Case Studies
Waverley Forklifts.
‘Rise up’ the ranks and reach your authority! How Waverley Forklifts lifted more than just their profile!
Waverley Forklifts has been a leading independent forklift company for forty years specialising in forklift hire and rental, forklift sales and service, training, and machinery transport.
THE NEED
When working on the Waverley Forklifts website, we identified some shortcomings focused on the keyword profile, and the search intent behind the terms bringing the majority of the traffic to the site. Waverley Forklifts was previously heavily reliant on branded terms alongside long-tail keywords. It was clear that they were seen as a great source of information in the Forklift Industry, however, they were not a competitive provider of Forklift Services. Fixing this was our main objective going into the latest year of work, with a focus on building out clear content templates around service pages – utilising the great authority the website has built up with informative content. One of the other main goals outlined by the client at the start of the SEO campaign, was an increase in visibility throughout other capital cities around Australia, (outside of the Melbourne base).
THE PLAN
Our objectives going in to lift Waverley Forklifts up the SERPs:
- Increase organic traffic users 800-1000 comparatively YoY.
- Grow keyword base by 200 keywords YoY.
- Improve average leads acquired through the website by 25 comparatively YoY.
- Improve SERP rankings from industry-specific keywords and location-based offerings – For example: ‘Forklift Rental Sydney’, ‘Forklift Rental Melbourne’, etc.
- Increase ‘top 3’ page keywords by 14-30 comparatively YoY.
- Increase non-branded organic traffic by 40% in 12 months.
- Plus the execution of the following:
- – Optimising the sitemap.xml
- – Increasing site speed and mobile usability.
- – Cleaning up technical issues on the website.
- – Improving keyword diversity.
- – Fixing the service page structure and descriptions.
- – Improving blog briefs and quality content on pages.
- – Increasing link acquisition.
- – Some client SEO education.
- – Be seen as an authority in the forklift industry by Google
THE EXECUTION
The challenge was set. We wanted to position Waverley Forklifts as a premium service provider and a source of high-quality information in the Forklift Industry. From updating all the main service pages with new content and overall structure, to increasing informative content on the site through blogs that would simultaneously release with service page updates, there was a fair amount to do. We also planned to push backlinks toward service pages, targeting relevant keyword anchor texts.
Action time! We created page briefs targeting service-based keywords with a templated structure and educated our client on the importance of having a clear plan of attack when updating pages on their site. For every service page that needed work, we created an equally high-quality blog brief that would tap into the same search intent. This saw an instant uptick in service keyword rankings.
Previously Waverley Forklifts was seen as an authoritative figure in the Melbourne construction industry as a main provider of high-quality forklifts. As the company expanded its physical stores across Australia, the website had to follow suit. It was time to create location pages! StudioHawk created location page templates to assist with this task, providing localised keyword research ensuring that each location was using relevant terminology and targeting relevant products for that area.
A Fork in the Road
In October of 2021, we saw a decrease in traffic moving through the main service pages. Initially, this did not raise alarms as the Christmas season often sees a decrease in Forklift rentals. However, the dip in traffic reached over 100%, raising alarms at StudioHawk. We could feel some heavy liftin’ coming.
After investigating, it was clear that a significant portion of the main landing pages on the site had been de-indexed. We attacked the problem head-on and in forward gear. First, we addressed a large number of URLs missing ‘trailing slashes’, causing inconsistent canonicalisation on the site. This mainly affected the service pages with the majority of authority being passed through to old and outdated versions of each service page. Further ‘pick-ups’ on possible causes for the mass deindexing on the site showed we would need to work alongside the web development team to fix a number of technical issues:
- Duplicate Sitemaps.
- Yoast SEO changes being overridden by the back-end HTML.
- Multiple page editors installed into the current theme.
Once all these technical issues were addressed, it was time to push the services pages through Google Search Console for indexing once again. Huzzah! The service pages were indexing once more, with a clear and instant uptick in traffic and keyword rankings for relevant pages.
THE RESULTS
- 555% increase in organic traffic to the forklift hire service pages!
- 204% increase in overall organic keywords!
- 414% increase in organic keywords in the top three positions!
- Increase in non-branded keywords: 383%
CONCLUSIONS
Establishing your authority in your market is one thing – executing it is another! Having that authority spread from your localised area is also a nice touch. A healthy website with smart content and associated structure can set you ‘up’ for SEO wins!