Just 1 blog post and 5 weeks was all it took for a local Canberra residential builder to rank #1 for a high volume keyword and increase its organic search traffic by 81%
Every month the Sea Salt Marketing editorial team recommend our clients create blogs to educate and target would-be customers.
These blogs should target users at the very start of their customer-journey as well as users who are close to signing on the dotted line.
One of our builders recently had huge success targeting customers towards the start of their journey, targeting viewers of the popular TV show “House Rules”.
In the first 5 weeks after posting, organic views increased by 81%.
We always tell our clients that SEO isn’t something that just turns on overnight – even the most successful campaigns take time. The graph below shows how views of the article increased – with peaks on days the show airs)
Graph 1: SEO – Page Views Over Time
By the start of June this local building company was ranked #1 for several phrases about House Rules including “Is House Rules Realistic” and “Is House Rules Real”
Here’s how they did it
1.Choice of topics
If you have a small business and a small website the key for SEO is to find low hanging fruit and pick it! In a broad sense, this means that rather than trying to rank for “Best Builder in Australia” or even “Best Builder in New South Wales” it’s going to be easier to rank for local areas like “Best Builder Wollongong”.
“Best Builder Wollongong” isn’t going to have as many people searching for it, but it’s going to be easier to get your name to the top of the list, and by targeting an area you definitely cover you won’t spend time responding to customers outside areas you service.
Now House Rules isn’t an overly “low” hanging fruit – but it is compared to other TV shows – like The Block
The below graph shows how many people are searching for The Block (Blue) compared to House Rules (Red).
Graph 2: The Block vs House Rules
While there are many more people searching for My House Rules, it’s also less competitive so it’s easier to rank higher, faster.
2.Catchy Headline
The second thing we did which helped this company rank well compared to bigger websites was our choice of headline.
The headline “Is House Rules Realistic” is one of the very common phrases that people are typing into Google – it even comes up as a Google suggested search
By using the exact phrases that people are typing into Google it made it easier to rank higher than other headlines that were similar or alluded to the phrase.
Once you’ve ranked well for a popular term, now what?
Sea Salt Marketing’s clients know that we usually target potential customers that are further along their purchasing journey – whereas this particular article looked at people who are still maybe a few years off making their final decision. So why do it?
So if you’re going to try and capture users higher in the funnel, make sure you’re ready to get their details and create future loyal customers
- Include a pop up newsletter box to capture their details and continue marketing to them.
- Include links at the bottom of the page and/or article to direct them to your social pages. People that are watching and researching building shows will be interested in design and looking at beautiful finished products (as well as some behind the scenes action) so make sure your social media pages, especially Instagram, are easily accessible
- Make related blog posts easy to find. If they’re interested in this, what else are they interested.
By targeting users higher up the funnel we can establish authority of the brand and draw them in with more great content so that when it is time to make that final decision, your brand name is front of mind.
