SEO Case Study – Auckland Marriage Celebrant
The latest client we took on was a Registered Marriage Celebrant from Auckland, New Zealand.
Sarah had a site that she had created herself with a website builder. She had put it together in just a few minutes before she rushed out to a bridal show, as she desperately needed something to send potential clients to. Like most busy business owners, all her time was spent working in her own business, so she had no time to learn website marketing as well.
MyCelebrant Before
There were a few fundamental flaws with the website builder, the first being it created websites with no on-page optimisation whatsoever. The website was also created with frames, meaning the design remained static, while only the content changed. This meant there was the same titles and meta information in the code for every page, a disaster for search engine optimisation.
Due to the fact the search engines have great difficulty in reading content within frames, only the home page was indexed, meaning only http://www.MyCelebrant.co.nz was available to be viewed. When people typed in just MyCelebrant.co.nz (quite common) it returned a 500 error, something else Google hates. All other information about what Sarah did was hidden, so only people searching specifically for her site were able to find any information about what she did.
MyCelebrant After
Against insurmountable odds, with off-page SEO Sarah had conducted herself through directory listings, she had managed to get herself to page 3 for ‘Auckland Weddings Celebrant.’ Unfortunately 99% of searchers don’t go past page two of a search. It was no surprise she was nowhere to be found for ‘Auckland Namings Celebrant’ as even though the page existed, it was not indexed in Google.
In short, Sarah’s website was practically invisible in Google for the areas she loved and wished to specialise in.
After we had a look in the backend of the website builder, we found it to be a total optimisation nightmare, with no hope for it whatsoever. We decided the best course of action was a total redesign. This would not only have her appear far more professional to visitors, but would help dramatically with her search engine optimisation.
Once Sarah was happy with the design, we went on with the optimisation process.
Auckland is New Zealand’s largest city, with a population of over 1.25 million people. There are over 250 Celebrants listed just in the Yellow Pages. There are up to 10 pages of results for ‘Auckland Wedding Celebrant’ when you count all the directory sites, all fighting for the market share of the thousands of various ‘Auckland Celebrant’ searches.
We knew this was going to be a challenge, and getting her to page one for such a competitive phrase wasn’t going to be easy. We told Sarah we expected it may be a month before she saw results. We let Sarah know at first she may even see a greater drop in rankings, before her website settled in on the first page. This is commonly known in the SEO industry as the ‘Google Dance,’ where the website listing can flip back and forth in the results until Google decides where exactly it wants to rank it for a phrase.
Then we rolled up our sleeves and went to work.
To our surprise, just seven days later, MyCelebrant shot to number nine in the search results for ‘Auckland Wedding Celebrant.’ It then dropped back to page 5 in true Google fashion, before it settled in at number 7. Today it is sitting at number 6, and alternates between the two on different days.
The Results Were Almost Instantaneous
Sarah emailed in awe on the first day her website hit page one that she’d had two new enquiries. In the first two weeks, Sarah had a string of 11 enquiries from her website. Three resulted in bookings, and a couple of other enquiries are still in the first stages before they confirm. Before we started the optimisation process, Sarah said the website amounted to about 5% of her bookings, and these were through bridal shows where she has specifically given out the address.
Sarah said:
This is a brilliant website and more than I could have ever hoped for. These results are amazing! Believe me I will keep in touch and let you know how it goes!
Then something even more amazing happened.
One of the ranking factors Google places highly for it’s Google Maps listings, is how well optimised your website is for any given phrase. The more highly optimised your website is, the higher it will place your Google Maps listing in the search results.
Because during the redesign we optimised Sarah’s on-page SEO for ‘Auckland Wedding Celebrant,’ ‘Auckland Marriage Celebrant’ and ‘Auckland Celebrant,’ it rocketed to number one in the Google Maps listings. In now sits within the prime real estate of the very top of Google for all three of these phrases*:
Auckland Celebrant:
Auckland Marriage Celebrants
Auckland Wedding Celebrant
*Results are not typical, but possible. We were hired to optimise MyCelebrant for one phrase, but it goes to show what can happen naturally with good on-page SEO.
Since then Sarah has asked to optimise for two more phrases in addition to ‘Auckland Weddings Celebrant’ so we are now in the process of optimising for ‘Auckland Marriage Celebrant’ and ‘Auckland Celebrant.’ As of the time of writing this, they are both above the fold on page two and steadily climbing.
The chances are, we can achieve this very same same success with your website as well, and you have nothing to lose by giving it a try. We take all the risk, you don’t have to pay a cent until we get you to page one and you are there for a fortnight. There is every chance our services will be paid for before the two weeks is up.
So go ahead and contact us, before your competitors do the same thing.
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