How We Increased Katana Asset Management’s Organic Search Traffic By 66% Without Ongoing SEO!

Here’s how we increased relevant organic search traffic coming to the Katana Asset Management website by 66% within twelve months.

Katana Asset Management is a boutique investment funds firm, managing both private & public listed funds.

Within twelve months of launching their new website, we achieved the following results:

• 66% increase in organic search traffic
• 229% increase in other relevant websites linking to the main business site
• 33% website conversion rate in investor application sign-ups
• All WITHOUT an active SEO retainer!

Here’s what the client had to say about that…

It all started with a simple email introduction...

One of our existing clients in the managed funds industry got talking to one of his associates.

He was over the moon with the work we had done on his website.

That conversation led to our client putting us in touch with Katana Asset Management.

The old Katana website was clunky, difficult to navigate and was not mobile-friendly at all.

Worst of all, it wasn’t visible in Google search, even when typing in the company’s own name.

Step One: Our ‘first date’ with Katana Asset Management

We started the journey by getting clear on where the company wanted to go.

Although the majority of business dealings were happening offline, it was clear the business needed an online face-lift.

Also, we needed to ensure the new website could be discovered in Google by prospective investors searching to find out more about them.

Step Two: Setting business-focused campaign goals & objectives

The campaign for Katana Asset Management was divided into three main stages: website, SEO and email marketing.

The client’s available budget for the campaign meant that we could only conduct onsite-SEO as we designed and developed the new website. Regardless, the results achieved would have been greater if an SEO retainer service was present.

It was also clear the primary online sales channel for the business was email. With that said, the new website needed to be optimised for capturing new email subscribers. An email marketing campaign would nurture those new subscribers with the goal of encouraging them to invest.

• Grow email subscriber database by improving the website’s ability to capture subscribers
• Increase marketing profitability and ROI by improving the website’s conversion rate
• Increase online search visibility by improving the website’s onsite SEO
• Capture more visitors from mobile search by ensuring the new website is mobile-friendly

Step Three: Planning a winning site structure & content strategy

With the campaign goals defined, the next step was to define exactly what the website needed for it to be effective.

This began at the sitemap level. That is: what pages do we need to have in the new website for it to meet the needs of the target audience?

With the sitemap defined, we moved onto planning out the page content.

Step Four: Designing & developing a mobile-friendly WordPress website

One of the main reasons why the old website did not rank well in search was due to it not being mobile-responsive.

Our aim with the new website was to not only make it look good but to ensure it works well on mobile devices.

The old website was also difficult to update and edit. That meant the client could not publish the information they needed to inform their clients in time.

That’s why we chose to develop the website in WordPress to give the client freedom and flexibility to update their website whenever they needed to.

Step Five: Optimising the new website for better search rankings

From the sitemap level, we made sure that content, design and development decisions aided in improving search rankings.

We also made sure that each webpage was correctly optimised for better search rankings.

Putting technical SEO aside, we made sure the new website had content that the target audience would find interesting and useful.

By doing so helped to naturally grow the website’s backlink profile over time as other websites within the industry linked back to the new website.

The result was continual year-on-year increases in organic search traffic to the website. In fact, organic traffic increased by over 4,000% when compared to the first year after the new website was launched.

Additionally, the website was able to achieve a strong investor application conversion rate of 33%. This helped to improve the ROI of the business's email marketing efforts.

Key results & takeaways

• You can achieve solid lifts in organic search traffic by ensuring your website is set up correctly
• Unique & interesting content that people want to link to is the best way to build links naturally
• Google will reward websites with great mobile User Experience (UX) so do pay attention to it!
• Good organic search results can be achieved with well-exceuted onsite SEO