Project overview
Customer brief
- To rank high for ‘mortgage broker in Portsmouth’ and surrounding areas in Hampshire
- To increase organic website traffic
- To generate more enquiries for a range of mortgage broker services
Targeted SEO Services
- New website
- Conversion rate optimisation
- On-page SEO
- Local SEO campaign
- Content marketing
- Off-page SEO
Where we started
YesCanDo Money is a family run mortgage broker based in Hampshire. When they came to us, they had a loyal client base, but were extremely keen to grow the business in their local area.
We always tell potential clients that the best time to embark on an SEO campaign was yesterday. The longer it’s neglected, the more competitive, time consuming and expensive it becomes.
Fortunately, YesCanDo Money had the foresight to invest in SEO, even though Covid was decimating the mortgage market. We were confident that if they invested in the site during lockdown, their authority would grow and they would come out of the pandemic in a much stronger position.
It’s fair to say that the results exceeded their – and even our – expectations!
What we delivered
We spent time getting to know YesCanDo’s business, objectives and long-term goals, before developing a fully integrated SEO campaign.
From Sept 2019 until Oct 2020, we worked closely with the in-house marketing team. YesCanDo’s Marketing Manager was experienced in web design and marketing, but needed the support of an experienced SEO specialist to improve the performance of the site, increase organic traffic, and ultimately, generate more leads.
New website and on page SEO
The first port of call was website design. It’s important to note the website already had some history with Google, so we were not starting from scratch on a new domain.
All of our websites are built fully-optimised. We worked on a new WordPress theme as the foundation, and introduced plugins such as Elementor Pro to help systemise templates and customise design.
We did our usual technical SEO magic to ensure that Google was able to crawl the site with ease. And we improved the overall user experience and conversion rate optimisation by including new contact forms and top level funnels.
Local SEO
Initially the company only wanted to increase visibility and local rankings within the Portsmouth area, so our main focus was local SEO. But as the campaign took hold, we soon started to see the opportunity to target a much wider area across Hampshire and, eventually, beyond. Today, YesCanDo have a nationwide clientbase.
Content strategy
When it came to clients in the YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) industry, our focus was always to create a high-quality content strategy. The pandemic had just hit, but fortunately, the business owners seized the moment and ‘doubled-down’ on content production under our direction.
We started to develop a blog jam-packed with useful information, based on our thorough keyword and competitor research.
Not only did the great blog content help establish YesCanDo’s authority in the industry, over time, Google rewarded it with higher rankings, sending more organic traffic their way.
Off page SEO
With content creation bubbling away in the background, our focus shifted to an off-page SEO strategy, including link building and citations.
Domain authority is so valuable to financial companies, so we invested part of the budget in a guest post strategy. This involved researching credible, relevant websites with high traffic, and pitching articles that linked back to the YesCanDo Money site.
While we’re on the subject of link building – it’s incredibly important to Targeted SEO that when building links, the sites are safe, as there are a fair few nefarious sites out there, (sometimes called ‘link farms’) that artificially inflate their domain rating for the sole purpose of selling links.
SEO Results
The Result
We were incredibly fortunate that YesCanDo Money had the foresight and patience to invest in SEO, especially in the context of the pandemic. By following our guidance, they achieved massive success and more than enough return on their investment.
“YesCanDo Money has used Targeted SEO for 5 months now. Not only have we seen a sharp increase in google positioning but more importantly we have seen an increase in enquiries and sales. Very highly recommended.”
Steve Roberts @ YesCanDo Money – Founder & Director
See how we helped a bridging loan broker become visible with SEO and website design in this case study.
