Though they had an aesthetically well designed and functioning website, Myriam and Doug of DSLM Executive Search knew that the website wasn’t performing to its full ability, leaving money and opportunity on the table.
As a boutique executive search firm that specializes in recruiting executives in the USA for European and Canadian-based companies, DSML had a successful history of relying on their deep network for lead generation and business growth. Meanwhile, leveraging SEO and a strategic digital presence were the missing piece for solid reputation management that could easily stand up to behemoth competing firms.
This is a case study showcasing Autumn Consulting’s work with a client. Autumn Consulting is the best rated Google search marketing firm that focuses on the design and building of Google-friendly websites, and also organic SEO or organic search engine optimization. Autumn specializes in Google search marketing in Chicago, Naples and Charlotte.
The team at Autumn Consulting, led by Nathan Misian, has been working with Myriam Le Cannellier and Doug Seville of DSML Executive Search, two business leaders we admire greatly, for two years, as their main SEO and digital marketing strategy and implementation partner.
When we were first brought on, our focus was partnering with their existing web designer and programmer, with full reign on content, messaging and SEO coding to take the site to the next level and make DSML a top contender in relevant keywords in Google search results. In this, DSML started to see results in just 3 months of working together.
A year into our collaboration, we also helped implement and execute on a new set of keywords that targeted a niche within a niche: the specific industries that DSML’s clients fall into. We brought Doug and Myriam’s vision to life by developing industry specific web pages and keywords to drive web traffic specifically to those pages.
Autumn also worked with DSML to translate their website and target SEO in other languages, important for their continued growth and targeting of new clients, who are European business executives.
Through all this, we continue to meet monthly to review key benchmarks and metrics and discuss future opportunities. We’ve also been partners on presentations, worked together on growth and outreach discussions and even helped Doug with miscellaneous troubleshooting of managing his overstuffed inbox - sometimes even the tiniest of fixes can lead to big impact.
The result has been a great relationship that continues to evolve and thrive for both sides.
Meet the client: Doug Seville and Myriam Le Cannellier of DSML Executive Search
Myriam Le Cannellier and Doug Seville of DSML Executive Search
Myriam Le Cannellier and Doug Seville are the founders of DSML Executive Search, a Chicago- based company that focuses on recruiting CEOs and executives in the USA for European and Canadian based companies. This is a small niche that is dominated by larger players, though with their deep network of connections and expertise, the DSML team is a force to be reckoned with.
Myriam and Doug make a powerful and effective team, and are excellent on vision and very clear on purpose. One of our favorite parts of working with them is the way in which communication is honest, direct and immediate - they are used to working with executives almost exclusively, so their expectations are very high when it comes to the companies they partner with. For us at Autumn, it’s a real pleasure to work with clients with high expectations.
“The process has been smooth and pleasant. Nathan is great at explaining and addressing our questions. He never tries to impose things so we can discuss options and ultimately decide or not to follow his suggestions.”
- Myriam Le Cannellier, DSML Executive Search
The challenge: SEO for reputation management in a niche business
When we were introduced to DSML Executive Search, they already had a great, visually appealing website. But it lacked the most important element of a good website: it wasn’t performing in the SEO-sense. At the time, the DSML website wasn’t asserting their expertise or generating leads, and it wasn’t being found organically by their prospective clients.
Autumn started with a discovery phase: we researched keywords that DSML’s prospective clients were searching but DSML didn’t know about. Through this, DSML learned that there are phrases that they want to be associated with and phrases that they prefer not to be associated with, which led to a focus and clarity on SEO keywords to target and what content needs to be written.
This discovery phase also allowed for clear benchmarking and a focus on what terms matter to the firm. Autumn then developed content, wrote title and description tags and implemented coding that wasn’t there before, and put into place a monthly set of metrics to measure results.
As a part of our work, we also developed a process to write monthly content. Myriam and Doug had ideas for content, but they weren’t sure how to organize the content to cater to actual searches being done. To solve this, Autumn developed a monthly process to write blogs, coded with keywords and integrated with hyperlinks, to be published on a monthly basis. DSML has since adopted and integrated this process into their work, and they continue to use the process that Autumn developed.
“Our relationship and collaboration with DSML is a great example of how important it is for Autumn to go the extra mile in all of our work. DSML routinely goes the extra mile for their clients, and that’s something I admire greatly about them, and in our work with them, we aim to continually go above and beyond.”
- Nathan Misirian, Autumn Consulting
The ongoing partnership and an evolution of wins
The work of SEO marketing and digital marketing never stops, so even after our initial success of seeing great progress on DSML’s focus keywords, it was very important to continue to meet monthly and to track metrics and data.
The Autumn Advantage
Autumn works very differently from other companies in that we don’t just send out a blanket email with a 15 page report. Instead, we focus on dialogue and actionable next steps. Nathan personally meets with each of our clients on a monthly basis. The guiding portion of the metrics that we discuss is our proprietary dashboard, through which we zero in on about ten key metrics. We also include forward-looking, actionable recommendations for the next month. This is something that we offer all of our clients, and it’s a service that’s included in our work. We’re in it for the long-haul and we focus on the long term success of our clients.
With the website being optimised from an SEO standpoint, Autumn continues our monthly check ins with Myriam and Doug, with an eagle-eye on metrics and opportunities for growth and further reputation-building in the industry.
Since our initial groundwork on building out a strong SEO foundation for DSML, we have also expanded on our work with two additional initiatives:
- Industry-focused niche landing pages
An idea of Myriam and Doug’s that Autumn brought to life, we built separate, individual pages that speak to the specific industries that DSML’s clients fall into. This helped to drive qualified traffic to these pages, and ultimately the DSML website. Results in this niche-within-a-niche strategy were seen after six months, as it’s a rather complicated endeavor. - Website translations and SEO in French, Spanish and German
Because DSML’s clients are European businesses and their team of recruiters speaks the languages of those businesses as well, Autumn worked on a three-month engagement to do SEO in other target languages that are strategically important to DSML: French, German and English. We worked with their team to translate and write the special webpages in these local languages, conducted research in these languages and implemented SEO practices for these pages.
Both of the above were natural progressions to a relationship that had an open and continuous dialogue- a hallmark of all of Autumn Consulting’s client relationships.
The results: page one number one, and counting
Of course, the goal of any SEO engagement is to appear on page one of Google’s search results for the targeted keywords, and we’re happy to say we’ve accomplished exactly that through our work with DSML, even as we’ve expanded the targeted keywords to reach various specific industries and languages. Perhaps most importantly, through DSML’s website and SEO presence, they easily compete with larger firms.
