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Pivoting with SEO: How Wildgoose reinvented itself during the COVID-19 crisis https://ift.tt/34dyZjL 30-second summary:
Matt Finch, SEO Manager at Distinctly, provides insight on how the team worked with events company Wildgoose to pivot quickly in the face of the Covid-19 lockdown. Founded in 2003, Wildgoose is a global leader in corporate events and team building, winning numerous awards for the thousands of experiences it delivers across the world annually. When lockdown began, Wildgoose’s sales and pipeline took an immediate downturn, with a year on year drop in sales of 62% for the month of April. Operational costs were tightened along with evaluations of the marketing and tech spend, and Wildgoose was forced to downsize its workforce by over 50%. The company had to act quickly, having just launched a new website in anticipation of a record-breaking 2020. A swift decision was made to repurpose Wildgoose’s offering into a set of remote team building activities to connect people virtually. This pivot would ultimately prove not only to protect the company’s immediate future but to help it thrive, and was backed up by an SEO campaign from Distinctly with three-month areas of focus in place. What focus areas were targeted?
What was achieved?The move has led to an overall increase in organic traffic of 56% and a sales increase of 158%, since the company’s lowest point in April. In addition:
How it was done: Rethinking Wildgoose’s business modelWithin days of the main revenue drivers effectively disappearing, Wildgoose founder Jonny Edser and the team were working on a way to secure the future of the business. The solution they came up with meant they could not only reshape their existing offering but take advantage of the sudden upswing in demand for virtual communication during the lockdown. Jonny Edser says,
Using SEO for a successful launchBefore coronavirus, Wildgoose wasn’t ranking in the search results for any queries relating to “remote”, “virtual”, or “online”. With the business model shifting, search visibility needed to follow suit, so this needed to change as soon as possible. Wildgoose’s new products were one of the first to market, but they needed to be put in front of the right people. Matt Finch, SEO Manager at Distinctly, says,
Keyphrase and content optimizationPeople’s searching habits have changed since lockdown set in, so traditional keyword research has had to change with it. Instead:
Digital PR and link buildingWildgoose’s unusual experience of redesigning its business offering meant there were unique data and content that could be used in relevant publications to promote the new products. A survey into people’s experiences of remote working secured coverage and backlinks in over 40 HR and business publications, allowing links and authority to be built into the new product and category pages, aiding ranking chances. An effective internal linking structure was also utilized, meaning pre-existing powerful pages were funneling authority to the new pages to boost them further. MD Jonny Edser was promoted as an expert in the field of virtual team building, leading to features in Forbes, the Chartered Management Institute, and Thisismoney.co.uk. All of this combined to show Google that Wildgoose was leading the way in the field, and so deserved to rank highly for its new target keywords and queries. Turning Wildgoose’s fortunes aroundWildgoose is now firmly focussed on the future, with a renewed energy around product development and new gameplay formats. The company is streamlining its sales and operational processes and scaling its business model based on updated forecasts for the months ahead. Expect to see more traditional team building activities made virtual over the coming months. Matt Finch is SEO Manager at Distinctly, an award-winning search marketing agency. The post Pivoting with SEO: How Wildgoose reinvented itself during the COVID-19 crisis appeared first on Search Engine Watch. SEO via SEO – Search Engine Watch https://ift.tt/2jPJ80l October 1, 2020 at 05:04AM
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