a451 Search Engine Marketing

Viking River Cruises - SEO & PPC

Viking River Cruises is a luxury river cruise company that cruises rivers in Europe, Russia, Ukraine and China. Viking prides itself on being the World's most award-winning River Cruise Line.

Viking River Cruises -

Search Engine Optimisation & Pay Per Click Marketing Case Study.

Project Background

Viking River Cruises is a global brand which operates the world's largest and leading fleet of deluxe river cruise vessels. To maintain their worldwide reputation and develop new avenues of business, Viking recognised that they needed to have a stronger online presence.

a451’s role

Through their experience in search engine marketing a451 knew that research in and around Viking as a company was essential before they began creating an in-depth marketing strategy. a451 ensured they understood fully the Viking brand, Viking's market and the areas within their current Web marketing strategy that needed improving upon. a451 determined the following needs:

Objectives

•    Organic traffic flow – increase non-paid traffic through search engines.
•    Positions for targeted keywords – improve and increase page position in search engines.
•    website architecture – ensure that search engines can find all content easily.
•   PPC (Pay Per Click)  - expand campaigns whist maintaining cost-per-conversion and therefore cost-effectiveness.
•    Increase online exposure to ensure a wider net for potential customers.

The Strategy

Working closely with Viking River Cruises, a451 got to work in pinpointing where the website was underperforming. Simple errors within the site architecture can lead to major issues and loss of potential customers were soon identified and fixed. It was important that the previous SEO efforts were carried over to the new site in 2010 to ensure minimal loss of authority with search engines.

Keywords were also revised to ensure that the Viking River Cruises website was gaining ranking for only the most relevant traffic; thereby ensuring a good flow of targeted traffic and a diverse range of ranking on search engines.

a451 used both Search Engine Optimisation and PPC together to compliment each other to increase visitors and conversions to Viking’s website.

Results

•    Overall traffic to Viking River Cruises website increased 665% since the outset of the contract with search traffic increasing by 511%.
•    Viking River Cruises has top organic positions for a number of keyword phrases including the competitive phrase “river cruises”.
•    The PPC campaigns had a marked improvement in CTR (Click Through Rate) of 12% with a conversion rate of 5%.
 

a451 have worked with Viking since December 2007 and continue to achieve great results.  

"As a growing company the Web is a critical part of our overall marketing strategy. Ranking highly on search engines for targeted keywords is critical for us. a451 took a comprehensive and professional approach to our website and implemented changes that have resulted in a marked improvement in our online sales and the overall cost of customer acquisition. We are very pleased with what a451 has achieved for us."

 

Wendy Atkin-Smith

 

 

Managing Director - Viking River Cruise Line