Boosting organic reach for Enhanced Site Health and User Engagement.

The project with the Health and Care Research Wales Evidence Centre’s site faced challenges with organic visibility after its launch in March 2023. A technical and on-page SEO audit uncovered several issues: from incorrect sitemap entries to overlong page titles and missing meta descriptions. The SEO team provided actionable solutions, impressing our partner, and setting the stage for enhanced organic search presence and ensuring future partnerships.

The challenge: The Need for an SEO Strategy

The Health and Care Research Wales Evidence Centre (The Evidence Centre as a shortened title) site went live in March 2023, embarking on a strategic five-year mission to bolster health and social care research. Strategically nested within the academic realms of Cardiff University’s School of Medicine, working with five collaborating partners from across Wales, the Evidence Centre is a beacon of scholarly research serving the Welsh NHS, Welsh Government and Welsh Social Care. Its research is pivotal in helping to inform future health and social care policy and practice

As a new site, they needed the expertise of our SEO know-how to make the site more visible online, especially in local searches. In other words, they needed guidance on SEO strategy. In fact, over half of their website traffic (54%) came directly from people typing in their web address or using bookmarks, while only 40% find them through social media or search engines.

The Evidence Centre recognised the necessity to enhance its organic online visibility, particularly in local search results, partnering with Golley Slater. This was not merely an ambition but a crucial step to go over the initial barriers that often challenge new sites on organic landscape.

Their goal for the campaign was clear: to establish a robust digital footprint that would not only disseminate their groundbreaking research but also foster organic engagement with the local and academic communities they aim to serve on the digital search world.

Solution: A Comprehensive SEO marketing strategy

In response to the Health and Care Research Wales Evidence Centre’s goal to bolster their site’s organic presence, we executed a thorough SEO marketing strategy, including technical and on-page SEO audit along with organic performance report. Here comes the science bit: the audit revealed several critical issues that needed addressing, from the sitemap XML including URLs not related to the site, lacking robots.txt file and canonical tags, to underperforming in Core Web Vitals and missing metadata such as page titles, meta descriptions and H1s all of them fundamental elements to rank properly on search result pages. On the other hand, the organic performance report revealed the areas where these immediate fixes could help to balance the web traffic coming from different marketing channels while proposing uncovered new objectives.

For each of these issues, we provided a comprehensive list of corrective steps. These steps require the technical expertise of web developers to implement, while significantly improving the site’s SEO performance.

Results: The Impact of our straightforward SEO Marketing Strategy

The client reviewed our findings and the suggested steps to fix these issues. They were pleased with the thoroughness of the audit and the clarity of our plan. The practicality and straightforwardness of our approach resonated with them, and they were convinced that these steps were the right way forward to improve their website’s search engine performance, resulting in a bright testimonial and potential future partnership.

Testimonial

“The Evidence Centre initially reached out to Golley Slater to support with digital advertising activities, aimed at improving our ranking in search engine results.

After discussing our goals for the campaign and the budget, the team at Golley Slater looked at our website and suggested it would be better to invest the resources in improving the SEO, as this would provide a longer-term solution.

The team rapidly conducted a full audit of the website and presented a detailed report identifying the necessary areas of work. Their expertise in this area was very impressive. Having regular contact with the SEO Manager for progress reports was beneficial as I was able to share this information with colleagues.

I will definitely look to work with Golley Slater again”.