Mike Richards, aka The Travelling Ape, is on a mission to visit all 195 countries and share his insights in geopolitics, international relations and personal development in his travel blog.
The brief
Following the Brand Strategy Package we completed for Mike, aka The Travelling Ape, he decided to go ahead with both our Logo & Style Guide Package and SEO Package. As Mike was at the very beginning of his new business venture, it was important to discover the SEO (search engine optimisation) opportunities for him to take advantage of, both for his existing website and for his upcoming marketing activities.
Keyword research
The first half of our SEO Package involves our tried and tested in-depth research process. Firstly, we carried out detailed keyword research to identify the actual words and phrases people are using online when looking for the kinds of services that Mike currently offers and also plans to offer in the future. As Mike wants to attract a global audience, we performed our research using both UK and US data, to gain the most comprehensive insights.
Topic research
Next, we carried out important topic research to find the most popular online content related to Mike’s current and future offerings. This will help to steer his ideas for future blog posts, to ensure he’s producing content that his audience actually wants to read, and to pitch him well against his competitors.
Competitor analysis
The final part of the research is competitor analysis. This identifies how The Travelling Ape fares against his competitors in terms of organic vs paid advertising, high ranking keywords, web traffic, marketing channels and social media presence. This helps to identify gaps and opportunities Mike can take advantage of, in order to improve his performance and rankings compared to his competitors.
SEO audit
The second half of our SEO package involves a full audit of the SEO data – focus keyword, SEO title, meta description – currently featured on Mike’s website. As his site is primarily a blog site, we carried out the audit on his web pages plus his top 10 performing blog posts. We then carefully crafted new SEO data for each page and post, based on the findings from our research, before applying it to the site.
The challenge here was retaining Mike’s funny, conversational style in his writing, whilst making sure we optimised the SEO titles and descriptions for the best performing, most relevant keywords. Although keywords are important to improve organic search rankings, SEO data should always be written for people first, then search engines.
The results
After running through our research findings and SEO audit with Mike, he was really pleased with the insights we offered and said it helped him to better understand the concept of SEO and how it works.
Over time, the work we’ve done under this package will ensure that The Travelling Ape’s website starts to appear higher in search rankings for relevant keywords that people are actually searching for to find what he currently offers. And when he starts adding new paid services to his website, Mike now has the research findings to inform the content he needs to write and help him optimise these new pages for organic search.
Client feedback
Brand Strategy Package: “My experience with Wildheart Media was fantastic. I was a bit stuck on the direction of travel for my travel-focused website. However, the Brand Strategy Meeting was very insightful, and offered me a whole new insight into the different possible directions I could take it in. It left me with plenty to think about, and excited about where I will be able to take it in the future.”
Logo & Style Guide Package: “I thoroughly enjoyed the process of developing my logo and brand with Wildheart. I had a rough idea of what I wanted the logo to look like. Having taken all of my views on board, the final logo that Wildheart produced surpassed all of my expectations and I love it. I have received positive feedback about it from so many people, and it has made me excited to take my brand to the next level. I would highly recommend!”
SEO Package: “The SEO package was incredibly useful. Not only did I get some great ideas for future SEO-friendly content and an SEO audit for my website, I was given a really useful document explaining how it all works and what to work on. For someone who had not previously had too much experience in the SEO sphere, this was highly useful!”
– Mike Richards