Ski & Summer Morzine

Why we Like this Case Study

Like most things in life, it often matters less how cleverly you fight your battles in business than, far more importantly, which battles you choose to win.

We like this case study because it shows how we inevitably achieve more valuable and profitable outcomes for so many of our clients when we apply this astute business philosophy to our online marketing campaigns.

The Client

Ski Morzine is one of the UK’s most established providers of mid-range holidays to Morzine in the French Alps. For the last eighteen years, it has marketed a range of both catered and self-catered chalets in Morzine. Offering a wide array of stylish and traditional chalets which are all superbly positioned near Morzine’s ski lifts and summer activities, Ski Morzine has developed an excellent reputation in the travel industry for unparalleled customer service, expert destination knowledge, and tremendous value-for-money.

The Challenge

Ski Morzine approached LeadGeneratorsDigital to help promote its Morzine chalets online. They were looking for an online marketing strategy which would maximise their exposure in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and help boost sales and maximize profits (which, as we always tell our clients, is not always the same).

Identifying the Most Profitable Strategy

As is our usual procedure before commencing any SEO programme, we sat down with our client to determine and identify their core and most valuable business objectives.

We consider this initial conversation to be paramount.

After all, our many years of online marketing experience have taught us that when it comes to SEO (like all aspects of online marketing), success comes not from fighting battles cleverly (which we like to think we do already), but far more importantly, from choosing the right battles to fight.

In this case, because we have extensive experience of marketing the travel industry online, we were aware of the essential difference between catered chalets and self-catered chalets in terms of business revenues. Although there is a larger market for self-catered chalets, we have found that catered chalets represent better profit margins per sale.

Our strategy for Ski Morzine, therefore, was to eschew phrases such as ‘holidays in Morzine‘ and ‘self-catered Morzine‘ – despite the fact they might have excellent search volume – and focus solely on those phrases like ‘catered chalet Morzine‘.

As the profits per sale for the catered chalet phrases were much higher, this approach would give our client the best return on its marketing spend – and far higher total profits.

How we Got There

While there are many routes for market, based on the particular circumstances of this challenge, we decided to start our work by concentrating our efforts on an SEO campaign.

To this end we carried out Keyword Research around ‘Morzine catered chalet‘ phrases to find out what people were actually typing into Google.

Next, because the Ski Morzine website only had one page covering all types of chalets in Morzine, we decided to build a separate Landing Page specifically for ‘Catered Chalets Morzine’. We Key Phrase Enriched the copy for this page, using phrases with the best search and KEI metrics, such as ‘Morzine catered chalet‘.

Then, once the Landing Page was updated with our new and optimised content, we began our Precision Link Building campaign to generate one-way inbound links to this page and achieve high rankings in the SERPs.

The Results

Success!

This structured, marketing-led approach to incorporating both on-site and off-site optimisation was able to achieve excellent ranking improvements for Ski Morzine’s new Catered Chalets Landing Page within a very short period of time.

Initially, of course, this page was not ranked at all in Google’s Top 100, but, within a surprisingly short time, we succeeded to achieve Position 1 rankings for all of the important key phrases.

As a result of this focused SEO programme, we were able to vastly increase (at a good cost for a medium sized company) the exposure of Ski Morzine’s Catered Chalets Landing Page to those specifically searching for catered chalets in Google.

Ski Morzine consequently benefited from an impressive increase in sales and, what’s more, was able to augment its maximum profit per sale.

Standing the Test of Time

Getting great rankings is important.
But keeping great rankings is more important.

When it comes to SEO, achieving a high ranking in Google is important, but the sign of a robust and sustainable programme is being able to maintain this high position for a long time.

This is why we are so proud of the huge efforts we make and the policies we have put in place to ensure that all our clients’ rankings are safe and sustainable.

We are also proud of the fact that in the past 15 years, despite all the Google Updates (including the recent Penguin & Panda Updates that many businesses suffered from), our tried, tested and constantly evolving ethical SEO practises have kept all our clients safe, secure and at the top of Google.

In the case of our client Ski and Summer Morzine, not only did we achieve great ranking improvements initially, but we managed to maintain these excellent positions for many years in a row.

Looking for Top Google Rankings that are Safe & Sustainable?

We have an enviable track record when it comes to fighting (and winning!) our clients’ SEO battles for them. If you are looking for superb, safe and sustainable rankings for the most profitable key phrases in your industry sector, contact us today.