An SERanking Survey of the Vpod.com domain found they have de-commissioned the old site and lost 99% of the traffic.

Why?

Executed poorly, no thought for historical content value.

No one looked at the traffic numbers, both before and after.

Fix: Site lost, New SEO plan addresses 

We researched 4 competitors who ranked for 1300+ keywords, 843 had significant search volume, totalling 26,500 visitors a month, Vpod.com was Getting 2 out of the 26,5000.

Why?

No one had analysed the competitors domains, keywords, volume and trends and made a plan around measurable data.

Output : a plan based on facts not Gut

The PPC Campaign was managed in isolation, not linked to the rest of the marketing team, not supported with any guidance.

Investigation found 77.6% of the PPC traffic bounced.(wasted spend)

Why?

The Website pages the ad campaign was pointed at, had site load speeds of 6.5-20.5 secs on mobile, 3 secs to 8 secs on desktop devices.

People literally got bored of waiting for the website to load.

Why was it not detected?

No one asked the data in Google Analytics, Google Lighthouse & Google Console what was going on, and the PPC campaign managers findings were ignore or not understood.  

Fix: New Webmaster, Accountability & Ownership  

Why?

The site was not indexed by Google Console in 10 months, Google ignored the website posting sitemaps because its algorithm said "the site loads slowly - do not index!"

Consequently, when the site Speed & Indexing were fixed the SEO traffic jumped 8X.

Fix : Indexing Ownership 

Impact : SEO results lift - without content changes

Multiple well intentioned HTML webpage builders had been farmed out pages to build. 

None of those pages was loaded via the content editors CMS using high performance templates, consequently they were:

- poorly created for Google Page Loading. 

- not measured technically, otherwise the issue would have been spotted. 

- no one looked at the quality of technical page delivery (Google Lighthouse)

- no one looked at the page effectiveness in Google Search Console

- of 843 target keywords they ranked for 47, on the 7th page of results in 67th position. 

Fix : Webmaster change, access removed, high performance templates added, number accountability added

All the output was activity delivered - and that, was what was measured.

​As soon as a professional webmaster costing £2k a month was appointed and made accountable for performance:

- The site speed performed within Google Parameters 

• 3 Secs Page Load for Mobile 

• 1 Sec page load on desktop

- 8 Page templates were delivered that performed well, all the content folk did was populate them.

- Instantly we achieved great speed performance across website.

Creatify Digital Fixed the Equals 5 lack of focus on site speed

To evaluate the success of future PPC campaigns we analysed every facet of a successful "high conversion" landing page v the Core Pages the PPC campaign was directed at.

- They Scored at best 78% "B" meriting a 2-3% conversion rate.

- Common mistakes - "no customers that trust us" logo's above the fold.

- No Enquiry form that you can enter or auto populate on the page above the fold, current one is below the fold and requires you to click to pop the form scoring C- from a user experience (UX) perspective.

- no compelling call to action (CTA) above the fold.

- content was good, just not designed with conversion at the front of its purpose, read more like a brochure. 

Fix Spend Ceased till Landing pages designed to perform created / Current pages were B grade for PPC

Starting from a goal of 30 leads a month we looked backwards at "exact match & broad match" keywords for seven areas:

• Competition

• 6 Product Keyword Groups

It was very clear you could beat 30 leads a month with a £5k spend at 6% Click thru rate and 4% Page conversion, to a demo or brochure download.

We set about creating the ideal template to overcome the normal product page "B" sore and brochure feel & design.

Fix ; New Templates delivered 

It became evident that 75 keywords needed targeting of the 7 campaigns to hit the desired numbers.

Clearly the campaign prior was not focused on business needs/objectives of 30 leads a month.

Modelling and Data informed the decision once again- not gut & activity.

Fix: Forecasting & Planning System introduced.

There was not 7 good compelling reasons to encourage anyone they were on the right partner course.

- No value trades that passed the "so what test"

- No offers that felt like "i'm dealing with a market leader"

- A day of interviews with the sales folk & leadership and our "value trade" gems were to be secured using joint brainstorming.

Objective(s)

1. Lift 4% decent landing page conversion to 6% and buy some insurance on overachieving 30 leads a month.

2. Lift the bar to "market leader" "winner" standards not "also ran" "turned up" behaviour.

Fix: Design new Value Exchange Offers TBA phase 3

Focus the fire power - target 7 words, that give us substantial volume if we rank top 3 in 6 months.

Top 10 positions secured 6 leads a month.

Top 3 positions secured 27 deals a month.

Now working back from there what would the ROI be?

​Full SEO Plan Developed with Forecasts

It took 30 minutes to model the ROI on the SEO campaign targetting 7 keywords.

Cost of Fractional CMO (15% of his/her time) to design campaigns & briefs £10k. Another 15% of time to QA and Measure delivery.

Cost of full time Marketing intern focused on the area £22k per annum.

Total investment £42k pa. 

The return, in one 6 deal month, £240k. 

One months leads, would cover the investment in 30 days!

Assumption - we deliver 6 leads a month,through SEO, after 6 months work, this would grow in months 7-12. 

Fix Business Goal Decision Making based on forecasted ROI - see 13

If you don't fix pain, then you won't have a business "Jeff Bezos"

We modelled 4 Sectors and 22 personas within them.

We then looked at a content map to deal with 66 pain points they had we could address.

That gave us our SEO content map for 12 months SEO campaign.

We then cross mapped that with the existing site.

And costed its £42k & a year to rank Top 3. (see 12 ROI significant)

The PPC and SEO enquiry measurement funnels didn't exist as no traffic populated it (reality 4 leads in 8 months).

a) The MD was using for PPC a simple measure - Google Ad spend divided by leads.

b) For SEO it was non existent - a crude schema blog, HTML code that tried to fool Google, that was the extent of SEO & no measurement.

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We recommended Google Campaign tracking UTM/Tags and Hubspot CRM be pulled into a databox consolidated reporting system so that:

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- The board had a summary report of both SEO & PPC - and in early days could see the trend lines moving north.

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- a diagnostic report so that the CMO and the PPC & SEO content guys could see where campaigns were succeeding and failing and tweak accordingly, same report just two levels of detail down.

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- An operations report, so we could avoid any speed issues or performance factors influencing results, by having a simple "Operations Health Check" report for both campaigns. 

Fix Full measurement system scoped 

Google Evaluates a domain on multiple factors to do with how rich and technically proficient a sight is for visitors.

There are 37 core criteria as well as Domain & Page authority.

The higher your scores in these 39 areas, the higher the Google algorithm lifts your content, in search results.

Areas like Videos, Images, Business Profile, Knowledge Panels, Search Snippets, AI responses - ie your content can be good, but Google needs to find it across a whole digital distribution array.

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Better Still, SERanking gives you where your competition are performing.

Across 37 areas VPOd.com scored in 1 area, hence the average 67th position.  

We put in place a content distribution plan to tackle this area and wake up Google.

There were customer logos on some pages to re-assured visitors, but a short interview found a growing vein of referenceable clients and customer videos.

Logos and Videos from Mars & Apple, these were then factored into content for:

- Different stages of the funnel

- Nurture campaigns for sign off stakeholders or prospect champions

- Landing pages to boost conversion. 

Broadly the team just needed a few "Major Tweaks"

• A Plan.

• A Measurement system that highlighted success & learns.

• A Focus on commercial goals and achievement, not activity.

• The team were good, too busy, needed keeping in "competency swim lanes" and focus.

As soon as early results started to surface:

• Website Speeds Leaping 

• SEO performance jump 8X

• PPC spend halting 

• Clear plan to fix "major issues"

• Education & updating regularly

• Confidence started to return. 

The Fixes were simple

Develop a plan detailed here

The Page Speed issues that affected the website were also on the landing pages.

A New PPC Template was produced for Testing (Escort)

3 Upgrades were planned to lift forecasted escort conversion from 2% to 6%

RS4 Code name for the 4% project (better PPC Template & Content)

Panigale the code name for the 6% project (Market Leading Value Trades)

Ducati MotoGP 2025 the go for more 6%+ Project (Full Nurture Program)

We will update the fix plan with learns and progress. 

Fast issue Diagnosis using free or cheap robust tools shone the light on:

- Issues to be fixed, the size of the prize, with objective data a plan emerged.

- That plan was to use data not gut, to inform decision making.

- To ignore opinion, unless data backed it up.

- Then focus on implementing a plan that had a root in commercial goals, not activity.

- A data driven approach meant a solid set of reference points to instill confidence and accountability and move forward. 

Links 

Short Term Fix Plan  

PPC Page Review - Led to Escort, RS4, Panigale, MotoGP

PPC Forecast What keyword groups do we need what hurdles have we?

Speed Case Study Page Speed before and After 

PPC Plan - 4 Stages - Research & Planning explained

Vpod 2026 Plan - PPC SEO Partner 

Vpod Partner plan V1

Vpod SEO Metrics & cost per lead