Yosemite Tourism Bureau Sees 54% Increase in Organic Traffic

BACKGROUND

Noble Studios began its engagement with the Yosemite/Maripossa County Tourism Bureau in 2016 as the Destination Marketing Organization was merging its two sites: Yosemiteexperience.com and Yosemite.com. The goal was to consolidate traffic under a single domain while driving more traffic to the region -- including Yosemite National Park -- in a traditionally slower season.

THE PROBLEM

With a strong desire to increase visits to its business stakeholders, particularly during slower seasons, Yosemite Mariposa County brought Noble Studios on to help establish KPIs and a strategy for improving organic traffic performance.

The primary goal was to increase traffic to its partners -- both digitally and in person. The DMO's secondary goals included increasing organic traffic, newsletter signups, and enticing potential visitors to download a Yosemite Mariposa County vacation planner.

By tapping into BrightEdge's SEO platform and Data Cube, Noble quickly identified keywords competitors were ranking for that Yosemite.com was not. Noble also began grouping these keywords into four distinct categories for better targeting: dining, lodging, things to do, and general partner referrals.

THE RESULTS

Noble's plan involved a combination of new content creation to capture net-new demand along with the optimization of existing content that was already ranked on the second or third page of Google and was of high quality. BrightEdge's in-depth keyword tracking tool ensured Noble's plan went off without a hitch. At the start of 2017, many of Yosemite's high-priority keywords weren't even ranked in Google. Today, 91% of those keywords rank on either page 1 or 2 of Google's SERPs with 73% of them on page 1.

In June 2017 Yosemite.com saw a 25% spike in organic traffic, then a 54% jump in July. For new users there was a 41% increase in July. By the end of summer, Yosemite.com reached 235% of its annual partner referral goal, 127% of its annual organic traffic goal, and roughly 400% of its annual email signup and vacation planner download goals.

Our partnership with Noble Studios and BrightEdge has allowed us to quickly uncover opportunities to dramatically increase organic traffic to Yosemite.com!

- Terry Selk, CEO/Executive Director, Yosemite/Mariposa County Tourism Bureau

As Noble began to see substantial ranking improvements and traffic gains with its content optimization, it turned to BrightEdge’s StoryBuilder tool to visualize results for the client. By providing this executive-level snapshot, Noble was able to quickly show the client a direct correlation between the SEO strategy being implemented, the boost in traffic, and increased visits to the DMO’s stakeholders.