Accredited and trusted digital marketing experts

The client

Japanese knotweed removal is a highly competitive market with large volumes of search and equally large volumes of competition – everyone wants a piece of the pie, but it isn’t easy getting there – you need to have all of your SEO t’s crossed and i’s dotted. We worked with a company specialising in Japanese knotweed removal, helping them to overtake some of the top players in the industry and dominate the first page of the search engine results pages (SERPs).

The challenge

When we met with the client, we discovered that they were running two websites for their Japanese knotweed removal service – one targeting homeowners and one targeting commercial. This meant they were having to optimise two websites which is not ideal in a competitive market.

We also discovered that as both websites were running Google paid ads, the client was competing with themselves, pushing the cost per click up for each website’s campaigns, and so costing more money than if they focused their ads for one website.

From our keyword research, the data showed that there were limited occasions when people searching would distinguish if their search was for a home or commercial. People searching generally look for ‘japanese knotweed removal’ or search terms around this central keyword, i.e. ‘japanese knotweed removal costs’, ‘what does Japanese knotweed look like’, etc.

We advised the client to focus on optimising one website and providing the web visitor with the option to navigate to content for homeowners and content for commercial, depending on what they were looking for.

Our objectives

We set out to achieve the following for the client:

Improve SEO foundations to create a technically clean website
Focus on a single user-friendly website that provides information for home owners and commercial
Build industry-leading content to challenge the top competitors dominating the top of Google
Increase the site’s visibility and drive higher volumes of traffic by winning more high-volume search term top ranking positions

What we did

We worked through a methodical approach to get the site positioned correctly so that we could work towards our objectives:

  • Extensive keyword research and URL mapping
  • Meta optimisation throughout the website
  • Improvement and optimisation of existing content for quick wins on improved rankings
  • Support the website restructure and redesign with an improved taxonomy, page structure layouts and improved messaging across the site
  • Liaison with the client’s website development agency to ensure the website was created to requirements
  • Pre and post migration checklists to ensure a smooth migration to the new website
  • Implementation of schema mark up to optimise for featured snippets
  • Content audit and identification of content gaps with the top competitors to feed the SEO strategy creation
  • Focus on improving and building new content that targeted the most relevant and searched for keywords
  • Targeting of high traffic competitor content with improved content formats to build site authority
  • Advice on conversion rate optimisation (CRO), making it easier and more appealing for people to request a survey

The results

During our time working with this client, we achieved the following transformations:

The increased ranking positions contributed to a huge uplift in search visibility in year 1 including:

366% increase

in top 10 position keywords monthly search volume

Increased number of keywords ranking by

107%

Increased organic traffic visibility by

618%

Increased traffic cost by

593%

(what you would have to pay Google Ads if you were bidding on the search terms you are appearing naturally for)

The site continued to build momentum and delivered the following results in year 2 YoY. The number of keywords only gradually increased, but the momentum the site generated from moving up the rankings significantly impacted the results:

364% increase

in top 10 position keywords monthly search volume

Increased number of keywords ranking by

31%

Increased organic traffic visibility by

318%

Increased traffic cost by

326%

Bumped the main strong competitor for several rich snippets positions (widely known as position 1 which is one step better than ranking number 1 in the search results, and means the result is often at the top of the search results page) in Google for high volume generating traffic keywords such as ‘japanese knotweed removal costs’ and ‘plants that look like Japanese knotweed’.

Talk to a digital marketing expert

With over 16 years’ providing digital services, we know what needs to happen to rank your website on Google – we do it day in, day out, and thrive on seeing the results we achieve. Working with Smart Monkey, you will benefit from:

  • better results online for your B2B, B2C or ecommerce website
  • a mastermind of Google Accredited SEO & PPC professionals on your team
  • direct contact with the talented team members working on your website
  • an independent and agile digital marketing agency that treats your business as though it is our own

We don’t take on every client – we will only work with you if we are confident that we can generate results. Fill in our form or book a consultation to set up a call and we will analyse your website, market and competitors to provide our recommendations for the results we can achieve.

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