[Case Study]: Mindstream Media Group Drives 14% Lift in Organic Traffic for The UPS Store

No matter how groundbreaking and spectacular a website is when it’s first launched, it’s inevitable that the site’s design, SEO and copy will eventually become outdated. When this happens, it usually means the roller coaster thrill ride of a redesign is in your future.

If you’ve been through a massive site redesign, you understand the highs of seeing your beautiful new design come to fruition, as well as the lows of watching your website traffic stumble as search engines re-index your site.

The UPS Store site redesign

This is the situation that The UPS Store franchise development team recently found themselves in. After launching a redesign of its website in 2017, the brand saw the site’s ranking in relevant Google search results fluctuate. Thanks to their well-established brand, the site didn’t experience substantial traffic losses, but organic search visits did drop from the previous year.

For high-volume websites, even a small decline in visits could represent a drop in thousands of leads. To reverse the trend and make sure prospective franchise owners could still find the site, we implemented a combination of SEO and Content Marketing efforts to:

• Increase earned and owned media sessions by 5 percent in 2018.
• Increase the site’s ranking in relevant search results to make it easier for prospective franchise owners to find the information they need.
• Produce engaging content to explain the value of franchising in general, as well as the value of franchising with The UPS Store.

How we amplified their SEO and Content Marketing strategy

Our holistic SEO strategy

Ranking well on Google demands an SEO strategy that optimizes all aspects of the website. For The UPS Store, we implemented a holistic SEO strategy focused on three main components.

1. Technical SEO
2. On-page SEO
3. Off-site SEO

Throughout 2018, we completed several major projects to improve these elements, including:

Link acquisition

Since Mindstream Media Group started a backlink campaign for The UPS Store, the link profile has steadily improved thanks to guest posting, manual outreach and other white-hat link building efforts.

On-page technical improvements

We updated the site’s internal linking structure, improved site speed, implemented title tags and meta descriptions backed by keyword research, added Schema Markup, updated much of the content and improved keyword rankings for several relevant high search volume keywords.

Accounting for algorithm updates

Google continuously updates its search algorithm to deliver the most relevant results. We monitored all the major updates for opportunities to optimize the site based on the latest SEO best practices. Here’s a look at some of the most significant Google updates in 2018.

Our Content Marketing strategy

Mindstream Media Group’s Content Marketing efforts included three main initiatives:

• Updating and expanding webpage copy to help visitors find the information they need to become franchise owners and improve the site’s ranking in search results.
• Creating blog posts to help prospects learn more about becoming a The UPS Store franchise owner.
• Publishing blog posts on the website and Outbrain’s content network to reach a wider audience of potential franchise owners.

Our Content Marketing efforts went hand-in-hand with our SEO work. We used the keyword strategy and technical SEO tactics outlined in our SEO program to guide both webpage and blog content. This approach allowed us to create content that:

• Was easy for search engine bots to read and index which helped improve the site’s rankings in search results.
• Was informative and entertaining for prospects to read, which helped nurture leads and encourage them to become franchise owners.

Related: How to Avoid 5 Devastating B2B Content Marketing Mistakes

The fruits of our labor

As we continued to implement our SEO and Content Marketing efforts throughout 2018, traffic to the website started to pick up.

Not only did the site’s traffic rebound from the redesign, but there were even more visitors than before.

In the fourth quarter of 2018, traffic to the site’s blog took off. We saw improvements in page views, time on site, entrances and bounce rate.

Thanks to our combined SEO and Content Marketing efforts, we exceeded our 2018 goal for SEO sessions by 8 percent.

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Need help driving more traffic and leads to your website? Contact Mindstream Media Group to find out how our SEO and Content Marketing solutions can amplify your brand’s website.