[Case Study] SEO Wins for the Coliseum — a Win for the Sioux Falls Community
A website with strong search engine optimization (SEO) is imperative for any business to be found online.
But when you’re running a non-profit with a limited (or non-existent) budget for digital advertising, it’s even more important that you’re on top of your SEO game.
How else will people find you if not through word of mouth or organic search? Plus, while good SEO costs time to implement, it’s free!
When 9 Clouds began working with the Coliseum of Sioux Falls as part of our Marketing from the Heart Program, our top priority was to grow the traffic to their website via organic search by making SEO improvements on their website.
So, how’d we do it? And, a better question — what steps can you take to improve the SEO on your website?
The Challenge
The Coliseum of Sioux Falls is one of the largest event venues in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places, it’s beautiful, and it helps the local community in a big way.
All profits from this non-profit venue flow directly into the 21 programs offered by the Multi-Cultural Center of Sioux Falls. So, when engaged couples, businesses, and leaders book their events at the Coliseum, they are directly supporting a local non-profit.
The problem? A lot of people simply don’t know about the option, and the Coliseum’s site was receiving little organic search traffic.
The Solution
While the Coliseum had a website, most of their marketing had previously been by way of traditional means like brochures and letters.
The partnership with 9 Clouds was the perfect opportunity to improve the Coliseum’s digital presence. At the beginning of the partnership, we ran their website through an SEO site checkup on SEO Toolbox — a tool that we use to provide a comprehensive “first assessment” of a website’s SEO health and to identify opportunities for improvement.
The initial SEO score was 71/100. Initial opportunities for improvement included:
- Adding meta descriptions to the pages
- Adding alt tags to images
- Adding Google Analytics to the website
- Compressing images to increase page load time
In addition, our team created additional informational content and pages to improve keyword rankings on the website. Some examples include:
- Creating a FAQ page with relevant questions and answers
- Creating a “Coliseum in the News” page, including external links to external news websites
- Adding a form to a “Request Pricing” page
- Creating relevant calls-to-action (CTAs) throughout the website
None of those SEO improvements are earth-shattering, but the Coliseum’s team of two simply didn’t have the capacity to make a handful of website improvements amidst their day-to-day, community-changing work. We were happy to help!
The Results
At the end of our six month partnership, we revisited the SEO Site Checkup.
The new SEO score was 83/100.
Considering that all of the remaining “warning issues” were dependent on the website platform’s limitations, both the 9 Clouds and Coliseum team were thrilled with the improvement.
In addition to the SEO score improvement, when comparing our final month of work to the first month of the 6-month partnership, the Coliseum’s website saw:
- A 440% increase in organic traffic
- A 14% increase in new users
- A 21% increase in pages/session
- A 250% increase in contact page form submissions
- A 42% decrease in bounce rate
While the data speaks for itself, the non-profit’s team noted a few significant “real-life” wins:
- Receiving 3-4 form submissions per week on their “Request pricing” form, which did not exist prior.
- Seeing an increase in website leads interested in booking the venue for their Sioux Falls event.
- Growing their newly-created MailChimp newsletter list.
In addition, the Coliseum said that when people come to tour the venue in-person, they seem to be much more informed about the space than ever before, thanks to an increase in information online.
“The 9 Clouds team was a pleasure to work with! We not only learned a great deal through this partnership but saw a tangible increase in visitors to our website and inquiries about our venue.”
Alasdair Selmes, Assistant Director, Sioux Falls Coliseum
Need Help With Your SEO?
If you’re a Sioux Falls non-profit with a limited budget, check out our community marketing program, Marketing From the Heart.
No matter where you are, what industry you’re in, or how many marketing dollars you have available, you can also win with SEO!
Learn more about SEO with 9 Clouds today, or request your free personalized marketing assessment. We’ll take a look at your website and other marketing efforts to show you some areas of improvement — totally free, with no strings attached.
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