From Low Search Visibility to High Booking Velocity

Alaska

Client Overview

Niche: Alaskan Wilderness

Business Model: Curating immersive stays and guided experiences across the Kenai Peninsula, showcasing its natural beauty and local wildlife

Key Activities:Sustainable Salmon fishing guided tours

Audience: Worldwide, Primarily United States, UK and Europe.

Challenge

I first met Mark, the guide and owner, during a holiday trip to Alaska. At the time, he had no idea I worked in digital marketing—but as we chatted, he shared how business had been really lacklustre that season. He mentioned that his website used to rank at the top of Google but had since slipped to page four or five, and he couldn’t figure out why. Mark had been working with a previous marketing agency for a couple of years but had grown increasingly frustrated with the lack of strategic direction, poor communication, and the sudden drop in both rankings and traffic.

Solution

We returned to core fundamentals and rebuilt the digital marketing infrastructure with a focus on data clarity, conversion efficiency, and strategic creative execution.

 ✓ Audit & Penalty Removal

Our initial audit revealed that the client had a Google penalty (yes, these still exist). In essence this had a negative effect inflicted on a website’s rankings. The reason? Ahrefs and Google Search Console unveiled a huge amount of low-quality backlinks the previous agency had built. We set up a disavow file and used the disavow tool to notify Google to fully disqualify these links and not associate them with the site. 

 ✓ Out with the old in with the new

Disavow can take quite a long time for a site to recover after a penalty, therefore we created a sister website to keep the enquiries coming through whilst we rebuilt quality content, attracted links naturally and regained the loss in rankings and search traffic.

 

Results

  • Within 12 weeks rankings returned to the top of Google
  • Sister website also entered the top spots, meaning the client now had more real estate on the first page.

Flowing River of Leads

  • Leads returned and Mark has had some of his best-ever months.
  • Beyond the business results, Mark gives back to his community — he created an annual community-driven initiative that educates local elementary students about environmental conservation and supports efforts to revitalise the Kenai River.

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