Who are Passmores?

We’re thrilled at getting timber buildings manufacturer Passmores back to the number-one spot on Google for nine high-volume keyword terms (a.k.a money terms) in the space of just seven months.

And the fact that their phones are ‘ringing hot’ when it’s Covid-19 lockdown. It’s a nice problem to have!

Passmores came to Comtecs for a third time after losing their organic rankings on Google and needing to increase their website traffic. Their pay-per-click (PPC) ad spend was high and their old website was not converting visitors into paying customers. Also, leads were drying up.

We met Passmores’ boss Stuart Slaughter to discuss these issues and to talk through his objectives which included focusing on timber garages, timber carriage houses and the kit-only versions of each.

What we did?

The Digital Audit:

We worked in partnership with Surrey based SEO & Digital Marketing Consultant Matt Thorpe of Grasshopper UK who first carried out a detailed SEO audit into Passmores, to understand why the site wasn’t performing, which keywords it was ranking for, what content it lacked and to identify new ranking opportunities.

Once we had this data, we found that the site was struggling to convert, both on mobile and desktop. This was a limitation of the existing website and we decided it was costing Passmores opportunities.

The audit gave us a real insight into the areas that were not working and enabled us to form a robust strategy to push forward and ‘muscle in’ on competitor rankings.

Based on our recommendation, the decision was taken to build a new website with a mobile-first approach. This meant that, unlike many websites, the site was specifically designed to display all information perfectly on mobile devices and load fast.

The SEO Strategy:

The SEO audit and keyword research uncovered many opportunities where Passmores could rank for multiple terms – ‘timber garages’, ‘carriage house’ and ‘sports pavilions’ which would increase the chance of more people finding the website. This is the bread-and-butter business for Passmores and is now the focus of our work.

To ensure we covered as many bases as possible, we studied most of the top competitors to understand what keywords or phrases they were ranking for and what pages on their site were the most powerful. This gave us the benchmark to beat.

Once the target keywords were identified, it was time to revamp the content across the site to become more detailed, authoritative and target semantic phrases. Most sites fail to focus on quality content which is why they struggle to rank highly and stay ranked highly.

Passmores sell different styles of timber buildings, so we wanted to create pages that:

Present the products in a user-friendly format, particularly on mobile.
Provide detailed information about the products.
Display easy-to-navigate galleries.
Provide price lists for people to download.
Provide brochures for people to read later.
Explain about the delivery and construction of the buildings.
Answer as many possible questions a customer would ask.
Tick the majority of boxes.

Once the pages were built, we then worked on the linking side, inbound (securing links to the Passmores site from external websites) and internal (linking between different pages within the Passmores site). Google loves links and there were plenty to be had here.

The Results

The ranking results achieved for Passmores are:

#1 for Timber Garages (During Covid-19 lockdown).
#1 for Sports Pavilions.
#1 for Carriage House Kits.
#1 for Timber Garage Prices.
#1 for Garage Kits.
#1 for Timber Garage Design.

In addition, the site is now performing as follows vs 2019:

Leads and enquiries up over 100% – During a Covid-19 pandemic, this is something we are proud of.
190% in website visitors – Greater Google exposure and smarter PPC campaigns.
196% increase in organic visitor traffic – This shows we have hit many top positions.
265% increase in mobile visitors – This shows mobile-first strategy is paying off.
183% increase in page views (235% on mobile) – This shows greater engagement on the site.
10% increase in time spent on site (13% on mobile) – Interactive Garage-builder tool is working.
15% decrease in bounce rate – We now have the right audience who are engaged by the improved design when they land on the site.

Here’s Managing Director, Stuart Slaughter’s verdict:

“I’m delighted with what Comtecs & Grasshopper have achieved for us in terms of generating leads in our timber garages and cricket pavilions through our website. Matt’s extensive digital know-how never fails to surprise me and to get the results we have is fantastic. He delivered 100% on what he said he would do.”