MARKETING A SKI RENTAL: AN SEO SUCCESS STORY FROM DLD
Carvers Ski Bike is our Colorado-based client that offers the rental of skis, snowboards, and bicycles, as well as the repair and tuning of sports equipment. The project was launched in August 2019, and in this case study, we’ll discuss how our SEO services for this sport equipment rental site has affected their business in the last 2 years.
OUR INITIAL GOALS
At the initial stage of the development of our newest SEO project, we set several goals:
- Expanding the semantics of the site
- Improving the positions of key queries and boosting them to the TOP
- Increasing organic traffic to the client's website
- Outstripping local competitors in search results
- Promoting new queries to TOP-10 and TOP-20 positions in search results
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS AND DEVELOPING OUR SEO STRATEGY
Analyzing the client’s main competitors and niche is the key stage of every SEO strategy. During this stage, our team researches the local market, the industry in general, and the main competing websites in order to devise a custom marketing strategy to achieve the best results for our clients.
When analyzing the competing ski & snowboard rentals websites, our SEO team pays attention to the following aspects:
- Website structure
- Content quality
- Link building strategy
- Internal links
- Metadata
LIST OF SEO TASKS WE PERFORMED
104% INCREASE IN CLIENT’S BACKLINK PROFILE!
At the beginning of the project, we began active work on increasing the site's link profile. The main task at this stage is analyzing the client’s competitors and searching for quality sites and directories with high domain authority for placing links. It is this approach that allows us to achieve our SEO goals.
We are proud of the link building results we achieved for this project:
THE NUMBER OF ORGANIC KEYWORDS INCREASED BY 160%
Increasing the number of organic keywords is one of the main goals of any website promotion. The more organic keywords you have, the more quality traffic your website gets. So, what are organic keywords exactly?
Organic keywords are phrases that people type in the search bar when looking for products and services they need. All keywords for promotion should be selected and approved in the process of creating a semantic core. Your further progress depends on how well the queries have been chosen.
When we started publishing new SEO texts about the client’s Breckenridge equipment rental business, sport equipment in general, and other topics, as well as optimizing the existing content, search engines began indexing the client’s site, which lead to more traffic coming in from the relevant queries. Look at this graph:
Yes, the growth in the overall number of organic keywords is a good sign, but the keyword quantity in the TOP 3 and TOP 4-10 positions is of even bigger importance. These are the searches that bring us the most leads and sales.
- Organic keywords in the TOP 3 positions improved by 171%
- Organic keywords in the TOP 4-10 positions increased by 104%
We don’t just sit back and relax after developing the initial SEO strategy. We are always looking for ways to achieve better results for our clients and run regular competitor analyses to improve the positions of all keywords. This is what smart SEO should do when promoting a seasonal business such as a ski rental. Below you can see the list of keywords that bring the most traffic to the site:
ORGANIC TRAFFIC INCREASED BY OVER 120%
One of the main goals of any SEO promotion is to increase organic traffic. In the screenshot below, we compared sessions, users, and pageviews at the beginning of the contract in August 2019 and now, two years later. As you can see, all indicators have grown by over 120%.
This key factor in this SEO project is its seasonal nature: in winter, the client provides snowboarding and skiing equipment, and in summer, it is bike rental.
The organic traffic has grown by 86% when comparing the latest winter season with the previous season.
Before we got to work on the project, the client did not have any content dedicated to the summer activity - bicycles. Now that we added texts about their summer equipment, we saw a good increase in organic traffic - 180% - compared to before.
The client now has a sufficient amount of traffic channels: visitors come to the client's website via direct searches, referral links, and social media sites. Still, the main channel for attracting visitors is free organic traffic, meaning that the SEO campaign has been successful.
CONVERSION RATE INCREASED BY 74%
One of the main goals of the SEO project for our Breckenridge equipment rental site was to improve lead generation, meaning to increase the number of sport fans who turn from simple visitors to customers. After adding conversion blocks to the site, optimizing the mobile version of the site, and increasing the loading speed, conversion rates have seen a major boost. The screenshot below compares the conversion results for the last year with the previous year.
MOBILE OPTIMIZATION IS A KEY PROMOTION FACTOR
In 2020, Google announced that they would start prioritizing mobile versions over desktop versions of websites for indexing. With that in mind, we optimized the client’s web adaptivity and created content that looks good on any device.
LOCAL SEO AND OTHER ADDITIONAL SERVICES
Google My Business is an effective promotional tool for local ski rental and other businesses. Naturally, our SEO team could not ignore it. A GMB profile is your key to local users as special sections of the results page show companies closest to the user first. The more content you add to your profile, the better you will inform potential customers about your products and services. We optimized the client’s GMB account, and the first results came soon.
Here is the client’s data chart:
After creating and optimizing a profile for the client in Google My Business, we managed to attract additional traffic to the site with visits directly from the Google results page.
IMPROVE SEO FOR YOUR SKI & BIKE RENTAL SITE
As a result of our SEO efforts, we not only achieved our original goals for the client’s sport equipment rental site but surpassed them. We are continuing to work on the site and will do everything we can to bring even more results for our client.
Attracting new visitors to a business is not an easy task for those of us who know nothing about SEO. We at Direct Line Development always keep track of the latest advancements in SEO and use only SEO best practices to ensure superior results for our clients. Thanks to our progressive approach and professional work ethic, we manage to achieve good results for even the most complex web promotion projects.
If you think that your business performance and efficiency leave much to be desired, get in touch with our team. We will help you get ahead of your digital enemies and take the lead in your industry.
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