Superbreak SEO Breakthrough
Back in 2004 the travel company Superbreak were making great strides in the new internet distribution world, but still had a long way to go. The then Marketing Manager appointed Bigmouth Media from Edinburgh to consult on creating a holistic SEO strategy for 2 key websites, Superbreak.com and Hotelnet.co.uk.
Critically, niche keywords were identified for both sites, leading to focus on these, with secondary traffic from mass keywords to come as a result, not as the focus. This lead to a multi-focus approach, allowing a broad range of traffic across short, medium and long tail keywords.
The initial goals were to achieve first page positions for a range of over 100 core keywords (back when first page meant good traffic, not like 2012!). The target was to deliver a 10-fold increase in traffic in 6 months, deliver over 35% of all site traffic from organic sources, and achieve better than target performance on over 2,500 keywords.
The approach taken was belt and braces, involving a thorough audit of the site structure, coding and optimisation. This led to a better mark-up, site speed, caching rules, content refreshing and optimised use of graphics (again, quite new back in 2004!).
The agency, Bigmouth, implemented a range of off page tactics, centred around article development and link acquisition. Social monitoring was also implemented to identify the warm and cold areas to be targeted for further effort.
The Superbreak marketing team, led by the Marketing Manager David Ranby, coordinated all the technical changes, and developed content both on and off site to compliment the keyword targets.
The results over a 3 year period were beyond expectation. By 2007 organic traffic was growing at over 200% and ROI was over 170%. The No1 organic position had been secured on all variations of “short break” and “weekend break” for all core UK destinations and themes. Significant positions were also achieved on generic hotel terms, which were considerably harder targets. Superbreak achieved positions across more than 60% of the total hotel-related keyword set in the UK.
The campaign achieved major recognition for Superbreaks web marketing team and Bigmouth media, winning the most significant search awards of the industry.
Travolution – 2008, Best Agency for Search Optimisation, for Superbreak.
New Media Age – 2007, “Best Use of Search”, for superbreak.com
Technology In Marketing – 2007, Best Search Marketing Campaign.
Press Release, Bigmouth Media
Bigmouthmedia has walked away with the coveted “Best Agency for Search Engine Optimisation” award at the 2008 Travolution Awards, regarded as rewarding the best in online travel.
Travolution awarded bigmouthmedia the honour for its work on the Superbreak SEO campaign saying; “The travel vertical is becoming increasingly complicated from a marketing perspective and, therefore, clients are needing and demanding more expertise from their digital agency”.
David Ranby, Internet Marketing Manager for Superbreak, was enthusiastic about yet another award win for the partnership: “Three awards for Superbreak has to suggest that we know what we are doing”.
The award win underlined the success of Superbreaks organic search marketing strategy, which has delivered remarkable results to the short break provider, consistently exceeded expectations, pushing down costs and generating enhanced levels of consumer understanding.
“I’m really pleased that the judges chose bigmouthmedia as best agency for search engine optimisation – the travel sector is a highly important one for us and we invest heavily to ensure we’re leading the market and providing the best service to our clients”, said Lyndsay Menzies, Managing Director of bigmouthmedia UK.
