National Fostering Group, the UK’s largest independent fostering agency, had seen success via an aggressive performance marketing strategy, bringing in a large volume of lead generation through paid advertising channels. Alongside this was the mandate to develop an organic presence which matched up to our domination of the paid market.

Organic visibility, a metric which measures the visibility of a website in organic search results when a related query is entered, is one of our core SEO KPIs. When undertaking our work with National Fostering Group, there was a general acceptance that, for a number of our core keyword terms, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to take top position for visibility. This was due to the presence of a leading UK fostering charity sitting at the top of the tree from an organic perspective. Due to their longevity in the market and the associated authority that comes with it, being able to overtake this leader was always deemed unrealistic within our available resources, but we settled into the fight. 

Our long-term SEO strategy has been based around a number of core pillars, all of which interact with each other, as well as interplaying and supporting other services with our model:

• A cohesive rebuild of multiple disparate websites into one authoritative source of truth for fostering.
• Keyword research, implementation and optimisation over a number of years, defining and understanding our target market and how they search, ensuring we’re best positioned to place ourselves in front of the people we want to see us.
• Internal and external link-building workstream, gaining authority and ground with Google and, as a result of, with organic users. 
• Technical evaluations and site optimisations, ensuring our platform is working at the top of its game, so users have the best experience once they’ve found us. 
• A structured and relevant content production and optimisation process, crafting new on page content and enrichments to existing copy, always looking to branch out into new areas based on organic search trends.
• Holistic workflows which benefit and elevate efforts on Paid Search, Paid Social, CRO UX and other digital marketing channels.

As a long term strategy, the success criteria for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is invariably measured over a greater degree of time than a more immediate uplift service such as Paid Search. Building up a foundation for organic performance is never an overnight fix, and our efforts on National Fostering Group have, over the years, built the website up into a flagship authority on fostering content and information, dominating keyword ranking for high value, quality search terms.

For us, there was no greater vindication of our efforts than when, in 2022, independent third party data confirmed that, for the first time, we overtook the previously referenced market leader for organic visibility, a goal we had previously anticipated was unattainable.

Our organic visibility results, in addition to strong keyword domination over a number of years, highlight the benefits of perseverance with long-term strategy.

Our work on SEO has been produced on the back of detailed research, and our dedication to staying the course with these principles has here elevated organic results higher than we ever expected to be possible with our available resources. These levels of results require constant, data-driven upkeep to stay on top of an increasingly competitive marketplace in organic, and we’re reaping the rewards of working with a client who understands that this evolution needs to continue once you’ve reached the top, to stay there consistently.