Paul Davis

Restoration and Repair Services

Paul Davis Restoration is a franchise organization that provides services to clean up and repair damage to residential and commercial properties due to water, fire, mold, storm and other disasters. As part of FirstService Brands, the leading North American brand in property services, Paul Davis is a growing network of over 370 independently owned and operated franchises in the U.S. and Canada. Although the company has had much success in their 52 years of business, Paul Davis came to Online Image® with the primary goal of increasing visibility online in order to create a more consistent lead source from their digital marketing initiatives.

The Problem

Although Paul Davis has been in the restoration industry for many years, they understood their field had become crowded with competition, as new startups emerged and existing competitors grew. Emily Schafer, the Marketing Technology Manager at Paul Davis knew that they weren’t showing up online in all the places the needed to be and could potentially be losing out on business because of it. “When people were searching for our services online, nothing was coming up or it wasn’t a great representation of our brand. We wanted more visibility and a better representation of our brand online,” said Schafer.

Paul Davis knew they wanted to be found by online consumers searching for emergency restoration services such as “water damage” or “flood damage”; and they wanted increased visibility at both a local and national level.

Another problem they had was that franchisees felt underrepresented online. The franchisees did not have the control they desired over their local websites (or microsites). When it came to making changes or updates, it was a difficult process, which discouraged many franchisees from feeling like they had a fair chance at local online marketing.

The Solution

Online Image®’s team of innovators constructed a roadmap to achieve Paul Davis’ goals. This was completed by starting with a discovery phase. In this phase, Online Image® developed a different approach, taking into consideration how consumers engage with Paul Davis’s website at the same time anticipating and adapting to how search engines interpret their website.

The new website was built for the home office as well as the entire network of Paul Davis franchisees.

Some of the key strategic differences with the new websites included:

Faster load time to ensure consumers get the information they need as soon as possible during their emergency situation.

We discovered this was a key issue in the discovery phase. PaulDavis.com was loading too slow, especially for a business who provides emergency services. Online Image® worked to fix this so Paul Davis did not miss out on any opportunities due to consumers not wanting to wait for the site to load.

Created a micro-site for franchisees to help minimize having to request small changes from the corporate office

The reason for the microsite was for franchisees to have the ability to make changes to their individual site without having to go through corporate. Now, franchisees can update their contact information and information pertaining to their local community without compromising the Paul Davis brand.

Thousands of new pages of content written by utilizing technology

By leveraging our backend technology, we were able to deliver quality content at scale. We utilized software tools developed to re-write the majority of Paul Davis’s website to become more relevant to search engines. This content was tailored to be educational. An example of this were informational articles written with the purpose of having the site be used as a reference tool, which will drive additional traffic to the site.

City specific content was written for each individual location as well. This helps with local online visibility for the franchisees.

Local office location system put into place

Allowed for claims by consumers or insurance professionals to quickly and easily reach the office responsible.

Paul Davis case study

National SEO Campaign

For the franchisees to succeed, the home office needed to dominate online first. For example, the national SEO campaign helped increase visibility for major industry searches such as, “flood damage repair”.

Local SEO Campaign

Geo-qualified search campaigns were created to assist local offices in front page search placement in their region. For example, these campaigns helped offices like Portland, OR who need to be found online for searches like “flood damage repair Portland OR”.

Paul Davis website

The Conclusion

Tools laid out on the floor

In June 2015, the Paul Davis Corporate Office website showed up for 0 out of 26 major nationally searched key phrases in the top 10 spots on Google, otherwise known as page 1. Since the beginning of the partnership between Paul Davis Restoration and Online Image®, Paul Davis has had a steady increase in national and local keyword rankings on page 1.

Within months of the launch of these campaigns, their rank began to increase. In the first two years, Paul Davis Corporate saw a 127.58% increase in new users to the site with 60 keyword phrases on page 1 of Google. As of September 2018, more than 3 years into our partnership, Paul Davis Corporate shows more than 86 nationally searched key phrases on page 1 of Google.

In the end, Paul Davis Restoration is assured of the success of these campaigns with a dominant national online visibility as well as local dominance for franchisees. Other successful metrics that are continually tracked are positive return on investment, increased leads and increased franchisee satisfaction.

Paul Davis is confident that their partnership with Online Image® not only provides value today, but also helps poise them for future growth.

“Not only does Online Image® help me with pauldavis.com, but they go above and beyond with our franchisees as well. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten compliments on the service they provide from our franchisees. Even when we have owners or marketers who have concerns or challenges with their website, I know I can count on Online Image® to educate them on their site and performance, and usually come out smiling on the other side. They really are an asset to me and to the Paul Davis network.”

Emily Shaffer

Marketing Technology Manager