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Case Study: Devon & Cornwall Overseas Marketing

International and multilingual search marketing
www.cornwall-devon.com

Using international and multilingual search engine marketing to build the profile of Devon and Cornwall as top destinations for foreign visitors from Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands.

The target was to deliver 225,000 visitors to the website each year within the proposed Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA), and to drive brochure requests

Results

June 2005

20 visits from search engines

December 2005

10,104 visits from search engines

50,000% increase in visits from search engines.

Interestingly conversion rates for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) exceed Pay Per Click (PPC) search.

SEO 3.59%
PPC 1.14%

The Solution

We used a combination of search engine optimisation and PPC search engine advertising in English, French, German and Dutch.

Before the optimisation project began, there were only 11 pages from the website indexed in search engines such as Google. With the launch of the new website in July, Neutralize worked with the website developers to ensure that this database-driven content would be accessible to search engines.

Additionally, because the website used a complex mapping system for the core of its navigation, we needed to put in place rules for controlling which parts of the websites were indexed using the Robots Exclusion Protocol. This made sure that the potential millions of longitude/latitude combinations did not flood the search engine index.

As a result there are now over 1,000 desired pages indexed on each search engine for each of the country-specific domains, providing high quality information about Devon and Cornwall.

Pages Indexed

The PPC campaign was also a resounding success and, due to the NeuTraffic* website level tracking system, our highly qualified PPC search engine management team was able to identify the best converting keyphrases in each language, and to drive further increases in brochure requests.

Summary:

Modifying the Microsoft.Net-based Content Management System so that content was accessible to search engines
Internationalisation strategy, including domain planning and different language rule sets for Meta Data
Template optimisation
Robots Exclusion Protocol
Community linking
PPC search engine advertising in four languages across three countries
Website analytics

* Our website-level analytics system.

"We have been delighted with the results achieved by Neutralize which have significantly increased the profile of our site across four languages and increased traffic to levels exceeding expectation."

Kate Davis,
DACOM Co-ordinator

About DACOM

Cornwall and Devon, the DACOM initiative has been successful in securing European funding of £2 million, from the Objective One and Objective Two programmes, to promote Cornwall and Devon to key international markets.

About Neutralize

Neutralize are one of the UK’s leading full service search engine marketing agencies. Thanks to our varied toolset and long experience, the company’s strong and expanding client base achieves the best results from both algorithmic (natural) and Pay-Per-Click (paid) searches.

In 2006 we placed 6th in the Deloitte Fast 50 business growth awards and, in 2007, are finalists in the Imperatives Digital Awards for 'Best Search Campaign'.

We contribute significantly to our industry as Members of the Nominet Steering Committee and Committee Members of the Search Marketing Association (UK). Whatever your online objectives – increased sales, lead generation, improved content access or brand building – Neutralize (*\*) can help you.