E-commerce
GEMS Education is one of the oldest educational institutions in the MENA region, with over 40 schools in the UAE and two in Qatar.
increase in traffic
increase in leads
return on investment
GEMS wanted to increase its online organic presence and provide its existing users with a better experience on their site to improve engagement and lead capture. With this in mind, our strategy targeted professional parents by focusing on non-branded terms to increase GEMS’ organic awareness and users. We soon saw rankings climb, driving a 30.9% increase in organic sessions from 350,709 to 526,817, resulting in an additional 176,108 sessions over six months.
The aligned technical, content, and UX enhancements on the GEMS site drove a 121% increase in organic leads throughout the six months, up from 204 to 452 leads, generating 587% ROI.
HOW WE DID IT
- Doubled down on content with a heavy focus on curriculum pages
- Optimized visibility, indexability, and performance of the blog
- Addressed canonicalization issues to prevent duplication problems
- Conducted organic link-building outreach
Working with an established brand like GEMS brings many benefits but a few challenges as well. The first challenge was their brand guidelines. We worked closely with the content and communication teams to ensure all content optimizations were accurate and aligned with the new brand tone of voice they were rolling out. This meant that the content production process had more steps, and we had to manage our timelines accordingly to ensure work was created and finalized on time. Additionally, for the GEMS brand, using industry-approved terms was crucial for the accuracy and credibility of the information they were providing to users. The problem? The users we were trying to reach did not use this terminology. We overcame this by creating informational blogs to target broader informational queries. These content pieces positioned GEMS as providers of user-friendly, helpful information. Furthermore, we added useful links to the functionality of each blog page to direct users to the money pages of the site.
“SEO Sherpa has been a great partner for us at GEMS. Their team has provided excellent insights and recommendations on how to drive non-branded awareness and traffic to the site."
Pablo Arguello
