Zest Digital

Hanson UK is a leading supplier of heavy building materials for the construction industry and wanted to increase its visibility to the SME market using local SEO.

Zest Digital‘s combined work has resulted in significant keyword rankings and traffic increases whilst more than doubling goal conversions in six months.

Objectives
Hanson UK was looking for an SEO agency partner to increase their digital presence within the product-specific area of concrete supply, with a view to improving awareness of two-specific streams of business. This had to have a national presence but with a local focus, since customers would be looking for local suppliers to minimize distribution costs.

Strategy
Zest Digital’s strategy was simple. Zest Digital found that Hanson UK was performing well for brand terms, but lacked visibility for longer-tail keywords that provide a lot of opportunity for exposure to their target market. In addition, there were little to no rankings for their target product.

Zest Digital set out to increase enquiries and demand for ready-mixed concrete from cash sales by increasing awareness and driving traffic to the relevant sections of the website. Secondly, they wanted to grow awareness of their focus product by targeting niche keywords and channels to gain impressions and clicks.

Action
Zest Digital’s Traffic Acquisition team is set to work focusing on core SEO tactics to achieve the client’s objectives. This included link reclamation to boost the number of linking root domains, and a local link building strategy that would form part of a longer-term play due to the scale of the work required. Lastly, they wanted to tidy up and improve the internal linking structure to create more flow to those pages indexed deeper within the website.

Their team identified keywords at the local level for each depot before adding this to a wider content strategy aiming to build relevance and dominance for each locality. As for rankings and search visibility performance, the results are impressive:

Zest Digital then set to work in partnership with Hanson UK’s internal team pooling together their resources for maximum results.

In addition to this, technical SEO work was carried out to give Hanson UK the best possible opportunity of receiving the desired rankings and visibility.

Results
Their partnership with Hanson UK has yielded some incredible results, including a #1 ranking for a major keyword with over 12,000 monthly searches, driving significant traffic to key landing pages. An example of traffic growth for one landing page can be seen below:

In addition, Zest Digital ran a series of test vs control experiments across key locations to validate improvements achieved. The test pages saw a 107% increase in conversion rate vs a 41% increase across the control pages. Both conversion rate values increased as part of the improvements they made to their goal tracking in Google Analytics, giving Hanson UK much more clarity over their data and marketing effectiveness.

Email clicks for quotations have increased by 83% across test pages vs just 13% across the control group. Furthermore, Zest Digital saw a 171% increase in high intent goal completions (sales enquiries) across test pages, and location pages have seen a massive 43% more traffic, representing thousands of new sales opportunities.

Steve Morten, Marketing Manager for Hanson UK said:

Since working with Zest to increase traffic to our website and improve our conversion rate, we’ve seen strong progress towards our goals. Their team are proactive, skilled, and have our commercial interests at heart. This has been reflected in their work.

Zest Digital increased online revenue of Fire & Security Store which is a leading eCommerce site for all things fire and security.

Objective
Fire & Security Store is a leading eCommerce site for all things fire and security, including extinguishers, alarms, CCTV, and signage. Stocking over 900 products from all major brands and manufacturers, Fire & Security Store is the only supplier selling to both established fire and security companies and the general public.

To build upon their stellar reputation in the industry (96% positive feedback on Trustpilot), Fire & Security Store wanted to continue to grow their online presence and revenue from their website. Having been referred to them by another client, they partnered with Zest to increase their leads through digital channels.

This meant their objective was two-fold: Audit and restructure the existing Google Ads account, and increase the account’s profitability by reducing the average cost per conversion by at least 35%.

Strategy
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to improving PPC account performance. It requires precise testing and ongoing optimization to see results.

Their experts conducted a thorough audit of the account, closely analyzing the campaigns, ad groups, keywords, targeting, bid strategies, and more. Their analysis quickly determined that the account would benefit from being restructured entirely. This would be more effective than manually implementing each of the changes individually, and Zest Digital was confident that the new structure would deliver impressive results.

Once Zest Digital had restructured the account, their strategy was to closely monitor and optimize the account based on the data collected to improve performance and profitability.

Action
The existing structure had many campaigns attracting unwanted clicks from searchers with the wrong intent, leading to low-quality leads and wasted ad spend. To improve cost per conversion, Zest Digital knew they had to minimize this.

To achieve this, Zest Digital focused on including more “negative” keywords in their campaigns. These are keywords that prevent an ad from being triggered by a specific word or phrase. By adding negative keywords to the campaign, they can prevent ads from triggering for broad, irrelevant, and low-quality searches such as “free” or “eBay”. This is a regular exercise within their ongoing optimizations to tighten targeting and eliminate wasted spending.

Another critical aspect of the account optimization was Google Shopping Ads. These ads typically appear within search results above text-based ads and provide the user with a product image and name, price, and shop name.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg where Shopping Ads are concerned. Unlike ordinary search and display ads, Google Shopping lets you include additional product details, including reviews and real-time sales information (see the “PRICE DROP” example below).

The existing account had few Shopping Ads, and many had been disapproved for not matching Google’s criteria. By resolving these issues, Zest Digital took the heavy-lifting out of comparison shopping for the searchers and meant they could position Fire & Security Store’s products as the affordable option.

As Zest Digital continued to fine-tune its approach, it also began to implement test-based campaigns. Using Dynamic Search Ads (which auto-fills ads with relevant ad copy and triggers an ad when Google identifies a potential opportunity), they could learn more about the types of searches users were making. This helped them ensure they weren’t missing any gems in their targeted campaigns.

Results
Once Zest Digital had the account in a strong position, they suggested that the client increase their monthly ad budget, as Zest Digital was confident the investment would deliver profitable results.

Spoiler alert: it did.

Following the restructure in January 2021 and within the first three months of launching their campaign, Zest Digital achieved a 55% reduction in the account’s average cost per conversion and Fire & Security Store enjoyed an increase of 360% in revenue from Google ads compared to the previous period.

Ed Stallard, Managing Director for Fire & Security Store said:

From the get-go, we’ve enjoyed our partnership with Zest and have been very impressed with the influx of leads they’ve generated. The team at Zest understands our needs and goals as a business and have tailored specific strategies to support our growth.

Polythene UK is a leading supplier of polythene products to some of the UK’s best-known brands. The multi-award-winning firm is changing the perception of its industry by driving investment into greener packaging solutions.

As Polythene UK’s preferred agency partner, together Zest Digital has transformed its digital presence over the years turning them into an online market leader. Through SEO and PPC campaigns, Zest Digital is proud to be Polythene UK’s most effective sales channel based on revenues generated.

Objectives
To maximize visibility across search and to generate a 5-10x return on investment from online channels.

Strategy
A structured search marketing campaign to create long-term repeatable value through SEO, blended with short-term viability tests using paid channels.

Action
Through two iterations of the website, Zest Digital has continued to improve conversion rate % to lead using data to inform their actions. Following their proven method of setting out clear objective-based tests, and following them through to prove or disprove a theory, Polythene UK has benefited significantly from their marginal gains approach.

Results
Zest Digital has generated its client £m’s in gross profit and has established them as a market leader in the online search space whilst providing a constant supply of qualified opportunities. Polythene UK has continued to grow its business whilst saving on additional overhead and allowing the company to train its already highly effective team.

James Woollard, Managing Director, Polythene UK said:

I cannot recommend the team at Zest highly enough. Our visibility on Google and elsewhere brings us new business every single day. These are opportunities that would quite simply never have found us if it wasn’t for their exceptional ability to deliver results year-on-year.

The Good Web Guide came to Zest Digital to fix their website from technical issues which caused significant harm to keyword rankings and, by extension, their organic web traffic.

Objectives
The Good Web Guide celebrates the best of the internet, lovingly curating the sites, apps, and people worth following. Unfortunately, their own website began to suffer due to technical issues, which caused significant harm to keyword rankings and, by extension, their organic web traffic.

When Zest Digital first started working together in September 2018, they had to get to the root of the problem fast. An in-depth analysis of the website revealed an SEO technical health score of 43% (meaning 57% of the site’s 10,000+ pages were experiencing critical issues), and so Zest Digital had their objective: fix the errors, restore SEO health, and drive quality traffic back to the site.

Strategy
Search engine algorithms are complex and ever-changing, but many things continue to hold true. Namely, the fact that search engines favour (and reward) sites that are technically sound and provide a high-quality user experience. These sites tend to rank high.

On the flip-side, a website with broken links, broken pages (404 errors), slow load times, duplicate content, and more, will often be punished with lower search rankings.

And with a technical SEO health score of 43%, this meant the Good Web Guide was being dragged down by over half of its own pages.

Zest Digital’s strategy, therefore, was two-pronged. First, Zest Digital had identify and fix the issues highlighted by their technical audit, and second, they had undertake a full-scale content audit to ensure only the highest quality content was being published going forward.

Action
If the Good Web Guide was a ship, then it was taking on water. Its rankings were sinking while its traffic (ironically) was drying up. So, Zest Digital set about patching up the biggest holes first, prioritising the errors and issues with the most significant impact on SEO performance.

This included lots of 404 errors, internal and external broken links, missing H1 tags, duplicate and/or missing meta, unoptimised imagery, redirect loops, and pages with low word counts. Once Zest Digital had the site back on an even keel, they provided the brilliant content writers at the Good Web Guide with some core SEO training to help them boost future organic performance.

And speaking of content, Zest Digital followed up their crucial technical fixes with a detailed content audit, reviewing traffic, engagement, and rankings of the key pages across the site. This left them with a few important decisions. Do Zest Digital keep, repurpose, or delete certain pieces of content?

In a ruthless pursuit of perfection, Zest Digital removed over half the site’s content, replacing it with rich, heavily-researched, long-tail, keyword-focused content. Or, in other words, they chose quality over quantity — and the results were phenomenal.

Results
Following their optimisations, Zest Digital saw the site’s technical SEO health score grow from 43% to 86%. For such a large content-heavy site, this progress is nothing short of remarkable.

Meanwhile, they are seeing year-on-year increases in organic traffic growth every month. A standout statistic is a whopping 214% increase in organic traffic, even accounting for the pandemic-related dip in demand around May and June 2020. That’s double the organic traffic, after having reduced the number of published pages and posts by over 50%.

Arabella Dymoke, owner of The Good Web Guide said:

It’s fair to say that our traffic has skyrocketed since working with Zest! They took the time to understand our business, identify the issues, and deliver a tailor-made solution aligned with our goals. They’ve also given us the confidence and know-how to create content that will boost our search rankings and grow our business. I wouldn’t hesitate recommending Zest to other businesses looking to improve the technical side of their websites, SEO and content. My one regret is that we should have started working with them years ago.

Zest Digital creates a growth engine for Dove Steel Doors that delivers a 4,715% return on advertising spend (ROAS).

Objectives
As a long-term client, Dove Steel Doors was already seeing consistently strong performance on paid channels, characterised by a 728% year-on-year increase in conversions, and a 68% reduction in cost per acquisition (CPA). But this was no time to put their feet up and relax. Zest Digital set their sights on cutting CPA even further, with the aim of launching overall return on ad spend (ROAS) into the stratosphere.

Strategy
An ambitious objective demanded a bold strategy shift. Zest Digital had already increased the ROAS from 674% to 2,116% over the course of a year, through a combination of reducing CPA and increasing ad spend. Put simply, this meant Dove Steel Doors were enjoying £21.16 for every £1 they invested in paid advertising. Not bad.

So, their strategy was already driving results, but Zest Digital started to look for new ways to break through this ceiling and increase ROAS further. Zest Digital tried all the tricks in the book: negative keywords; weighting budgets based on trends; split-testing new ad copy, and more. But Zest Digital couldn’t move the needle beyond ~2,000% ROAS.

Action
When it comes to scaling growth, it’s natural to want to spend more and do more. Zest Digital could have increased the volume of incoming leads by lumping more budget into various campaigns, but this wouldn’t have helped the client’s CPA or ROAS.

In fact, their test meant doing the opposite. Zest Digital asked Dove Steel Doors to spend less, with the plan to scale back up over time once they had achieved a low CPA.

Sometimes, to build beautiful architecture, you need to tear down an existing building. And this is exactly what Zest Digital did with Dove’s account – stripping it right back to its foundations, uncovering the winning keywords, optimising obsessively, and iteratively rebuilding from the bottom up.

This meant that Zest Digital could reduce the CPA to its lowest possible level, and keep it there while they raised budgets and tested new campaign strategies. This ended up being far more effective than chipping away at a heavier, more bloated, account.

Results
Zest Digital did the complete campaign strip-back in the first quarter of the year, reducing spend by 54% overnight. Between Q1 and Q2, ROAS jumped by 30%. Over the next 3 months, they nudged spend up, seeing only minor growth in the returns.

Q4 was when things got really interesting. Zest Digital reduced spend again by 24% and boosted ROAS by 28%. And over the first two quarters of the following year, they continued testing while scaling up the ad spend, and added another 43% ROAS.

By the end of this campaign rebuild, the team had increased ROAS from an initial 2,116% to 4,716%. And when you compare the first two quarters year-on-year, Zest Digital reduced CPA by 54% and overall spend by 29%. Conversions jumped by over 55%.

Adam Marston, General Manager, Dove Steel Doors said:

We’ve worked with Zest since 2014, and they still continue to grow our revenue and profits. It’s not common for an agency to ask us to reduce what we spend, but Zest’s test-based approach filled us with confidence and we were happy to trust it. Over a short period, we’ve doubled our margins and our return on what we spend on advertising increased to almost 4,500%. This is quite simply, outstanding value.