eier Lake Resort, a stunning retreat in Hatcher Pass, Alaska, is truly secluded — not just because of its remote location near the top of the world, but also thanks to its quaint accommodations totaling only 12 rooms. A completely restored summer camp surrounded by 120 acres of untouched Alaskan wilderness, it’s the perfect home base for leisure travelers and professional groups alike.
The Goal
Increase seasonal bookings and general awareness of the resort as a destination for wellness outings, corporate meetings, and gatherings.
The Challenge
Low SEO rankings for critical keywords hindered the resort’s awareness online.
The Strategy
In order to get to the bottom of why their current SEO strategy wasn’t working, we performed a site audit to determine where additional keywords and key phrases could be incorporated, both on the public-facing pages and the back-end site hosting platform.
Based on those results, we crafted a robust strategy:
- Updated the website with a focus on font size and navigation.
- Created a clearer path to their contact form.
- Introduced a new CRM that included the additional touchpoint of SMS messaging.
- Created a strong backlink profile to target the core keywords.
- Created a strong Google My Business page to push keywords.
- Updated navigation links to create an order that was easier to use.
- Optimized the site SEO by creating a new keyword list; and added new keywords in titles and meta information.
SEO Results
- Meier Lake’s website has gone from no search result ranking to the top two pages for the keywords “Resort AK,” “Alaska resorts,” and “Resort in Alaska.”
- Those keywords all have a difficulty score near or above 40. (Keyword difficulty is a measure of how challenging it is to rank for a certain keyword, on a scale of 0 to 100.)
Overall Results
- User growth has increased 28% for organic traffic and more than 60% overall.
- Site visits grew 55% from Q4 2022 to Q4 2023.
- Form submissions increased 48% during the same time period.
Feeling inspired to elevate your digital marketing strategy? Reach out to Hawthorn Creative’s team of SEO experts.