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Boutique hotel, EdinburghUX and SEO success story

Taking an Edinburgh hotel from OTA dependence to direct bookings

A boutique Edinburgh hotel losing margin to OTA commission. A UX audit plus an organic content strategy took direct bookings from under 40% of the total to more than 70%.

  • UX audit
  • Technical SEO
  • Content strategy
  • Local SEO
  • Paid search
  • Social ads
blackivy.co.uk
The Black Ivy homepage, with the hotel wordmark, rooms and offers navigation, and a photograph of a guest room
Increase in direct bookings
90%

Direct bookings went from under 40% of the total to more than 70% through the website.

Organic traffic growth
110%

Monthly organic traffic rose from 6,000 to more than 13,000 within a year.

Conversion rate, up from 0.69%
3.2%

UX changes proved an excellent improvement, lifting conversions and overall bookings.

Overview

Black Ivy came to us to boost direct website bookings through Google organic and paid traffic. They also needed UX changes, because the website was not converting. OTAs such as Booking and Expedia were charging them heavily and they were not in an ideal position.

Problems

  • Lack of direct bookings, with very little traffic reaching the website.
  • Not ranking for any keyword in their own area when they came on board.
  • Rooms going unfilled, and the bookings that did arrive coming through third party OTAs.

Solution

I arranged a UX audit to improve the conversion rate and started an SEO plan to get people to the website through organic ranking. Alongside it I built a content strategy designed to bring over 15,000 interested visitors a month, people who could then go ahead and book directly. Results were impressive after a one year campaign.

Impact

Black Ivy now ranks for the main keywords bringing tourists to their door, which lifts both the hotel and the restaurant side of the business. They are also running social media ads with us and it is starting to work well for them.

Evidence

Straight from the platforms

Google Search Console
Google Search Console clicks chart for Black Ivy, flat near 350 clicks a day until August 2024 then climbing to peaks close to 690 in late November
Organic clicks, February to December 2024Daily clicks sat flat around 350 for the first half of the year. From August the technical and content work starts compounding, and by late November the site is peaking close to 690 clicks a day.
Semrush
Semrush keyword table for Black Ivy showing 552 tracked keywords and position gains on terms including brunch edinburgh and brunch spots edinburgh
Ranking gains across Edinburgh search terms552 tracked keywords, with the commercial terms climbing together: brunch edinburgh up eight places to seventh on 12,100 monthly searches, brunch spots edinburgh at number one, and a run of Morningside, Bruntsfield and Marchmont searches inside the top seven.

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