The Telluride Tourism Board’s previous site had monumental challenges with SEO and visitor retention/conversion. They faced a special SEO challenge after being completely sandbagged by Google for presumably black-hat practices and/or keyword & link stuffing by a previous SEO agency. The new Drupal site was a perfect opportunity to clean the slate.
In November 2008 we were contracted to redevelop The Telluride Tourism Boards web site. Their site at that time was no where to be found on the search engines, had massive content and usability issues. The brand was being poorly represented in terms of design and desireability.
In terms of visitor retention, conversion and online sales, there was an obvious need to not only increase traffic but retain visitors and get them converting to customers. After identifying the many user turn-off’s on the previous site, the new site’s architecture, layout, call-outs and funnel were all strategically designed to overcome any prior barriers to conversion. Giving users what they want right away on the homepage, with clear navigation throughout the site to get them where they need to be, and an OpenX banner module for the client to manage and promote holiday packages delivered an effective, easy-to-use information portal.
We needed to start fresh and present search engines with a high-quality, well-optimized site worth indexing. SEO actions & features included:
Within 2 weeks of the new site launch, the site went from not being on the radar (not even in top 5 pages) for all but two of our identified keywords, right up to the 1st and 2nd page of Google.com (US) for most keywords, including #3 for the coveted “Telluride”, #2 for “telluride vacation”, #3 for “Telluride Skiing”, and so on. Google organic search traffic went up 574% over the first 3 weeks of the new site.
The result? Over the first 3 weeks of www.visittelluride.com being live, visits were only up 49% yet pageviews were up 308%! That’s a 175% increase in pages/visit and a 47% improvement in bounce rate (from 68% to a more respectable 36%). Average time on site was up 55%. Meanwhile, online sales saw 335% improvement in conversion rate, and 600% increase in purchased products. Previous online transactions were minimal so these percentages are bloated, but the goal of driving visitors to online booking options was definitely achieved.
Less than a year since the site relaunched, visits totalled over 31,000 last month, up 25% compared to the previous period and up 111% over March of last year. The team at Telluride Tourism Board have engaged VentureWeb in an Online Marketing contract since August 2009 and continue to work closely with us to achieve a goal of #1 ranking in Google's organic search for the term 'Telluride'.