How a simple SEO campaign took Trout Tales from position 30+ to position 3

At Wakeford Digital, we’ve recently taken a strong interest in search engine optimisation or SEO.

In particular, we have been discovering how simple and affordable SEO campaigns can make impactful differences for businesses and organisations in Tasmania.

What’s driven our interest is the lack of middle ground between the expensive premium SEO services versus the client DIY experience that is long and not always successful.

In Tasmania, competitiveness of local keywords and searches isn’t as high as mainland Australia or globally – which also means we can achieve really great outcomes without high budgets, long time frames or a super intensive process.

One of our first attempts at dipping the toe into the world of SEO was for Tasmanian-based trout fly fishing tour business Trout Tales.

Trout Tales owner Matt reached out to Wakeford Digital as his existing website wasn’t optimised for mobile and tablet responsiveness, and was overdue for a content tidy up and an update to the visuals.

Following a thorough review, we identified that the previous website had strong cues to the business branding — which was a strength, however it lacked a logical structure and clear content.

Utilising no-code website builder Webflow, we re-developed the Trout Tales Tasmania website with a strong emphasis on creating a consistent design that featured strong call-to-action elements, for example, ‘book now’.

From the initial design, we developed an SEO strategy that focused on two primary goals:

1. Improve our keyword rank to a top ten position for ‘trout fishing tasmania’ (this keyword had the largest volume at the time); and
2. Improve the average search position of the website.

Our SEO process was as follows:

1. Conduct a comprehensive review of the existing website and its content;
2. Undertake keyword research and competitor analysis;
3. Implement primary and secondary keywords through out website content;
4. Develop a specific page targeting the primary keyword/s; and
5. Create a ‘call to action’ banner at the bottom of each main website page that encouraged booking submissions.

We started off at position 31 for the ‘trout fishing tasmania’ keyword, with the top search results at the time being larger and much broader websites — which meant that ranking highly for this was going to be a challenge.

Given the old website didn’t have a lot of positive SEO juice, we didn’t want to jump straight in with a brute force approach to target the primary keyword, so we implemented a different strategy that we often refer to as the ‘round about approach’.

What is the ‘round about approach’ to SEO?

The ‘round about approach’ identifies and targets smaller volume and competition keywords and search phrases first.

This gives websites a strong foundation to build on — to let search engines know we mean business and want to be an authority in the area.

Our strategy targeted keywords within the broader scope of fly fishing in Tasmania, such as;

• the trout season in Tasmania
• fishing spots near key areas in Tasmania
• relevant fishing gear
• different types of fly fishing suited to Tasmania
• types of fishing tips and insights

These themes and areas were identified through our primary website user analysis and keyword research stages.

Working alongside Matt, the expert on these topics, we developed a strategy to target these themes and corresponding keywords through deliverables.

Our macro SEO actions were:

• updating the existing short blog post on the trout season in Tasmania to be more comprehensive and broken down into key seasonal areas;
• developing ‘location guides’ for best fishing areas and tips for Hobart, Launceston and the Central Highlands;
• blog posts that detail different types of trout fly fishing insights and styles from Matt;
• sharing partnerships with local and broader fly fishing supplies and stores, such as Trout Tales’ partnership with Hurleys;
• identifying which pages were already ranking well for SEO (such as the trout fly fishing near Hobart page), and optimising these so that they were more comprehensive than competitors;

Our micro SEO actions included;

• updating and adding internal links on existing posts;
• curating new posts to ensure internal and external links were maximised;
• updating meta title and description information to target our identified keywords;
• ensuring the website speed was as lean as possible through compressing images, reducing file sizes, adding alt-text to images and removing excess stylings and interactions;
• analysing the website through AHREF’s site audit checker and Google’s Page Speed Insights.

Our SEO Outcome:

We’re really pleased with the initial efforts from our SEO campaign.

From the four month campaign up to the end of December 2021, the Trout Tales website had;

• 567 organic keywords (initially 153)
• 1.8K backlinks (initially 25)
• 619 organic traffic (initially 36)

Source: AHREF’s Dashboard

In September 2021, the website averaged around 4 clicks (per day) and 150 impressions (people seeing the link) from search performance (Source: Google Search Console). By 1 January 2022, this had increased to around 20 clicks and trending upwards of 1,000 impressions.

Regarding our goal of achieving a top ten position with our primary keyword ‘trout fishing tasmania’ — as at 1 January 2022 we’re currently sitting at position number 3 (source: AHREF’s Rank Tracker). We are also seeing large jumps in our secondary terms such as ‘trout season tasmania’ (was 20, now 5), ‘fly fishing hobart’ (was 4, now 1) and even ‘fly fishing tasmania’ (was 42, now 14).

While the impacts of COVID-19 and ongoing border closures have created challenges with gauging interest from interstate and overseas visitors  —  a key demographic for Matt’s trout fishing tours  —  we feel the website now has a great foundation to extend upon.

That being said, Matt reports that inquiries through the website’s ‘Book Now’ form have increased since starting out SEO campaign — a testament to the website setup and easy to find information.

What’s next?

We’re the first to admit that we’re still honing our skills when it comes to SEO.

Our next focus for the Trout Tales website is analysing and refining the specific Tasmanian trout fishing packages page to better serve visitors and guide them through to the booking process.

We’ve also spent some time recently better defining our SEO processes (shout out to Pait Academy for the excellent course) and creating pages/posts based on keyword research and competitor analysis — so watch this space for some more content.

Furthermore, we’re looking to expand on our own search engine optimisation services in the near future, with a focus on  cost-effective campaigns for small businesses and organisations in Hobart and Tasmania.

If you’ve enjoyed what you’re reading or are looking to improve your own website, head over to our own website design enquiry and quote form to get in touch.

Thanks for reading — Dom.