Growing global tourism for VisitScotland

Challenge

VisitScotland face arduous competition in the search space. They compete with major booking aggregators, travel blogs and, in many cases, lifestyle websites offering inspirational content about the glorious places to visit and exceptional things to do in Scotland.

This challenge presents a number of questions. Where are our content gaps? What are the opportunities? What type of strategy will allow us to generate long-form content that is informative, well crafted to rank, and has the potential to drive digital PR coverage? VisitScotland knew we could answer these with our data-led approach to strategic recommendations. Here’s how we executed the brief.

Action

By conducting keyword research we gained an in-depth understanding of the user intent. VisitScotland were looking to identify opportunities. To do this, our Technical SEO team calculated the glass ceiling (maximum achievable rank) at keyword level. We used Search Console data to determine average Click Through Rate (CTR) for non-brand keywords and calculate current non-brand traffic based on rankings, search volumes and average CTR. We then combined this with analysis on historic traffic and visibility trends helping to show baseline non-brand traffic volumes for next year based on trends. This allowed us, not only to understand the potential, but also to craft a strategy that would ensure VisitScotland achieved optimal results.

Through our data analysis, we identified two distinct lists. 1. High priority landing pages that performed well but could be enhanced further. 2. Under performing pages that could be over hauled to transform their SEO value.

Before we re-launched any of these pages, we built our in-house developed Content Dashboard. The dashboard works by analysing the traffic to the existing page content and then measures the changes in performance of that content, over the whole customer journey. The model behind the dashboard has been created to analyse content performance at scale and allows us to identify probability of conversion if a user views a page – on this visit or in the future. Additionally it shows aggregated performance before and after content update. By monitoring our strategy this way, we ensured our optimisation continued to evolve, driven by evidence-based conversions.

We understood the Outlander Map had huge potential. Our team prepared a robust campaign that ensured an outstanding level of exposure. It included three thorough rounds of outreach, speaking to an array of partners from the hospitality industry to distilleries, tourist attractions and many more.

Change

• 426,034 additional potential visits from organic search
• 14 million global visits
• 185% increase in global organic traffic
• 214% increase in UK organic traffic
• 167% increase in global organic portal referrals
• 195% increase in UK portal referrals
• 230+ high-quality links

We'd love to hear about your marketing goals