“We have enjoyed working with DataForSEO. We can recommend DataForSEO to any company that needs SEO related APIs. We have been satisfied with the speed, cost, and accuracy”

Kaspars Milbergs, CTO at On The Map, Inc.
 

About On the Map Marketing

 
Founded in 2009, On the Map Marketing is a digital marketing agency headquartered in Florida offering a wide range of services for building a strong online presence – from industry-specific SEO services to website design and development. They have an in-house client reporting system and provide a free ‘SEO browser’ tool. The company has over 50 employees and more than 300 active clients worldwide.

“We’ve been around for ten years, On The Map has grown up with SEO and internet marketing. We’ve been through dozens of Google updates over the years and that’s taught us to be nimble. Another thing that makes us unusual in this industry is our centralization. All of our work is done in-house, which helps us maintain the integrity of our product,” said Milbergs.

On the Map Marketing is rated #2497 in the “2019 Inc. 5000: The Most Successful Companies in America” with the growth of 158% and $4.1 million in revenue. The company is mostly working with small and mid-size businesses, but the current goal is to go beyond this segment.

Business Challenge

The difficult economic environment that has formed due to the COVID-19 pandemic might not seem very favorable for growing a business. Nonetheless, some companies take the brave steps for the sake of future success. And so does On the Map Marketing.

“We’re in an expansion phase, which frankly, is unusual in this industry during the current time. We’ve recently gone through a major overhaul, updating our vision and redefining our core values. We are currently in the process of diversifying our client base and creating new service products,” said the CTO.

Working towards new objectives throughout a recession takes even more effort and strategy than it would under normal economic conditions. On the Map Marketing had to be particularly mindful about their own budget, as in times of uncertainty before making any investment, businesses need to make sure it will be a safe bet. Thus, reliability became one of the decisive factors for the company’s business decisions.

The company knows perfectly well that digital marketing remains an effective and high-yielding channel for them in terms of reaching a wider audience to promote the brand. As Milbergs said, “to achieve the growth we’re looking for, we’ve allocated more resources to our own marketing campaigns.”

Contrastingly, since various industries see a decline in customer spending, budget cuts disproportionately affect marketing for many of the agency’s clients. The company CTO points out that “the current economic crisis is an obstacle for every business. Our clients need to see an enhanced value for their marketing dollars, but we also see this as an opportunity.”

Having loyal customers and staying in a good place with them during a recession is more important than ever, as they are the main enduring source of cash flow and growth. On the Map Marketing, in fact, accepted this challenge as another possibility for improvement. They knew that their platform was not always providing the most accurate rankings, and finding a more sound yet affordable data source was vital to deliver a greater benefit for both existing and potential customers.

Objectives

• Expand the business and develop new products
• Generate more leads, diversify the client base
• Retain existing clients
• Improve the platform
• Find an affordable source of highly accurate data

Solution

SEO is all about data, On the Map Marketing quickly realized that’s where they needed to start with improvements since their in-house reporting platform is a crucial part of the agency’s workflow.

“We have more than 300 active clients and each one gets a monthly report. We have our own client dashboard where we manage all the client info, keywords, traffic sources, etc. to generate reports. For each client, we have around 500 keywords on average and we have to check positions mostly on Google but we also have multiple cases where we check Bing and Yahoo,” explained Milbergs.

“As an award-winning SEO company, providing accurate data to our clients is super important”, he added. In order to improve customer experience, they started looking for a new data provider. “It was a struggle to get the data fast, accurate, and at a good price”, said the CTO.

With service reliability as the decisive factor for making an investment, On the Map Marketing made their choice to go with DataForSEO after testing multiple data providers. Milbergs said they “ended up using DataForSEO since the value and accuracy were way better than competitors.” Besides that, the company was pleased with our affordable pricing. “I would say DataForSEO is 50% cheaper than different API we used”, added Milbergs.

First, On the Map Marketing decided to integrate SERP API as an alternative data source for monthly client reporting:

“We are still using different API to get the most of the keywords for our standard reports, but once we feel like they are not accurate, then we generate new ones based on DataForSEO SERP API.” The team managed to “regenerate reports quicker and test them in different locations so that each client is getting the best results.”

After using our API for some time, On the Map Marketing saw a significant benefit from the new data source. “DataForSEO definitely improved our client satisfaction since we have more accurate rankings,” noted Milbergs. So they considered transitioning to DataForSEO will be the right step forward on the way to achieving their goals.

“We will migrate fully on DataForSEO soon. We just need to make the switch. We are not fully satisfied with the current API cost, speed, and accuracy. So, we think in our case, DataForSEO adds more value and has more accurate data,” explained Milbergs.

One more key benefit for On the Map Marketing noted is the ability to speed up the generation of on-demand reports. “Previously, to get it we had to wait two days with our old API. Now we can generate it within 10 minutes with DataForSEO”, said Milbergs.

Along with enabling On the Map Marketing to improve the platform on the customers’ side, they benefited from using DataForSEO SERP API in terms of development and maintenance:

“When we integrated DataForSEO in our client system, we also updated how we store our keywords and SERP positions way smarter so we could use other data for different clients if needed. So, for example, if one client is ranking for a particular keyword, then another client could rank in the same results too, so we don’t need to request the data again,” said the CTO.

DataForSEO SERP API helps the team to deliver the following features within the client reporting system:

• Automated monthly SERP ranking reports
• High-quality keyword rankings
• Data from Google, Bing, and Yahoo
• Location-specific rankings

In addition to the in-house reporting platform, On the Map Marketing is using the live SERP API for the ‘SEO browser’, a free tool for checking competitors on Google. It serves as a lead magnet and therefore incorporating quality real-time data into it was essential for company growth.

“For “SEO Browser” we are getting more leads since the visitors are satisfied with the speed and data they are getting. We now have around 2k visitors per month and higher conversion rate,” confirms Milbergs.

Describing the overall experience of working with us, the CTO of On the
Map Marketing said:

“We have enjoyed working with DataForSEO. Support is always fast and whenever we have some issues or questions, they usually get back to us really quickly. Once our webhook was down for a few minutes, and we didn’t notice, DataForSEO reached out to us first and let us know. In our experience, other companies let it slide and then blame the client instead of being proactive”.

Speaking of plans for the future, Kaspars Milbergs told us the company is working on a new version of their client dashboard that “will have more advanced SERP ranking analytics”. DataForSEO is proud to contribute to it. “We are super excited to use DataForSEO for that project. This will improve reporting for clients by 300%”, added Milbergs.

Grasping opportunities when they arise is the key approach for leading business to success. Leveraging DataForSEO SERP API, On the Map Marketing managed to reshape problems into solutions that align with the company’s main objectives. We are happy to be the company helping them grow and we are looking forward to learning about further achievements of On the Map Marketing.