Objectives
L&C Mortgages is the largest mortgage broker in the UK with offices in Bath, London and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. They are the proud winner of the 2023 What Mortgage award for Best Mortgage Broker.
Equimedia, a VWO trusted agency, was appointed as L&C’s Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) partner in March 2023. Whilst SEO and CRO are different digital marketing disciplines, they are essential to each other’s success. Both strive to create a web user experience that is the best match to the searcher’s intent. By creating a user experience that is helpful to the user and converts well, Google’s ranking requirements are also satisfied.
We regard Google as a ‘recommendation service’ that ranks great user experiences highly. L&C already had a strong web presence and highly competent internal team. We were able to effectively support L&C by adopting a flexible, consultative approach to projects to ensure work to implement SEO improvements and CRO experiments fitted in with the internal team’s existing plans.
- Increase rankings for search queries that drive high value transactional conversions via web and phone
- Implement SEO and CRO as a combined discipline
- Provide recommendations that are actionable within the constraints of the current CMS
- Work as an extension of the in-house marketing team
Our Approach
Analytics:
Our first priority was to ensure we had all the data we needed to conduct user journey analysis effectively. Our analytics team created a common measurement framework for the site and migrated into GA4 360.
SEO:
We then worked closely with the L&C team to develop a data driven SEO/CRO strategy that focused on improving the quality of the content provided on site and the user experience with particular focus on the pillar pages that already ranked in Google.
The strategy was developed to address Google’s Search Quality Rater’s guidelines, which highlights the need for “very high-quality main content”. We further prioritised this work to maximise click through rates and conversions with insights from the PPC campaigns data.
We worked with the L&C team to refresh and repurpose existing blog content to strengthen the core rankings pages and enable users to find answers quickly without needing to navigate the site.
Minor technical SEO improvements were also implemented to minimise cannibalisation and highlight the quality of the site.
CRO:
To improve site conversion, we performed quarterly user journey analysis and used the insights from 30,000 user touchpoints recorded in GA360 to devise data driven landing page test experiments. With the sunsetting of Google Optimize, we set up VWO and worked closely with the CRO team in L&C to implement testing across important pages in the user journey.
Results
Despite a 7% market driven drop in impressions year-on-year for generic Organic searches, L&C experienced a 26% growth in transactional Organic clicks.
This increase was driven by 11 out of the top 18 search term rankings improving by between 2 and 8 places and SERP rankings for 5 of the top search terms moving to page 1.
These changes resulted in an impressive 45% improvement in Organic click through rate.
- 26% increase in transactional organic clicks
- 5 out of the top search terms moved to page 1
- 45% increase in organic click through rate
Annette Read, Marketing Director, L&C Mortgages says:
“Equimedia has become an extension to the Marketing team here at L&C. Their like-minded approach and their flexible ways of working are the perfect fit for us. As an Agency they appreciate the commercial priorities of L&C and have developed a strategy that is delivering tangible results. They are also a great bunch of people to work with!”
26% increase in transactional organic clicks
5 top search terms moved to page 1 rankings
45% increase in organic search click through rate
Interested in seeing what we can do for you? Get in touch and let us know about your requirements today.
