GO Rentals | Travel SEO Award Winner | Content Cluster Case Study Growth Study

2024 APAC Search Awards – Best Use of Search in Travel

3 x Finalists for APAC Search Awards & Semrush AU Search Awards in 2023 & 2024

The problem

GO Rentals is a New Zealand car rental company with customers across the globe looking to travel. When GO Rentals approached Prosperity Media in 2022, they had great visibility in New Zealand. Yet, they struggled to rank with a local ccTLD in their main international markets such as Australia, the UK, and the USA.

International car rental giants were able to target global markets with multiple local ccTLDs. Unfortunately, GO Rentals was unable to implement multiple ccTLDs or a hreflang strategy used in standard international SEO campaigns.

We were tasked with ranking a local brand in an international, competitive landscape and bringing more traffic. The initial revenue target was to generate growth in conversions, ideally from their main BOFU service pages.

However, our SEO and Content digital marketing team chose to target TOFU informational blog content. The exceptional growth in traffic and assisted conversions have made this one of our top marketing campaigns and SEO case studies.

Our marketing teams received well-deserved recognition from the judging panel of both the APAC Search Awards and Semrush Search Awards.

The strategy that won at the APAC Search Awards

With only 8 articles in a content cluster, we were able to bring exceptional growth to our client’s website. We exceeded the revenue target with an outstanding performance of online visibility and engagement. This is how we won “Best Use of Search in Travel” at the APAC Search Awards:

Our campaign involved three main pillars:

1. Target audience research
2. Answering our queries
3. Filling in the gaps

Target audience research

To achieve the goal of conversions, we needed to connect with a customer and build trust as industry experts.

We focused on designing personas of foreign travellers looking at driving in New Zealand. Once we understood who they were, we speculated every:

1. Worry
2. Pain point, and
3. Question

they may have before deciding to book a car rental. We identified that our potential customers may be feeling overwhelmed or nervous about driving in another country. This was the base point of our empathy in the SEO campaign.

Answering our queries

We took this base knowledge and attempted to answer each point with the information currently online.

We were able to identify some questions without a clear answer on the first page of Google. In fact, we had to visit 5 other websites to piece together the full answer.

Remembering our target audience was already potentially overwhelmed and nervous, we knew that the current content in the search results did not alleviate these feelings.

Filling in the gaps

Once we knew the questions our target audience could not easily answer, we knew we could bridge that gap and build topical authority for our client. We wrote 5 articles answering the same question for each of their top foreign markets.

Our content structure was to answer the question within the first 3 sentences.

Through empathising with our target audience, we established an immediate connection by giving them information that is not easily accessible. We appreciate quality over quantity when writing compelling written content.

The rest of the article answered closely related queries found in “people also asked” and “people also searched for” on Google. We were able to increase engagement and keep readers on the page by answering what they would need to know next.

Our writers used empathy, search intent analysis and tone of voice to guide the reader into a winning CTA. After receiving a clear yet comprehensive answer from the client’s website, it increased a customer’s trust in their business and services.

The 5 articles quickly became the client’s top-performing blogs in their marketing campaigns, increasing their online visibility in international markets. We extended our content cluster to another 3 articles for their next top foreign markets.

Results

We achieved our goal of ranking in international markets and exceeded our revenue target with exceptional growth. The results from only 8 articles:

Ranking Goal:

Increase online visibility in international markets with a local NZ ccTLD without using Hreflang or multiple local sites.

Ranking Achievement:

25 featured snippets in 6 countries, including 16 in the Australian market.

58 keywords ranking on the first page of Google.

Traffic Goal:

Bring exceptional growth from International customers looking to travel to New Zealand.

Traffic Achievement:

19.6k traffic and 460k impressions from 51 countries.

Conversions Goal:

Generate growth in conversions from International customers.

Conversions Achievement:

10,577% increase in revenue from assisted conversions, from customers viewing the content cluster in their buying journey or as a last click.

10,804% ROI for our client.

We create award-winning marketing campaign by focusing on resonating with people first, before algorithms.