A great article posted by Search Engine Watch reveals why BankRate was able to weather much of the sub prime debacle and every single one of us should take notes. I don’t know how many companies who like to talk a big game and say they focus on organic search (SEO), but in actuality focus on everything except organic search. Why because it is so so so easy to let SEO slip by the wayside when it takes months and months to see the slightest bit of payoff, but Tom Evans, CEO of BankRate seems to be the proof in the pudding.

There is obviously a lot of noise about the softness in the housing and mortgage industry, negative news about subprime loans, and concerns about bank liquidity. However, I think our business seemed to have weathered it pretty well.

Traffic for the quarter was up 14 percent versus a year ago, and 6 percent ahead of the second quarter 2007. We were pleased at the strength of the traffic, given that it was such a crazy quarter.

During some of the toughest times in the real estate market BankRate was rewarded by their SEO efforts with increased traffic. Evan’s points out that 75% of BankRates traffic was from organic search results, 11% came from referring traffic and 14% came from paid search campaigns.

Evan’s said:

“I think the reason we do so well in SEO is we have an enormous amount of content. We have an enormous amount of tools and calculators, and I think we have done a good job from SEO with, we have got literally millions of links into the site and out of the site, and I think that it really helps.”

Evan’s lays it all out in the table and why not? One of the biggest challenges and advantages that organic search rankings play is that they are not easily attainable, especially for mortgage and real estate, and take a significant amount of time and dedication and most companies don’t have either. They tend to stick with paid search and strategies that have little foundations and instant results.

Lets put a little perspective on the amount of time and effort it takes to gain similar ranking. BankRate currently has 170,000 dynamic rate tables and calculators and continues to add more. They have almost 1 million pages of content.

Can this be duplicated? Yes, of course, but focus on organic search must be a company wide focus if it is not, it will inevitably fall to the waste side. Don’t forget, you do not have to be the next BankRate and have 1 million links and pages of content, but you can be the next BankRate in your city or region.

Evan’s states, “we believe that organic traffic is less susceptible to competitive market dynamics, and is reflected in driving higher margins to our bottom line. Organic traffic continues to grow at double digits, and free traffic is always a good thing. We also see a positive trend reflected in the number of unique visitors to the site. August, with over 6.1 million uniques, was our highest month ever. And uniques for every single month this year have been higher than the same month last year. “

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