SEO Support to WOW the Flux Rotherham team
In line with our CSR objectives, we like to dedicate spare capacity to pro bono work with worthy local projects. As well as designing and building a site for the Bangers & Cash art trail this year, we also partnered with Flux Rotherham to provide 6 months of SEO support and training to help grow their organic reach.
We put together a roadmap focusing on a different area of SEO each month, and by the end of the campaign could reflect on a 37% uplift in organic visibility and a 137% YoY increase in organic sessions to the site. But more importantly than the results, we’ve provided valuable training to the Flux team and given them the confidence to carry this work forwards with every new post and event.
The Flux Mission
Flux Rotherham is part of the Creative People and Places programme, which aims to increase involvement in creativity, arts and culture for areas which fall behind the national average. Through local events, art projects, workshops and more, Flux gives communities regular opportunities to get involved and explore their own creative ambitions, heritage and identity.
The SEO Campaign
The Flux team had been doing a brilliant job of promoting events across social media and driving engagement with their followers, but felt there was a collective gap in knowledge when it came to SEO.
They connected with Evoluted to deliver bespoke SEO training, and after a discovery call we had a list of topics to cover in more detail through regular training calls and written guides. Alongside this we also made a number of optimisations to the main website and WOW Festival site, thankfully demonstrating that this stuff actually works!
Finding the organic opportunities
With our pro-bono work for Flux we only had limited time in a 6 month period to maximise results and increase their traffic levels. At the start of our campaign they had good visibility for the WOW Festival in Rotherham, which is a global, annual event celebrating women, girls, trans and non-binary communities. The site wasn’t really visible for much else despite having a good platform to work with.
From carrying out some keyword research and mapping these to the core pages, we knew that a considered approach would improve the site’s visibility for a broader range of searches.
An SEO strategy to deliver results
We’re used to working with clients on their SEO over long periods of time, where we can plan and implement bigger changes which will bear fruit further down the line. With our pro bono work for Flux we had limited time, and so we focused on the simple tasks which could still yield positive results within the 6 month campaign.
We started by uploading optimal metadata and H1s for their main pages, then went further and optimised the keyword targeting within the body content. This was supported by a thoughtful approach to internal linking to strengthen those key pillar pages.
On the technical side of SEO, we carried out a full site audit and worked with their development team to implement some fixes, including backend functionality to add event schema to posts.
Both sites were missing GA4 event tracking, and we helped Flux set this up so that they could get a better understanding of success across all channels.
The end result was a 37% uplift in organic visibility across our tracked keywords, and for Events in particular, their visibility went from zero to 9.5%.
The visibility gains carried over to their site traffic levels as well, with Organic Users increasing +85.8% and Organic Sessions +137% for the 6-month period vs previous year. This far outpaced the growth in other channels to become their largest channel, with Organic users also having the highest on-site engagement rates.
SEO support through tailored training sessions
Despite achieving some good results for the organic campaign, the bulk of our time was spent delivering training to upskill the Flux team on all things SEO (and even branching out into Digital PR and Social Media campaigns with support from our content marketing specialists).
Each SEO training topic started with a written guide, which we ran through in more detail on our training calls. In addition to these we had regular catch-ups to find out how things were going and answer any questions the team had.
Our discussions were led by Flux just as often as by us, and we were happy to be guided by whatever was most pressing and where they needed more guidance, which is when we brought in our wider marketing team to provide timely training on more than just SEO.
We covered topics like:
Keyword research
Google Analytics and Search Console
Technical site issues
Securing backlinks
Social media content calendars
The campaign wrapped up with some next steps to guide the team on how they could take their organic performance to the next level, with tasks which would require a bit more time to implement.
We loved working on this project and thankfully so did the Flux Rotherham team, who had some kind words to say:
Evoluted's SEO training workshops have been inspirational, empowering our organisation with valuable knowledge of both SEO theory and practical techniques. Evoluted's expert training has helped us to greatly increase visibility in search to better serve our local community. Coupled with follow-up QA of the work we’ve implemented, their guidance has given us a critical understanding of how to further expand our team’s SEO knowledge and skillsets to achieve even greater success.
Award-winning digital marketing support
As we mentioned at the outset, giving back to the local community is a core value here at Evoluted and we’re always looking for causes to support each year. If your non-profit would like to partner with our specialist team for consultancy and training, or if your business would benefit from a multi-channel digital marketing strategy, we’d love to hear from you!
SEO Executive Dan joined Evoluted in 2022 after making the switch from Web Development to Marketing.
That career path has meant he's provided a fresh perspective to our SEO team and is highly adept at more technical projects like GA4 migrations and analytics tracking.
