Case study: how SEO works

Not convinced yet how SEO could boost your site's performance on Google? Take a look at the table below.

These figures show how one tour operator's website rose dramatically in Google's rankings over a period of a few weeks. Exeter International is a small company specialising in upmarket tours of Russia and Eastern Europe. When I took it on as a client, it had barely any presence on Google. Its highest ranking was at 28th spot for the phrase St Petersburg White Nights.

Our first task was to identify the keyword phrases that would be most profitable for the client. You can see some of these above - Mariinsky Ballet Festival, private tour Moscow, private tour Russia, etc.

I then rewrote the main pages of the site, optimising them for these phrases. At the same time, I oversaw a simple redesign of the pages, and a review of the information architecture (how the pages link to each other).

Within a few weeks, the effect on the site's rankings at Google.co.uk was remarkable - as you can see from the table above. For many of our chosen phrases, the site was at no1. For "St Petersburg White Nights" it was no2.

What's more, the site was more user-friendly and better written. So when visitors landed on the website, they were more likely to hang around, and convert to customers.

This is what the homepage looked like before the SEO campaign, and how it looks now (click on the images to see full-size versions):

You'll notice that we did not need to embark on an expensive redesign. We cleaned up the look of the homepage, scaled back the images and provided links from the homepage to other pages on the site.

More importantly, the rewritten copy is simple and elegant, clearly stating what the company does, and what the user can expect to find on the website.

The whole project took about a month, with daily communication between me and the client. I was there to advise and support at every stage. The total cost? Less than £3,000.