April 6, 2017

Vue Entertainment

Vue Entertainment is part of Vue International – one of the world’s leading cinema operators, managing the most respected brands in major European markets and Taiwan, spanning ten countries, 211 sites, and 1875 screens.

Committed to continued growth and development of its premium entertainment ‘big screen’ experience, Vue delivers the best choice of content, combined with the best technology in the best environment.

The Challenge

While Vue International is one of the biggest cinema chains outside the US, the UK search results didn’t really echo the same sentiment. Its competitors had made gains on the lead that Vue held previously through increased SEO work, particularly around location and latest movie terms.

Another of the key challenges from a search point of view was to make the same film information different and offer a better user experience for cinema goers, ultimately meaning that users (and therefore Google) choose Vue as the cinema of choice in their ‘go-to cinema’ moments.

Film synopses are usually stored and provided by a third party that distributes the exact same information (trailers, synopses etc.) to a number of cinema chains. In short, the challenge was to increase search visibility with very limited control over the format of film content.

The Strategy

The strategy put forward by Edit was to create unique copy for these listings, tying in with Google’s best practice guidelines. Listings would be uploaded a minimum of three months in advance to build SEO authority prior to film releases. The synopses would include search terms within copy to target long-tail keywords as well as short-tail. The team would also ensure content is as descriptive as possible to cater for different user intentions.

Another key concern was avoiding any duplicate content issues from Google’s Panda algorithm, so to counter this press releases and descriptions of films from studios were rewritten and reworked to make unique content. The length of listings would be extended to avoid thin content issues.

The Results

The work has delivered a 46 per cent increase in visibility for Vue alone, but Edit has also created an 8000-point visibility gap between Vue and its closest UK competitor.