Apex Predators

Apex Predators are the leading Shark Cage Diving operators in Cape Town and offer a wide range of tours throughout the year from False Bay to Gansbaai.

At the start of April 2016, Apex Predators were referred to us to take on their digital marketing and Search Engine Optimisation efforts. Apex Predators were not getting any results with their digital marketing efforts and commissioned us to run with their search engine optimisation and pay per click inbound marketing channels.
We jumped in with both feet to assist Apex Predators in growing their business from both an organic SEO and PPC angle.

There were a number of actions that we took on the website. Amongst these, the primary tasks involved:

Page Architecture – The whole website needed a better structure, pages existed all over the place and weren’t correctly connected together in a topical manner.
Keyword Positioning – As with the page structure, no proper keyword research had been performed and keywords were scattered all over the place in a manner that wasn’t strategic.
Keyword Research – We used a combination of strategies to determine which keywords were being searched for by people in various countries. This involved competitor research, software usage and per pay click campaigns via Google search.
Content Creation – The website lacked content in a big way, we worked with Jako to triple the amount of content on the website. Done against a strategic plan around keyword research.
Link Building – The website had few links from other websites yet offered really valuable content, we built links to assist in seeding the new valuable content.
Local Search – A big requirement was for the website to appear in the local search map pack, we set up the Google My Business account, optimised it and got it featured.
Tracking – The website was set up on Google Analytics but was not working. We created a Google Tag Manager account, set up Google Analytics tracking as well as Google Search Console. Furthermore, we set up a suite of conversion points to assist in determining success points.

All the steps we took were underpinned by deep competitor research which revealed the top 4 industry leaders and this allowed us to understand not only what Google expected within this vertical but also what the industry leaders lacked.

We witnessed a 43% increase in organic traffic to the site
Their general enquiries were boosted by 64%
We increased the number of people booking shark cage diving trips by 300% in a year.
The conversion rate, i.e. how often an interaction with Apex Predators’ website leads to a booking, rose from 9.5% to 37.5%.
Traffic brought to the Apex Predators by pay per click advertising increased by a massive 375%.