n 2010, when Bellagurl began working with the Outer Banks Weddings Association, a non-profit organization comprised of nearly 300 wedding professionals, we were asked to help them become known as a top ranking spot for destination weddings in the United States. Bellagurl got right to work implementing a digital strategy that encompassed blogging, an award-winning social media campaign, and a new website. The wedding association needed to increase their SEO for search terms such as destination weddings, beach weddings and more while developing a relationship with potential brides. Using many of the inbound marketing fundamentals, we achieved that goal, helping them become ranked #8 in 2014 in Yahoo’s list of Most Sought After Wedding Destination Spots.
Blogging was an important part of creating content that kept brides returning to the site for ideas and mainly visualization of what their dream weddings could look like on the Outer Banks. Next, promoting the blogs through their social media brought visitors back to their blog and in turn, visits to their website.
The importance of an informative, user-friendly, and aesthetically pleasing website cannot be emphasized enough when a business needs to not only reach but appeal to a potential client. It’s the first opportunity they have to sell the client on their product or service and it needs to have an immediate impact.
The Outer Banks Wedding Association decided to re-design their website, increasing its visual appeal, making it mobile-friendly and further increasing search engine optimization.
The OBWA website was a ground-up rewrite because their old site had become outdated and contained coding practices that were detrimental to user experience and search engine optimization. In addition, the site could only be viewed correctly using a desktop web browser. Browsing the site on a smartphone and tablet was very frustrating for visitors.
The new website has been built using “responsive” technology. In addition to the ease this provides, it also removes the chances that a search engine will “punish” the site for having multiple sites of identical content. In addition, the URL for every page will remain the same across all devices. If a mobile user shares a page with a friend who is browsing on a desktop computer – they will each see the page appropriate for their device.
The Vendor page allows the visitor to filter the vendors to a specific category. The old site would only display the vendor listing in alphabetical order, reducing the visibility of vendors that may have a name in the latter half of the alphabet. To overcome this, the vendor category pages were created using an algorithm that rotates the vendor sort order every time the page is loaded. This allows every vendor a chance at the top of the page.
Through our award-winning website design, Bellagurl can increase your business leads and make a lasting impression to all who visit your website. If you would like to increase your digital presence, further enhancing your search engine optimization, as well as representing your business or product in the best way possible, contact us to schedule a meeting to discuss your needs. We make marketing that matters.
