March 24, 2016

Balgores Property Group

The Challenge

In October 2014, FSE Online was tasked with improving the online presence of an established Essex-based property group. Over the course of an 18-month period, consultants have successfully enhanced the website’s exposure in search by implementing a resource-intensive integrated search plan, resulting in a marked increase in brand awareness, higher website traffic volumes, and significantly more high quality enquiries for the company.

Balgores Property Group approached FSE Online in October 2014 looking for a long-term search marketing agency partner. They tasked our SEO consultants with improving Balgores’ organic listings for predominately localised search terms, particularly focusing on the major towns in Essex, as they had seen limited success in the listings for these areas. Balgores also tasked FSE with amending their Pay Per Click account to improve targeting and reduce click spend, as advertising costs were excessive and the group was seeing little return.

The Strategy

The client operates in an industry where competition is fierce, so consultants were keen to dramatically generate exposure locally in order to raise the profile of the brand and, crucially, acquire more business. This involved optimizing the website itself for better performance, along with managing exposure in Google My Business for each of the branches. Pay Per Click advertising was to be used more aggressively while the organic optimization process was underway.

Execution

SEO

FSE Online carried out a full onsite review to assess and identify areas for improvement. This initial audit resulted in a number of important changes to the page content and meta data.

As well as working with quality, industry-relevant online business directories to help boost the site’s visibility and generate more direct leads, our consultants devised a comprehensive content marketing plan for Balgores. The strategy consists of publishing articles and press releases to authoritative websites.

Pay Per Click

The team at Balgores felt they were spending an unnecessary amount of money on Pay Per Click advertising with very little return on their investment. For this reason, FSE focused on reducing click spend by adjusting the campaign’s location settings to ensure the company was not targeting areas that they simply did not cover. When FSE first took to the reins of the campaign, ads were showing 24/7, which was resulted in a lot of click wastage; daily budgets were being exhausted by early evening and ads were not showing at key times. A lot of attention was focused on increasing the quality scores of keywords and text ads, which meant our consultants were able to bid less for keywords whilst still maintaining excellent search positions. We also developed a remarketing campaign, which has since helped to increase website traffic and generate new enquiries.

The Results

In an 18-month period, Balgores’ organic rankings have improved substantially. The company is occupying position 1 on page 1 for keywords such as:

  • Estate Agents Essex
  • Letting Agents Essex
  • Estate agents Brentwood
  • Estate agents in Brentwood
  • Brentwood estate agents
  • Letting agents Brentwood
  • Rental agents Brentwood
  • Property management Romford
  • Estate agents in Basildon
  • Letting agents Basildon.

Balgores has also consistently ranked within the top three organic positions for other competitive, localised keywords, including ‘Chelmsford estate agents’ and ‘Rental agents Chelmsford’.

Referrals from organic search alone have increased by over 46 per cent, and overall sessions are up by over 100 per cent.

As a result of the changes and improvements made to their AdWords account, overall ad spend has been reduced by 23 per cent. More importantly, however, AdWords traffic has increased by 10 per cent and conversions by 18 per cent.