Flagmakers is the UK’s leading expert in bespoke flags and flagpole solutions. Having been around since 1837, they’re one of the UK’s longest established flagmakers. Priding themselves on their premium quality, their flags can be seen everywhere from The Savoy Hotel and Cartier to the International Maritime Organisation.

104% increase in organic traffic in 3 months.
Top 5 ranking for head term ‘Flagpoles’.

The Challenge

Drive more traffic and better rankings to an underperforming area of the site.

Flagmakers wanted to focus their efforts on improving the flagpole section of their website, which wasn’t performing as well as their flags section.

As there’s more commercial viability to this part of their business, it made sense to improve the sales performance by investing in a marketing service like SEO. With this in mind, they wanted to see how much could be achieved in a short period of time around target head terms like ‘flagpoles’.

Despite having good content, there were some issues that needed to be addressed on Flagmakers’ website from a technical SEO perspective in order to leverage and maximise all organic search opportunities (things like missing canonicals, meta descriptions and headings).

They also had a high level of toxic backlinks - which were essentially working against them - and resulted in a negative impact on their SEO presence. Plus there were a number of lost backlinks which were lowering the site’s domain authority.

After receiving underwhelming results from working with other marketing agencies, Simon Butterworth, Marketing Manager at Flagmakers, reached out to Contrast for our expertise in eCommerce marketing.

Simon’s also at the helm of several other eCommerce businesses, so his time was stretched. Aware of the improvements that needed to be made but lacking the time and specialist knowledge to implement them, it was clear he needed to outsource the more technical side of his marketing.

The Solution

Increase site visibility by optimising SEO, improving on-page copy and carrying out a targeted outreach campaign.

We started with the fundamentals by making sure Flagmakers’ SEO was up to scratch. Our audit highlighted some areas that needed improving and we implemented the following tasks:

Optimised their technical SEO by making stronger suggestions for their meta descriptions and implementing canonicals (as well as providing guidance on self-referencing canonicals and redirects).
Gave best practice guidance for on-page SEO regarding copy, page formatting and images (eg. using image tags).
Reviewed internal links and highlighted other useful areas for internal linking to help establish site architecture, improve UX and increase authority (and ranking potential).
Conducted keyword research for all pages of the flagpole section and carried out an analysis of SERPs intent.

We then optimised the on-page copy for the flagpoles section by using clearer, SEO-driven wording on pages that lacked direction (specifically titles and headings), and suggesting more instructional language for call to actions. This was to ensure each page was consistent and helped support good UX.

Finally we looked to run targeted digital PR campaigns to drive brand awareness, more traffic and secure higher quality links.

The first campaign was in preparation for Pride, which detailed the ‘Top 15 LGBTQ+ flags in the UK’. This was using an existing campaign asset which we updated slightly. And the second campaign came from a team ideation session which revealed the ‘Most sent flag emoji’.

We managed to land coverage on sites including Global Brands Magazine with an average domain rating of 55 which linked directly to the flagpole category.

Simon Butterworth Marketing Manager

Having worked with a few different digital marketing agencies, I engaged Contrast to work on a very specific SEO task with clear objectives.

I found Contrast to be very easy to work with, knowledgeable and responsive. I would happily recommend Contrast to any SME looking for help and support with their SEO activity.

The Result

A 104% increase in organic traffic and top 5 ranking for head term ‘Flagpoles’.

An effective SEO strategy and PR campaign helped Flagmakers achieve impressive results in a short space of time.

We saw the term ‘flagpoles’ (Simon’s KPI) with the UK monthly search volume of 3,200 move from position 7 to position 5. While the biggest increase was for the term ‘flag poles for sale UK’ with a UK monthly search volume of 100, which jumped from 9th to the top 3rd. Even though this is a low search volume in comparison, ranking highly for a less competitive term will still increase their chances of acquiring more sales/leads.

Goal completions on the site were at an all-time high and organic revenue increased by 20%, while conversion rate moved up by 0.4% in just 3 months.

We also saw a record amount of organic traffic sessions:
YOY: March 2021 vs March 2020: +309%
MOM: March 2021 vs Feb 2021: +104.5%

All of this growth has significantly strengthened the visibility of the flagpole section, showing the impact that organic changes alone have had on Flagmakers’ site in helping to drive more traffic, better rankings and more sales/leads.

Want to grow your business but not sure where to start? Get in touch with us to find out how we can help get your business where it needs to be.

Case study: A 104% increase in organic traffic in just 3 months.