We started working with Follow the Camino in July 2016. They initially hired us for a technical SEO audit. Their website had been hacked, made possible by an error on the part of their hosting company, and they needed to make sure everything had been cleaned up.
(Note on the above image: I prefer to use third party stats, as I dislike sharing clients’ analytics data publicly. This graph is provided by SEMRush)
Background
Follow the Camino are a part of the One Foot Abroad brand. They offer tailored walking and cycling holidays along the Camino de Santiago. One Foot Abroad sell walking holidays with an emphasis on sustainability.
The aim of the project was to increase company revenue by increasing relevant traffic in three main geographical areas: the US & Canada, the UK and Ireland.
Gone are the days when SEO stands apart from all other digital marketing strategies. We needed to make sure that the marketing efforts were integrated – including offline advertising. This means we needed to ensure performance was outstanding in all the following areas:
- Branding across all channels
- Google Ads management
- Facebook social management and retargeting
- Testimonials on various platforms
- UX and CRO
- Lead generation goals and tracking, integrated with the sales CRM
SEO Audit Results
The audit laid the groundwork for all future actions to be taken on the website. Our audit checked every possible issue that may be holding a website back from ranking higher and provided solutions to all the problems.
Follow the Camino completed the work needed after the audit in-house and returned a few months later when we performed the second audit. From this, we crafted a plan to optimise the site and reviewed all the existing content.
The Strategy
After the audit, we created a long-term SEO strategy and roadmap that first aimed to answer search queries that asked specific questions (i.e.target long-tail keywords). The second and main head terms ranking goals have now been met, and the website ranks for keywords that drive thousands of visitors per month.
Content Marketing
Starting in April 2017, we crawled the website to create a full list of all the content on the website. We then decided what content was worth keeping as is, what needed to be rewritten, and what would be deleted (and/or 301 redirected).
All marketing staff from Follow the Camino have walked the route at least once, which ensured that all content was deep, detailed and factually correct.
To ensure everything went smoothly and to upskill their internal marketing team, we arranged a call every week. The calls were via shared screen, the best way to clearly illustrate where content improvements could be made.
As a result of these calls, we developed a content marketing process ensuring all content met high standards.
Related:
Building Trust
One of the hardest problems for any company is deciding who to trust with your SEO and digital marketing. This is all the more difficult when you have not engaged an SEO agency previously.
Part of my trust-building process is being available all the time at the start of all projects and finding quick wins.
This is important as there are going to be times ahead in any project when I have to say to a client, “trust me, this is the right way to do it”.
On-site SEO
All of the on-site SEO was undertaken by Cube. This is an area where a process can be created for ongoing publication. But, to go back and change and fix the current SEO is better completed by an expert SEO consultant.
You may also be interested in our WooCommerce SEO case study and our SEO case study for cosmetic surgeons as well.
Link Building / Content Marketing
For most websites, this will be an ongoing process. Between Follow the Camino and Cube’s staff writers, we have created great guides that have been published on highly relevant websites.
Without links, the best content will not drive the desired amount of traffic.
Results
Within 6 months, Google organic traffic had increased by over 100%. Year on year increases is now running between 180% and 200%.
Comparing May 2016 to May 2018, the figures are incredible, but we started from a fairly low bottom with a company that has been in business for 14 years.
These increases have directly translated into increased revenue.
You can read more about our Travel SEO here, or why not just have a chat with us and find out if we can help?
I am the founder and manager of BeFound SEO and the main consultant. I started offering SEO services back in 2007 when I had to explain SEO, as most people had no idea what it was and how much it could help their business online. I still love seeing the results from SEO.
When I’m not creating great strategy, I am usually out hiking up a mountain.
Connect with me on the links below.