35% increase in visibility for leading fitness and leisure brand
Over 170 high quality links boost performance for Better
GLL is a not-for-profit charitable social enterprise committed to delivering a better quality of fitness and leisure, libraries and performing arts facilities for everyone. Their mission is to provide access to quality community facilities - and more - at a price everyone can afford.
GLL are a UK-wide organisation with over 258 centres from Carlisle to Cornwall, plus a presence in Belfast and Cardiff.
The challenge
We have been working with GLL for over 5 years and we’ve seen incredible results historically but, due to the scale and potential within their organisation, a significant amount of organic opportunity remained available to us.
Post covid-19 lockdowns, health and wellbeing became a huge priority for GLL. These are notoriously difficult keywords to rank for in the fitness and leisure space; a blend of informational and transactional customer search intent means brands compete with direct competitors but also with publications as well.
We knew from our proprietary opportunity sizing project that high quality links were needed to help break into the first page of Google for gyms and fitness related terms.
In order to overcome this challenging landscape we needed to work closely with GLL’s internal PR team and their business stakeholders in order to tap into the resources within GLL, and maximise our link building impact.
Why we love this case study
- The integration with Better’s internal teams made us greater than the sum of our parts, which is what genuine partnership is all about.
- The variety of tactics this integration opened up meant their agency spend was more efficient and our work was more impactful.
- We used the client’s own data to create newsworthy stories which is a sure-fire way to ensure our campaigns are relevant and add value to the brand.
As specialists we love digging into detail. See the full solution here.
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The results
Cross team collaboration is now in full swing, we have shared ideation sessions to ensure alignment on ideas and through our multi-faceted approach we built 178 links between October 2021 and February 2022 with an average DA of 46.
These included new links from the likes of Grazia and the Huffington Post, alongside numerous top tier publications such as The Independent, Women’s Health and Stylist.
Our always on tactics reached a wealth of regional publications, such as The Londonist and Visit Lincoln, which are really effective at showcasing Better to current and prospective customers in their national locations, as well as extremely relevant fitness sites such as British Basketball League and Special Hockey International.
These links have translated into some brilliant results. The /gyms landing page saw a 35% increase in visibility, including getting the keyword “gyms”, with its monthly search volume of 1M, onto page 1 of Google!
The Weight Loss with Better Content and Digital PR collaboration saw 38 new keywords, with a monthly combined search volume of 13k, start to rank, and a sharp increase in visibility since the page went live which has driven over 9k in impressions in the 3 months since launch.
By working closely with Better’s traditional PR team and across our own Content and Digital PR specialisms we have been able to get even better results, faster than ever. Teamwork really does make the dream work!
Don't just take our word for it!
The past two years have been particularly challenging for the leisure industry, which has meant there has been an even greater need to maintain visibility of the Better brand.
Driving awareness and securing editorial features within relevant publications requires dedicated resource, the right expertise and strategy, alongside close collaboration by the relevant stakeholders.
Builtvisible’s Digital PR team has played a key part within the wider marketing mix, helping us to build our brand awareness and effectively communicate key messages. The team has often gone the ‘extra mile’ to secure coverage, working flexibly and reactively to seize opportunities and react to the wider news agenda. We have developed a strong working partnership, which is a crucial foundation to any successful digital PR campaign.
