2. AGENCY SPOTLIGHT: KANSAS CITY WEB DESIGN
We love a good success story. Especially when it involves an agency that combined hard work,
vast expertise and robust SEO tactics to build their company from the ground up. So when the
opportunity came to interview Phil Singleton, owner of Kansas City Web Design, we jumped at
the chance to pick his brain on how he built his successful agency catering to small businesses.
KANSAS CITY WEB DESIGN with PHIL SINGLETON
UpCity: How did Kansas City Web Design get started?
Phil: After working in Taipei, Taiwan for 4 years
handling Internet marketing and search engine
optimization in the software industry, I started
my own spin-off venture capital start-up that
I then sold in 2004. Shortly after that my wife
and I moved back to the US and settled in
Kansas City where I have family roots.
During that first year back, I bought a sports car for fun
and had it detailed from a local auto shop. At that time,
the owner had no retail business and was mostly doing
car prep and auto details for dealerships and making
pennies on the dollar. I told him with a website and
some SEO to boost rankings on Google he could go
from making $25/car to $250/car.
I did my first local business website for free and that little Kansas City
auto detailing website started it all. Now here I am today with a full
service web design and Internet marketing company that has served
hundreds of small businesses.
UpCity: Wow! That’s very impressive that this started from
a car detailing website. How quickly were you able to
expand your business into what it is today?
Phil: When my wife and I moved back to the country to start a family
it was really important to me to have a job where I could be with my
twin sons whenever I wanted. So I started Kansas City Web Design as
a lifestyle business.
For over a decade, we had such strong organic rankings through our
SEO initiatives that I unfortunately had to turn away more business than
I would have liked to. This year, however, my kids will be in school full-time
and we have invested accordingly to grow the business. We have 3 full
time developers, a project manager and a business development director
to help manage our constant flow of inbound leads, and we will be hiring
even more in 2015.
3. AGENCY SPOTLIGHT: KANSAS CITY WEB DESIGN
KANSAS CITY WEB DESIGN with PHIL SINGLETON
UpCity: It sounds like your own SEO strategy has played a very
important part in starting and growing your agency. What types
of services does your agency specialize in for your clients?
Phil: In 2014, most of our business came in the form of rescue and
recovery work — either from companies that lost their ranking from
a Penguin, Panda or one of the other updates, or because the previously
hired developer could not complete the project to specs.
We specialize in true SEO-friendly website development and
most of our customers choose us based on our track record for SEO
services, PPC and/or custom WordPress development.
We market and sell Internet marketing and search engine optimization
services under the brand Kansas City SEO®
.
UpCity: As we all know, SEO is constantly changing. Where do
you see the main focus going in terms of SEO?
Phil: In the 15 years or so since I have been working in and around SEO,
I think Google’s Penguin and Panda algorithms have been macro-level
game changers. For years the SEO industry was driven almost exclusively
by link-building, and much of that was being fulfilled offshore. With these
two evolving algorithms, Google has essentially shut down all forms of
volume-based link building and brought all SEO back onshore.
For the last two years we have focused almost exclusively on
content-driven SEO. While there are still some back-room off-page SEO
tactics that still work, Google is always going to close those loopholes. It’s
so much safer and professionally fulfilling to focus on content that nat-
urally attracts high quality links, while also spurring engagement and
genuine social signals. Since content-driven SEO is the only way forward
(in our opinion) we made the strategic decision last year to focus heavily on
marketing to support a well-rounded, full-service agency solution.
UpCity: You recently became a Duct Tape Marketing Certified
Consultant. Can you tell us more about that?
Phil: As we are focusing on becoming better
at marketing in general, the decision was easy
to become a Duct Tape Marketing Certified
Consultant.
What I love about Duct Tape Marketing is
that the system is based on taking a scientific
approach to identifying a company’s ideal
customer, then building an inbound marketing system that draws the best
customers into your organization. This is exactly how we’ve done SEO for
years — reverse engineering websites based on search behavior. Yet, Duct
Tape Marketing takes that same kind of ideal customer approach and
builds an entire marketing system around it.
UpCity: Do you see this strategy influencing the evolution of your
company in the next 5 years?
Phil: Yes we do. In terms of going forward, we plan to work much more
closely with our customers to understand their entire marketing strategy,
and build a web-centric system that draws and converts as many ideal
customers as possible.
In fact, I am co-writing a book with four other
Duct Tape Marketing Consultants titled: The
Small Business Owner’s Guide To Local Lead
Generation. This book, due for release in early
summer, will be a big part in how we market our
family of products and services this year.
4. AGENCY SPOTLIGHT: KANSAS CITY WEB DESIGN
KANSAS CITY WEB DESIGN with PHIL SINGLETON
UpCity: Without revealing your secret sauce...what’s been effective for
you in terms of growth/success? What advice would you share for an
agency just starting out?
Phil: There is no real secret here. 70%+ of our new business is coming
mainly from our own organic visibility, which we supplement with some
PPC. The rest of our business comes from referrals.
This year, we will be launching a series of SEO training workshops for
business owners. If I could turn back the clock, I would probably start
with more marketing via workshops and seminars for business owners.
One other tip relates to inbound marketing: it is harder and harder
to rank a single website for related business services. For example,
for KCWebDesigner.com, we focus on searches related to web
development, web design, WordPress and Magento web design. Since
those are already very competitive core search terms in Kansas City,
we broke off the search engine optimization content into a separate
niche site: KCSEOPro.com. We then took this a step further when
we became Duct Tape Marketing certified and created a third site for
small business marketing, business coaching and consulting terms at
KCMarketingAgency.com.
You can see the strategy. It would be near impossible to rank well for
all these services under one site, so we split them out and powered them
with their own content specific SEO. If I were just starting out again,
I would have implemented this strategy at the very beginning.
UpCity: There are many moving pieces when building out your account
team and the processes involved to keep projects in line with customer
expectations while still being profitable. Can you share any insight on
what makes your team click or what hurdles you’ve overcome to perfect
this core element of the business?
Phil: This has been a real struggle over the years. The key differentiator
for my business has been our ability to achieve and maintain high organic
ranking for our clients. I have been able to build a team and delegate most
of this process, from design and project management to the development
and support of SEO friendly-websites. Yet, the one area that I have not
been able to delegate has been SEO strategy and implementation. I am
the SEO talent at my agency and this is the special sauce that makes
us different.
So, I was very excited to partner with UpCity
because the SEO account management platform is
exactly what I need to be able to build and customize
my own process (via multiple process templates). That
means I can grow my team this year by hiring an SEO
account specialist that can complete a large percentage
of the setup and maintenance tasks, while still enabling
me to manage and execute that last 25% of the SEO
tactics that really make the difference.
UpCity: We are so glad Kansas City Web Design has found the
value in our product and it has helped them expand their business into
the successful agency we know today. This is why we do what we do!
A special thanks to Phil Singleton for his time and thoughtful
responses to our questions.
70%
organic visibility
30%
referrals
Source
of New
Business
5. About Phil Singleton
Phil Singleton is the owner of Kansas City Web Design®
,
a web development firm specializing in SEO-friendly
WordPress websites and custom website applications,
and Kansas City SEO®
, a full-service Internet marketing
services company that provides organic search engine
optimization and other online marketing services.
Contact Phil on his Google+ page or LinkedIn page.
About UpCity
UpCity is a local inbound marketing platform built for
agencies looking to acquire, scale, and drive results for
their local business customers profitably. We accomplish
this by combining our proprietary SEO/inbound marketing
platform with a full range of sales and SEO service offerings.
UpCity makes it seamless for agency partners to increase
efficiencies by managing and delivering customized tasks,
generating robust on-demand reports, and providing full
SEO services to help our partners generate new revenue.
Our passion for the industry and dedication to building
long-lasting relationships with agency partners is the
foundation of our business. It’s what inspires us to
continue to raise the bar in the industry.
For more information, please visit us at www.upcity.com or email salesteam@upcity.com.
AGENCY SPOTLIGHT: KANSAS CITY WEB DESIGN
KANSAS CITY WEB DESIGN with PHIL SINGLETON
