Increase in search visibility using targeted optimization

We were approached back in September 2018 to support our legal client through a site migration and then once the website was live, increase their visibility, rankings and most importantly, leads through their website.

Through a carefully developed and targeted integrated search and content campaign we grew organic search traffic by 54.87% and increased their visibility by 196.99% in their chosen legal service area. This fed into a much stronger organic footprint and led to a number 1 ranking of one of their most competitive terms “leeds barristers chambers”.

Zelst were engaged following a referral from one of our design partners and as it was our first big project within the legal sector, we took the time to understand the business, its target customers and the company goals and objectives for the year ahead.

The first year was spent working alongside our design partner to facilitate a successful site migration and map out a new site hierarchy, with optimized landing pages to satisfy their users and Google.

Now that the design and functionality of the website was much better, it needed expert help to be seen and get found by the right customers.

Once we had the right foundations in place in terms of the successful site move, we then moved into more targeted optimization based on the client’s chosen service area. It’s quite common for barristers and solicitors to be flexible in terms of their core focus, based on the changing demand for specific legal services.

For example, in the earlier part of 2020, the legal area of Fraud was requested as our focus. We implemented an intensive strategy that included:

All these processes involved carrying out competitor research and emulating structures of pages that had captured relevant featured snippets.

By targeting search terms through developing existing page content and creating a series of new content, we have seen a huge increase in rankings.

Our client ranked on the first page of Google for 68 other fraud-related search terms, and the featured snippets soon followed.

Not only have we climbed up the ranks for fraud related terms, we have also seen consistent improvements to the more competitive terms which are typically more challenging to gain good visibility.

Before we were engaged by our client, we were being outranked for their core generic terms. However, over the last 12 months, we have seen our targeted optimization feed in to the growth of their local footprint too:

Moving into 2021, our client is now highly visible across their most valuable search terms, they are attracting much bigger and better quality leads and they had a successful year despite all the challenges faced in the current financial climate.