GoEngine

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the owner of Some Web Studio, LLC. We design and develop websites for small to large businesses looking to modernize their online presence.

For what projects/services did your company hire GoEngine, and what were your goals?

Our challenge is properly positioning our clients in search results. We understand the basics of on-page SEO and the requirements for a good launch, but GoEngine definitely takes SEO to the next level for us and they produce the results we are looking for, page 1 rankings.

How did you select GoEngine and what were the deciding factors?

Dennis, the founder of GoEngine, is an old colleague of mine, and when I started searching for SEO companies to contract for me, I couldn't help to notice not many were offering as much transparency, and GoEngine provides results and they stay on top of every step in their processes to show you how rankings increase.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and campaigns.

GoEngine helped from the very beginning with consultations, strategic plans to keyword research, and identified a project plan to get started within the first week. Their team started week one with research and topics for SEO. Within the first month, they had the plan in action and content-ready for the site.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

There were 2 people that I worked with directly. Harrison was helping with writing the content, and Dennis (the owner) helped with driving the project plan and implementation.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Within the first 2 weeks, we were able to see a 40%+ increase in user sessions, which aligned with our goal in getting more visitors.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

We utilized Google Workplace, Slack, and traditional phone call methods for managing the project workflow.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I think the most impressive and unique experience is working with GoEngine and how transparent they are with their process. I felt very involved in decisions and it felt like an extension to my company rather than contract work.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I feel like an area for improvement would be a little more time spent on market research to align topics with more modern solutions.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founding partner of a private law firm in Chicago. We focus on criminal defense, with a little bit of family and injury law as well.

What challenge were you trying to address with GoEngine?

There are a million lawyers in Chicago, so the problem for us is never how to do the cases, it’s how to get the cases in the first place. A lot of criminal defense traffic is dominated by a few bigger players, and I wanted a partner who could help me increase incoming leads as well as the quality of those leads and the overall conversions that they translated to.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They started by creating a fantastic logo and immediately engaged in discussions with me about different ways in which I could reach out to people. They opened my eyes to all kinds of different marketing strategies, including ones that lawyers practicing for 30 years don’t know about, and we targeted a few specific areas to start with. From there, they have handled all of the advertising work themselves both on and off the website, and I field the leads that they bring in.

What is the team composition?

I primarily work with Dennis (Owner), as well as a few of the other main partners who work with him.

How did you come to work with GoEngine?

A friend of mine recommended them to me, and I reached out from there. As a young lawyer, I was a little hesitant to make the investment at first, but they ran me through a whole site audit and detailed proposal process that gave me a lot of confidence in them moving forward.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost of the services is around $10,000 a month, so in total, we’ve spent about $240,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around October 2018, and the project is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

All the work they’ve done has been incredibly successful so far. Obviously, as with any SEO work, it takes a little while to ramp up. But I went from using nearly 15 different providers to just GoEngine, and I currently don’t have enough room for all the client files I have as a result.

With the previous company I worked with, I was getting about a 150% return rate on my investment, which is obviously good but doesn’t do a lot more than just cover your expenses. Almost immediately after starting with GoEngine, I jumped to almost a 500% return rate, which has astronomically improved our business. I hired other people, got a bigger office and a telephone service, and increased the amount that I was able to charge per lead on top of all of it.

How did GoEngine perform from a project management standpoint?

They did a great job of keeping me up to date on how our progress was going and answering any questions that I had. I am really impressed by how engaged Dennis has stayed with the project down the line, which was very different from the experience I’ve had with other companies.

The timelines that they promised were the timelines they stuck to completely, and that level of honesty is a huge part of the reason that I’ve stayed with them for so long. Their communication was consistently open and honest, and they were always willing to explain everything that they were doing so I understood it.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their team really came on as a silent partner with the firm from the beginning. A lot of marketing firms, especially working for law firms in Chicago, will put you on the list but make you compete with other attorneys for their time. Right away, GoEngine was invested in building our business as if it was their own.

For the first couple months, there wasn’t a lot going on because they were committed to doing everything necessary to build a sustainable and successful marketing model. But they promised that by January, my phone would be ringing off the hook, and that’s exactly what happened.

Even since then, they have consistently worked with me on how to expand everything that we’re doing. They will reach out any time they hear of a new format that could help, so the investment on their end is never in doubt in my mind at all.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I genuinely don’t think that there’s anything they need to be doing differently in terms of the work. The only I think their company needs is more recognition, because they’re an up-and-coming company and will probably have a lot more business as soon as more people know about the results they can deliver.