Case Study
Increase in online visibility & organic traffic boys’ prep school in Oxfordshire
+ 35 80 53 421 %
Increase in Increase in organic visits Increase in referring domains Increase in keywords on 1st page Increase in keyword share of voice
Project briefing
About the client
Moulsford is an independent Prep School for boys aged 4-13 years, set on the picturesque grounds on the banks of the River Thames surrounded by the rolling hills of South Oxfordshire. The school aims to prepare boys for the next step in their education by creating a culture of achievement within a vibrant and quality learning environment and ensuring positive reinforcement at all levels of ability.
The school’s mission is for their pupils to stand on their own as lifelong learners, growing in confidence and independence and where good habits become second nature. Moulsford aspires to provide a holistic approach, wherein the spiritual, moral, social and cultural values are embedded in every aspect of school life.
The challenge
Moulsford.com required a comprehensive SEO solution as the site was not built with search marketing practices in mind, nor had it encountered any previous SEO work in its history.
Bubblegum Search has worked and continues to work with local schools and educational establishments, providing SEO services for schools, therefore we had a rough idea of the bespoke approach we needed to deploy for Moulsford School. Yet we were certain there would be unique hurdles to surmount along the way.
Project goal
As briefly mentioned above, Moulsford Prep School has defined its mission to prepare their pupils for life, while instilling fundamental values and providing a happy school atmosphere. The school is located in Wallingford, Oxford where they have to compete with a number of other preparatory schools for admissions.
Moulsford Boys’ Prep School strives for perfection in every aspect of its education and it’s fair to say the same applies to its brand image. Their admissions and marketing teams have done a fabulous job to establish the school as one of the exemplary educational institutions over several decades – since 1961 to be more specific! Their facilities are top notch and they have a strong reputation for sport.
The only missing piece to the Moulsford puzzle was their digital presence. Hence Sarah Beardmore-Gray who came knocking on the doors of Bubblegum Search, our London-based SEO agency. She had the vision of improving the organic metrics for the prep school’s website to enhance their digital profile, achieve better conversion rates and eventually strike a higher admissions rate as an ultimate goal.
Minimal SEO work done in the past
No prior keyword list or targeting
No history of tracking organic metrics
Non-SEO-friendly CMS in place
Tech audit uncovered numerous critical errors
Local strategy to be devised from scratch
Relentless local and national competition
All critical metadata to be completely rewritten
No existing competitive analysis
No existing competitive analysis
No prior SEO outreach - poor backlink profile
No landing pages to target local keywords
Internal linking structure missing
Untouched Google My Business profile
A blog serving merely as a newsletter
The Solution
Complex on & off-site Search Engine Optimisation
Roadmap created as the initial phase of SEO processes
Comprehensive keyword research and mapping completed
Brand new keyword strategy to fulfil needs of core pages
Fresh metadata created to deploy keyword strategy
Competitor analysis was conducted to bridge the gap
Extensive blog improvements for existing content
On-page keyword analysis to bulk up and improve existing content
A sitewide internal linking audit conducted
Schema markup optimisations made
FAQ research to answer popular questions within key pages
FAQ research to answer popular questions within key pages
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Historic technical errors rectified as a priority
404 pages
Orphan pages
Thin content issues
Sitemap errors
Indexation problems
Site speed improvement
The optimisation results
Massive uplift in organic traffic, leads, & brand awareness
421% increase in keyword share of voice
Summary
Growth across the board – keyword share of voice, organic traffic, keyword rankings, and backlink profile are all on the rise!
Bubblegum Search teamed up with Moulsford Prep School in January 2021. An all-inclusive technical audit was our very first action as their SEO agency to detect critical errors in the domain.
We then immediately start putting the necessary fixes in place such as purging 404 pages and optimising the sitemap to improve our overall signal quality. Once this cleared up, we were able to proceed with on-page SEO implementations.
The second step was assembling a keyword list and mapping these targeted keywords to relevant pages, which uncovered a set of new issues due to the precarious construction of core pages. We advised the client on the restructuring of the website that includes enhancement of navigation, the addition of new pages and mobile-first optimisations. The site was very raw, to say the least, thus these rudimentary but essential practices could not be disregarded.
Another key finding was the lack of local initiatives over the years. Moulsford School is a local business with ample opportunities in its immediate surroundings. Despite the opportunity, Moulsford’s Google My Business profile was incomplete, neighbouring businesses were never reached out to, the keyword list had no instances of location keywords and no landing pages were considered. We, therefore, upgraded the local strategy as one of our top priorities.
A critical stage of our comprehensive SEO campaign was to assess competitors, in order to gain much-needed ground on them. A number of competing schools had built themselves stronger digital presences in spite of Moulsford’s superior qualities. Here we invoked several preferred practices of ours to bridge the competitor gap. The list of analyses comprises backlink profiles, content gaps, and mobile and generic on-page content.
Upon the implementation of Bubblegum’s SEO practices, the domain witnessed gradual but consistent improvement in its organic channels. As primary and secondary keywords made strides towards the first and second pages, organic visit numbers adopted a positive trend. Backlink profile benefited greatly from the outreach campaigns to earn high quality relevant backlinks.
Greatest progress was witnessed in keyword share of voice which yielded a 421% growth rate in 6 months! We’re proud to report tens of focus keywords with poor ranking history proceeded to rank in the first page. Amongst these, primary keywords such as “boys private school”, “boys prep school”, “independent boys school” and “boys school oxfordshire” succeeded in grabbing the top spot in Google rankings.