Results roundup – what performed well in January 2021?

The winner last month was copywriting. Browsing through our client monthly reports, it was striking how influential it has been to great results. 

In these cases, it’s specifically content SEO that has been aligned to keyword strategy. You wouldn’t know unless you were looking for keywords though – it’s stylish, informative and has a good tone of voice. 

So, if you’re worried that an SEO-optimised keyword strategy will make mincemeat of your brand voice, think again and take a look at these results.

Side menus add accessibility and bring results

A fabulous marriage of UX and SEO is helping one of our clients go from strength to strength on one of their keyword themes, leaving competitors in the dust.

We restructured an entire section around this keyword theme to include all the keywords that come into it. Using a category page with a side menu for easy navigation between topics, we were able to build a deeper hierarchy of content – which Google likes because it shows authority. 

These critical key terms are now dominating SERPs above the fold because:

• The topic is easily navigable
• The content is structured,  deep and informative
• We’ve shown Google that it’s important information on this site with an internal linking strategy

The section went live In April 2020. At first it looked like it was going to be a slow-burner. But look at the explosion of sessions and leads.

GA image by Door4

This is great because their sector is commercially competitive as well as dovetailing with services offered by the public sector. Google will often default authority to local government and regulatory websites and position them highly in SERPS, meaning commercial outfits are relegated to positions under the fold or – gulp – page two and beyond.

Great content boosts landing page conversions

Some businesses benefit from a locations campaign in Paid Search. Well, the same is true for Organic Search. This SEO location campaign focused on supporting key branch locations and was married to a site-wide conversion map – that is, the locations supported the objectives of getting the user into the site and prompting a journey through the site that led to a conversion.

After looking at what competitors were doing, we put a strategy together to do it better. We created some very basic location pages (that were of a higher quality than anything competitors were offering) and set them all live in batches covering the entire UK.

Phase two implemented a programme of refinements for these pages that increased their quality even more. This involved enriching the copywriting with unique information. It was complicated to administer, as we had to go straight to source for this kind of gold and involve the branches themselves. 

It’s been worth it. The first cohort went live in January and you can see the immediate improvement in average position.

GA image by Door4

These location pages:

• Have a lower bounce rate than the whole site 
• Encourage more clicks through the site than the whole site
• Make visitors stay on and read more information
• Have a conversion rate that’s x3 the whole site (6.19% versus 1.92%)

These figures are approaching the highly competitive conversion rate for this client’s Paid Search campaigns. 

CRO testing copy = content that converts

Last year, we designed a quiz-type tool for a client’s website. Its objective was to:

• Educate visitors and potential leads
• Inform prospects they were suitable
• Inform non-prospects how they might try again
• Demystify a signing-up process 

Tone of voice was exceptionally important for this copywriting project – we wanted visitors to feel reassured and among friends from the start, even if they turn out to be unsuitable at this time.

The tool has been a runaway success and data shows it has increased the client’s organic conversions. For the last quarter, as part of a CRO marketing programme, we’ve been testing the effects of different copy in the tool headlines and instructions.

• Control tone of voice – friendly and conversational
• Variant tone of voice – formal, more official

The friendly and conversational tone won with this client’s target audience, eliciting +88% conversions. It shows how language is important to your demographic and small changes can make a lot of difference.

Takeaways

• Good copywriting is worth its weight in gold
• SEO requires patience but it’s worth it
• CRO testing copy gives you audience what it wants
• Paid Search is an excellent business growth mechanism
• The business case for investment is in your performance data

Door4’s objective is revenue optimisation. If you’d like to know more about what this could do for you, get in touch.