Brafton has been in existence for 14 years, and Gerard Malouf and Partners (GMP) has been a client for 12 of them. In that time, we’ve created thousands of assets across hundreds of campaigns, nearly all of them for the purpose of organic search engine optimization.
In the interest of not recounting more than a decade of SEO, this story focuses primarily on the campaigns we’ve been working on since the start of 2021.
The challenge
Gerard Malouf and Partners is a leading Australian law firm specializing in personal injury law, superannuation and total permanent disability claims, and inheritance and estate disputes.
Their goal is to rank organically in search for the types of queries that they help address as a business. This presence on search for relevant keywords builds brand awareness, demonstrates credibility and creates leads for GMP.
Our Work
We’ve taken a two-pronged approach to helping GMP rank on Page 1 for strategic keywords:
- New content creation: We created new blog posts and landing pages for specific keyword targets.
- Content reoptimization: We optimized blog posts and landing pages they already had on their site to rank on Page 1 for specific keywords.
In both cases, we conducted keyword research to figure out what topics to cover. We then created Search Performance Briefs (SPBs) for each keyword. These documents compile dozens of metrics — including in-depth SERP analysis of the top-20 results — into a guide that helps Brafton writers create the most comprehensive piece of content on the web for a particular topic.
In other words, SPBs improve the likelihood that a piece of content we create will rank on Page 1 for a strategic keyword.
In total, we’ve used this method to create or reoptimize approximately 94 blog posts and landing pages for GMP since the start of 2021.
The Outcome
March 2021 – March 2022
Rankings
- 52 of the pages we worked on rank on Page 1 for their target keywords.
- 16 of those pages are in position 1.
Conversions
- 1,222 goal completions directly from the GMP blog.
- 973 of them were commercial-intent conversions (phone calls or inquiries).
- At least 683 additional conversions on other pages after landing on a blog post.
Traffic
- 60% of all site traffic came from organic search.
- 74.5% of that organic traffic came from the blog.
- In total, the blog accounts for 46% of all website traffic; note that most of the blog content on GMP’s website was created and/or reoptimized by Brafton.
In total, we added 30 new Page 1 keyword rankings in one year. An additional 22 pages that already ranked on Page 1 were optimized to rank even higher — hence the total 52 Page 1 rankings.
As a percentage, that means approximately 55% of the keywords we targeted ended up on Page 1.
Traffic and goal completions in 2021 for the blog post, “How long after a car accident can you file a claim in Australia?”
Informational blog content isn’t typically focused on commercial-intent conversions. Even in GMP’s situation, the overwhelming majority of “macro” conversions take place on core landing pages (e.g., the homepage). Rather, a blog’s purpose is to create a presence in search for the topics that matter to your audience.
In GMP’s case, the topics they target on their blog often relate directly to a legal battle or question that GMP’s lawyers help with. By establishing a presence in SERPs for these important questions, GMP shows that they not only care about these topics, but are experts in them. This further underscores the importance of creating reliable, high-quality content that is optimized to perform in search.
And that’s exactly what we’ve achieved in the past year. We managed to win dozens of Page 1 rankings that have generated more than 100,000 sessions, and nearly 2,000 website conversions, more than half of which involved either a phone call or online inquiry to learn more.
According to Gerard Malouf, Chairman, this work — both from the past year, and the past 12 — has been essential to GMP’s growth:
“Brafton’s is without doubt an integral aspect of our continued success and dramatic growth whereby we are now operating across Australia.”
