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Matt Nunney, Head of Search at digital media agency agenda21 and SEO Analyst Sam Frazer talk us through their work for Action For Children, which won the team the 'Marketing On A Shoestring' Revolution Award 2011
Q: Could you sketch out some of the background to the project – what was it that Action For Children wanted to achieve and what was agenda21’s role within that?
The brief we were set was to establish Action for Children as an authoritative childrens’ charity, and to raise awareness about the charity’s child-neglect campaign.
In September 2008 Action for Children rebranded and changed their name. Before the change, they were known as NCH, or National Children’s Home and although this was widely known in the non-profit sector, search engines were struggling to make this connection in practice.
As a registered charity, Action for Children is allowed a free paid-search account under the Google For Non-Profits scheme. Whilst this is very useful for charities, corporate altruism has its limits: no more than $10,000 worth of ads can be served per month, and no keyword bids higher than $1 are allowed.
However, the limitations of the grant account are precisely what make it an ideal research tool for natural search optimisation. Knowing where paid-search ads could not achieve a high rank on a bid of $1 immediately identifies where the greatest opportunities lie in the natural listings.
We therefore began an integrated search process, using the paid-search data as a guide to indicate how to optimise Action for Children’s website and portfolio of digital assets, the aim being to maximize their search offering in these areas.
Q: Could you talk us through some of the practical onsite work you did – how did you go about optimising the charity’s digital content?
As it happened there was a myriad of great content on the site around all the work they do in supporting children and young people, the events, jobs and research they have commissioned in a variety of formats, web pages, videos, pdfs, as well as a fantastic blog containing up to date commentary from members of the team.
Our job was simply to make the search engines aware of all this material though a number onsite technical changes and building authoritative backlinks.
Q: Did you encounter any particular problems?
As with most projects there were some technology stumbling blocks, but with many clients, it is not the technology that slows progress but a difficulty in understanding the need for organisational change. In this case, Action for Children understood that in order to gain visibility on search engines changes had to be made.
What was the outcome of the campaign?
We achieved first place positions for keywords around childrens charity as well as top 5 rankings around adoption, fostering and for the term child neglect.
Since February 2010 there has been a 65% increase in traffic form natural search and keywords found for increased by 234%. By removing the technical issues and working closely with Action for Children we were able to help to achieve these results quickly.
Q: What sorts of issues do brands and marketers need to think about when using Google AdWords, and what insight or advice would you have?
PPC is not complicated, but there are many considerations when beginning or running a campaign. To name a few: competitive activity, seasonal trends and the level of click volume to expect, the destination domain and its landing pages, account structure, copy - and, over-arching all of this, the preservation of quality score.
Everything has to come down to a bottom-line figure that is profitable for the client. The key to this campaign was recognizing the limitations of paid-search in the charity sector, and using them to directly benefit SEO.
Q: What other tips would you give to brands and marketers seeking to maximise SEO?
The key to a successful SEO campaign is having a strong client relationship. It is crucial to work closely with all the relevant parties; the technical team, this often includes developer agencies, the editorial team and the marketing team. Again it comes back to educating clients about why things need to be tweaked and changed. We often hold workshops and training sessions. For example showing the editorial teams how to optimise content for search engines and marketing team why it is important to consider anchor texts when press releases are issued to media outlets.
It is also essential to consider SEO as a part of the wider digital marketing strategy and not allow it to live in isolation. Have regular meetings with your PPC team to discuss keywords and landing pages and combine social media efforts with your off site activities.
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