High competition SEO for Spitalfields Market
SEO case study competing for top #1 rankings when a brand name has competitors with closely related brand names.
Client: Spitalfields Market
Site: https://www.spitalfields.co.uk/
When I joined the account there had been the loss of the top ranking for the key brand term "spitalfields market" to competitor "old spitalfields market". A third competitor complicated this further: another competitor named "new spitalfields market", and all three different markets are located in London, UK.
The challenge was to improve the Spitalfields Market brand's online presence and overtake top organic search positioning for branded terms.
The approach covered multiple channels. It required aligning onsite content, social media, paid search and digital PR messaging to the brand story, alongside a recent rebrand and fresh media assets. Foundational SEO work helped the site align with search engine guidance. PageSpeed improvements, which hadn't been addressed before, also improved onsite UX — important for user engagement. Auditing the digital marketing channels including paid Google Search, social media accounts and backlinks uncovered mixed branding and messaging that required reworking. Competitor analysis uncovered new opportunities for boosting local SEO. Backlink building was done on select local directories and business profile platforms. This fed into the local SEO strategy including optimisation of the Google Maps/Google Business Profile and the creation of a Time Out listing.
An issue that seemed to work against most efforts was misinformation about the distinct Spitalfields Market vs Old Spitalfields Market vs New Spitalfields Market. The most reputable publisher, Wikipedia, was on the list of misinforming the public at the time.
It was a long process to revise the Old Spitalfields Market wikipage and create a Spitalfields Market wiki, then finally hyperlink critical info between both pages.
To increase brand impact in the public eye, PR efforts included a campaign with popular local media publisher Time Out.
The results have held, and credit goes to those who worked on this and maintained the SEO afterwards:
#1 organic Google Search ranking for "spitalfields market"
