AVS Fencing, along with its sister site Sleeper Supplies, supplies landscaping materials, fencing and equipment to a varied customer base. Typical customers include commercial landscape gardeners, building contractors and local authorities, as well as consumers. The brand operates both online and through a number of branches throughout the south of the UK.
Previously, the organisation suffered from poor website visibility for its core range of products and wanted to dramatically increase its ecommerce revenue. In order to address this, in 2011 the business set itself the objectives of improving its natural search rankings and traffic using both branded and non-branded keywords.
Working with SiteVisibility, who had a proven track record of success in the ecommerce sector, AVS Fencing deployed a combination of on- and offsite SEO tactics in order to reach its target audience. Firstly, the website was optimised from a technical point of view so that when search engines looked through the site, they could easily identify keywords and terms the site wished to rank for. In addition, a keyword strategy was developed and meta-data for top-level pages and categories was created.
On- and offsite content creation was implemented as was content syndication and blogger outreach. The content created included:
Onsite content, in the form of resources and guides, was based on ideas of how the AVS materials can be used to create various elements of a landscaped garden. The objective was to inspire users to create their own projects, some examples of which were creating a pond out of railway sleepers, and how to lay the perfect decking.
Offsite content was created and syndicated to various landscaping websites, including industry associations, such as BALI. Key industry blogs, such as Landscape Juice Network were approached. Content was created based on the target audiences we identified, such as professional landscapers, DIY gardening enthusiasts, allotment owners as well as farmers among others.
Creative link building activity was undertaken, such as voucher code promotion and outreached with to various voucher sites, such as Money Supermarket. These vouchers used unique codes that were entered into the AVS system at the checkout process enabling the team to track the ROI.
In addition, SiteVisibility designed a pay-per-click strategy, which was then handed over to AVS Fencing’s in-house team. Email marketing supported the SEO campaign to help drive customers to the optimised site. Away from web-based activity, AVS Fencing also created in-store promotions.
In Q1 2012, the KPIs set for campaign-created revenue were met and exceeded by an average of 70 per cent. Furthermore, comparing Q1 of 2012 with Q1 of 2011, AVS Fencing saw 52.34 per cent increase in natural search traffic, 46 per cent increase of keywords sending traffic and 83 per cent increase in revenue from non-branded search traffic.
AVS Fencing’s marketing director, Mark Whiting, commented, “We have been working with SiteVisibility for three years now and are very pleased with the continuously improving SEO results it has achieved. Its insights and understanding of how ecommerce SEO works has enabled AVS Fencing to dramatically grow our online business.”
AVS Fencing’s E-Commerce manager, Marty Taylor, added, “Working with SiteVisibility to improve our SEO has been a real benefit to the business. Through our time working together on link building, discount code distribution, content creation and more, we have expanded our reach and the visibility of our website. The framework that SiteVisibility has laid out for our websites SEO has allowed us to bring our SEO in-house and drive our business forward.
