Outdoor Brands Case Study

Echo Canyon

Echo Canyon River Expedition in Canon City, CO, is a family-owned rafting outfitter that’s been creating unforgettable Colorado whitewater adventures since 1978. They cater to both families and thrill-seekers with experiences for all skill levels, showcasing Colorado’s stunning natural landscape. As a highly seasonal business, with most sales occurring between April and August, they needed a strategy to boost their online presence and effectively target the right audience at the perfect time.

Challenge & Goal

CSP was tasked with increasing organic revenue during a time when search trends for rafting-related terms were decreasing year-over-year. It seemed like people just weren’t as interested in a rafting adventure as they had been in the past.

Echo Canyon needed to increase its visibility and reach, but also needed to make sure it was reaching the right audience who would be interested in their offer. It was determined that this could be achieved through content creation focused on more relevant topics with rafting-related keywords. This would align the site with user intent and drive more potential customers to the site while also resulting in fewer unrelated clicks, increasing conversion rates.

The main goals for the project included:

Creating a content schedule that matched their busiest seasons (April – August)
Optimizing blogs that focused on general information topics that were not converting well
Providing clean and accurate data on key metrics so goals could be tracked.

Strategy & Tactics

One of the major goals of this project was to increase SERP presence by targeting gaps in Echo Canyon’s on-page strategy. This was achieved through the use of localized blog posts that targeted their buyer personas with informational and commercial intent. The effects of these localized blogs were further enhanced by optimizing existing pages with local commercial keywords. Lastly, consistent Google My Business posting was implemented to achieve a better position in the map pack. This combination of new highly targeted blogs, optimizing old content, and expanding their GMB profile formed a three-pronged approach designed to improve Echo Canyon’s SERP presence.

Additionally, future content was planned out to better monopolize traffic during the busy season, while topic ideation ensured that future blogs would remain in line with customer expectations and needs. Echo Canyon also received ongoing consulting and SEO training to improve their reach and relevance for future endeavors.

The technical strategy was focused on ensuring all navigable pages were optimized to be easily understood by search engines and to fix any errors that might impact their performance. This was achieved by properly indexing content, fixing meta tags, and creating an easily navigable site structure. A few additional technical SEO issues were also addressed through ongoing testing, analysis, and recommendations.

The majority of this project was dedicated to the on-page content strategy. CSP needed to create a new approach based around local keyword optimization, shift the bulk of keywords away from non-relevant topics, and formulate a plan to implement blogs well ahead of schedule so they could be published before the busy season began. In addition, we addressed underperforming pages, internal cross-competing pages, and created a keyword gap analysis. These combined efforts helped to transform the site and drive relevant, converting traffic to Echo Canyon’s most important pages.

A backlink analysis was conducted to provide a deeper understanding of the overall link profile as well as information about the competitive landscape. Based on historical trends, competitive data, and business and SEO objectives, a detailed strategy was created and executed. This helped us to deliver new, relevant, and trustworthy links each month.

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Summary & Results

While the market for rafting adventures was shrinking, Echo Canyon was also losing its place in the SERP, leading to a loss in organic revenue.

By the end of this project, Echo Canyon had achieved their primary goal of seeing a significant increase in organic revenue caused by their new content creation strategy. This also led to more organic traffic with a higher conversion rate due to more relevant targeting. More people were viewing the site, and these viewers were more likely to convert into customers than ever before.

Echo Canyon also saw additional benefits from partnering with CSP such as improved keyword targeting which led to holding the number one rank for valuable keywords such as “Colorado White Water Rafting”. Their future strategies will also be easier to create and track due to cleaner reports now that the altitude blog is no longer skewing the data. Even during a market-wide period of low search interest, Echo Canyon experienced an increase in transactions and continues to see growth today.

Echo Canyon has continued to leverage CSP as a trusted SEO resource to tackle important challenges and continues to see growth and SEO success across multiple KPIs.

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