Business Moves Group (BMG) is an office relocation and workplace change specialist with offices across England and Scotland. We have supported BMG with PR and communications for many years.
In 2020, we added search engine optimisation (SEO) into the programme to help BMG improve its digital presence and attract more targeted organic traffic. This case study details our strategy and the results so far.
SEO strategy
Keyword research
Keyword research was a fundamental part of our foundation work. The first step was to analyse the keywords that BMG ranked for. Most were branded search terms – this means they included the company name in the search. We discussed what keywords BMG wanted to target and carried out in-depth research to identify a list based on search volume, relevance, user intent and keyword difficulty.
This keyword list informed our content marketing strategy which involved creating a blog calendar, new website pages, and ensuring that the existing pages on the website were optimised for these keywords.
Site audit
The other core part of our foundation work was conducting a site audit. We designed and launched the BMG website in the summer of 2020, so it already had good technical SEO fundamentals in place. Our audit included meta titles and descriptions, anchor text, image optimisation and internal linking to ensure that best practice was in place throughout the website.
Content strategy
In addition to blogs, we have created and launched numerous new website pages. These include location pages, case studies, revamped service pages, sector pages and testimonials. All of these have been published with a purpose of improving the user experience and to demonstrate E-E-A-T. This stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness and is a framework that Google uses to evaluate the quality of content.
Backlinks
Backlinks are links from one website to another and can be considered a “vote”. The more backlinks you have, the better. However, these need to be legitimate links – paying for backlinks is against Google rules and can result in penalties in the form of a site becoming unranked in search results.
Through our PR work we already secure backlinks with articles we place and press releases we distribute. As part of our SEO campaign, we have secured links with business listing websites that increase BMG’s exposure and support SEO. We also monitor for BMG mentions online that don’t have a backlink and reach out to those sites to request one.
Local SEO
BMG is based in Reading and has offices in Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Glasgow. An important part of our work is improving the BMG online presence in each of these markets.
Our first step was to review the Google My Business pages for each location. The pages were being managed by different people and the information on them did not all align. We secured ownership rights for each page and linked them to ensure uniformity.
We then created specific location pages for the website.
Each page includes key content including contact details, an overview of BMG services, a blog feed and calls-to-action. The goal is that when people are searching for BMG services in its core markets, these pages will appear high in the search results and a user will find everything they need on the page without having to visit another part of the site.
Google accounts
We gained access to or created accounts with Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Google Tag Manager. This allows us to track and measure all key metrics relating to the website and SEO as well as better index new content in search engine result pages.
Further to the work on Google accounts, we also set up Microsoft accounts with Bing Webmaster Tools to perform a similar function in Bing and Yahoo.
Business impact
Lead generation
There are numerous metrics we can use to measure the impact of SEO, but the metric that matters most is lead generation.
We record conversions – important actions on the website like phone calls and emails – and can see which of those come from organic search.
We recently added a quote request form to the website and have seen that it is a much more popular lead generation tool than email or call buttons.
Organic traffic consistently drives the most conversions and generates the most leads. We stay in touch with the BMG sales team to make sure they are relevant leads.
BMG has completed several projects with clients that found them through Google search, which is testament to the ongoing success of our work.
SEO metrics
There are many metrics that demonstrate the improved SEO of the BMG website. They include:
- When we started the project, BMG ranked for 29 different keywords. It now ranks for 171, and almost all the new ones are extremely relevant to the business, including service lines and key locations.
- Numerous keywords are the top result in Google search, positioning BMG as a trusted business and attracting organic traffic.
- Followers and engagement on the BMG LinkedIn page have noticeably increased since we developed a content strategy.
- The overall site health, a metric we view in SEMrush, has been steadily improving over time and is currently above the industry average.
- In December 2020 BMG had 116 referring domains – these are domains that link to businessmoves.com. Now, BMG has 261 referring domains and over 1,800 backlinks.
- BMG’s average visibility for monitored keywords in the UK is 23.58%. As a result of our local SEO work around key locations, visibility is improved in all five of its regional locations.
- Website metrics including users, sessions, pages per session and bounce rate have all dramatically improved.
SEO support
We offer search engine optimisation support as a standalone service or alongside PR and communications. Contact us today to discuss how we can support your business.
