is a low-tiered solution for Homebuyers in America. Investor Carrot has many clients, however, it is one glove that fits all solution. Most of the sites that are built through the Investor Carrot have the same web design and re-use the same content—they just switch out the company name and location.

Also, despite ranking well in Google, The Trusted Homebuyer had apparent gaps and opportunities to grow. 

Solution

Our solution was to rebuild the user experience to increase the conversion rate, create a clear keyword strategy to dominate Google search, and maintain momentum!

User Experience

Our initial focus was rebuilding and re-branding the website to make it unique. We aimed to build a user experience that promoted trust, was easy, and was clean. We started by narrowing down Martin and his team’s vision and turned that vision into a website. Here is a before and after:

screenshot of The Trusted Home Buyer homepagescreenshot of the Trusted HomeBuyer homepage

The user experience went through a complete transformation. We decluttered the website and rewrote the content to match the website. 

The original contact form had many distracting fields that easily overwhelmed the user.  So, we created a multi-step contact form that increased conversions. The theory is to have just one field per step with as few steps as possible. This increased the conversion rate tremendously. 

The original site did not have coherent navigation. The site lacked a clear structure. We created and condensed the navigation so users would find what they were looking for without getting lost. This reduced the user bounce rate and improved the experience. In short, we changed everything!

Clear Keyword Strategy

As mentioned The Trusted Homebuyer already ranked decently in Google before we took them as a client. After we redesigned their website we did some keyword research and identified the ranking gaps for the type of keywords that are “buyer-keywords”. Essentially, buyer keywords have purchase intent, for example, “Barber-shop near me”.

We found some large gaps. One specific gap was for the keyword ” We buy houses Phoenix” and the combinations of this keyword. During the content rewrite, we implemented this keyword into the strategy, and The Trusted Homebuyer started to rank in the top 5 positions in Google. This considerably impacted the number of monthly leads the website brought in (+/- 50% increase!).

After implementing the rest of the keywords that The Trusted Homebuyer did not rank for into our strategy, The Trusted Homebuyer started to dominate the Phoenix area. They consistently appear in the top 5 positions for the most important keywords that could result in a lead. 

screenshot of The Trusted Homebuyer's keyword search

First Highlighted Column is the keywords that TTHB ranks for and the Second Highlighted Column is the position

Maintaining Google Rankings

After a website ranks well in Google, a considerable part is maintaining the rankings. This is done by constantly monitoring the website’s rankings and adjusting as needed. Also, backlink generation is a significant part of maintaining Google rankings, which we will explain more about in a bit.

Keeping Up With Google

After getting The Trusted Homebuyer Ranking in the top positions in Google for the “Buyer Keywords,” we have been maintaining these positions. Google is changing its algorithms frequently to make the search experience more “clean” and less “spammy”. 

Here is just one example:

Many existing blog posts on The Trusted Homebuyers website were from the Investor Carrots content pack. As mentioned, this content is reused by many of the other of Investor Carrot’s clients. Essentially, in the eyes of Google, it is plagiarized content. We noticed The Trusted Homebuyer was negatively affected after Google released an algorithm update known as the “helpful content update” in August of 2022. We deleted the old “plagiarized” Investor Carrot content to combat this. This pulled The Trusted Homebuyer out of the slump they were in. 

Backlink Generation

Apart from getting a website to rank and stay ranked in Google is through backlink generation.

A backlink, also known as an inbound link or incoming link, is a hyperlink that points from one website to another. Backlinks are essential for search engine optimization (SEO) as they are considered to be a vote of confidence from one website to another. In other words, when one website links to another, it is essentially saying “this is a good website, go check it out.”

Search engines like Google use backlinks as a way to determine the authority and credibility of a website. The more high-quality, relevant backlinks a website has, the more likely it is to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

On a monthly basis, we generate high-quality backlinks for The Trusted Homebuyer through reporter outreach. Here are some examples of the links that we have gotten for them:

Conclusion

The Trusted Homebuyer has since increased their presence in other states- Florida and Michigan since we have been working with them. They continue to dominate the Phoenix metro area with for the main “buyer-keywords” that are relavant to their services. With Martin’s leadership and our premium SEO’s services The Trusted Homebuyer remains one of the top cash home-buying companies in Phoenix.