The Problem
EcoTraining is one of the leading safari training and wildlife emersion providers in Africa. They had recently built a new website which was causing a dip in their website traffic and monthly enquiries received through the website.
It was important for EcoTraining to be listed at the top of the Google search results for the services and courses they offered so that it could reflect their standing at the top of their industry.
The company that EcoTraining had hired to rebuild their website had also been brought on to run their search engine optimisation ( SEO ) and Google Ads campaigns, however they were seriously under performing.
The Solution
When we were brought on board to take over EcoTrainings SEO and Google Ads we first needed to fully understand their business so we could find the most important keywords they needed to be ranking for and which of these keywords would bring in the most lucrative leads for the courses they run.
With this deep understanding of their business we formulated an specific search engine marketing strategy to incorporate both SEO and Google Ads.
The Results
When we first started working with EcoTraining they had about 2900 – 3000 website visitors per month and about 100 website enquiries being sent through each month.
In October 2019 their monthly website traffic was over 13 000 visitors. In 2019 they have consistently had more than 10 000 website visitors to ecotraining.co.za per month.
This traffic generates between 250 and 300 website enquiries each month which is almost 3 X more than when we first started working with them.
The Results
458 %
Increase In Traffic
3 X
Increase In Monthly Enquiries
EcoTraining’s traffic growth over the last four years.
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So what did we do?
Understanding Ecotraining’s Business and Who They Were Selling To
This title could have also been called “keyword research”, but that over simplifies one of the most important steps of a great SEO strategy.
The company who EcoTraining had worked with to build their new website ( and who had sold them on SEO and AdWords ) had asked them to send through a spreadsheet of all the keywords they thought applied to their business along with the content for the site.
They then “plugged” those keywords into the website, SEO and Google Ads without ever asking if they were the right keywords for EcoTraining or not. So many SEO agencies make this mistake.
Target The Right Keywords
It is pointless being number 1 in Google if you aren’t being seen by the right people who want to buy your products and services. You can have all the traffic in the world but it will be pointless if it is not quality targeted traffic for your business.
50 of the right people can be more valuable than 1000 of the wrong.
We already had an understanding of the African safari market having worked with a few inbound safari companies already.
We delved into EcoTraining’s business even more, asking them questions, finding out who paid to attend their courses, who the different courses and programs were aimed at, etc. Along with the help of the keywords they thought applied to their business and our own extensive keyword research through Google’s and Moz’s keyword explorer we created a simple list of keywords we needed to target in order to get the right people coming to their website.
A Short Keyword List Can Be Better Than A Long One.
It is only possible to target so many keywords on each page of a website effectively. Trying to be the highest ranking website on 50 different keywords is just going to stretch your resources to thin. We prefer to focus on 5 core keywords to rank for, strengthen the overall SEO of a website so that blog posts and long tail keywords can start ranking. Once those 5 are ranking in the top 3 – 5 search results we add 2 more keywords and so on.
Never Underestimate The Power Of Great On-Site SEO
Our next step was to make sure each of the websites relevant pages were optimised as much as possible for the prime keywords we had decided upon.
Onsite SEO is basically how and where you tell Google what your business, website or page is all about so they know for what searches they should show your website for.
But onsite SEO is only half the battle. It only tells Google what you should be ranking for, not how high you should be ranking for those keywords.
That is where links come in!
Ongoing Offsite Link Building & Outreach
Google looks at links like referrals. The more links/referrals a site has from other sites the more authority that site is given for a certain subject. The more authority a site has the more ranking power it has.
Like referrals, not all links are equal. Links from sites with stronger authority pass that authority on with the links found on their site.
We engage in ongoing monthly link building strategies to make sure our client’s relevant backlinks are continuing to grow and increase over time.
We have seen fantastic results from the links we built and connected to EcoTraining which increased their websites SEO strength and ranking ability.
EcoTraining’s Average Google Ranking
A More Focused Google Ads Strategy
Google Ads is an incredibly powerful tool, but it is also very easy to spend your monthly budget quickly without seeing any leads coming in.
We focused the Google Ads budget to focus more on South Africa and make sure no competitors were stealing potential customers looking for the EcoTraining brand.
With this dual strategy of SEO and Google Ads we were able to dominate the Google search results page often showing up 3 – 4 times in the search results which dramatically reinforces EcoTrainings brand and industry leading status.
Later after we had seen some success we managed to a broader budget so EcoTraining could start to target more international clients in the US, Europe and Australia.
Content Strategy Consulting
Content is always an important piece of any SEO strategy. Blogging and the targeting of long tail keywords is a fantastic way of bringing in highly targeted search traffic by answering important questions and queries, telling amazing stories and solving client problems.
We continually consult with EcoTraining on the blogs and articles they add to their blog so that they are taking full advantage of their websites SEO strength and ranking ability.
Want To Be Our Next Case Study?
Let’s work together on the best solution to shift your website’s rankings and get your business on track to grow into it’s full potential.
