We wanted to improve our customer experience and raise visibility so that when customers were looking for courses or qualifications we would be able to (provide them with relevant information).
Mark Krull
Project Background
Client: LCL Awards ("LCL")
LCL Awards specialises in delivering qualifications and certification for the Building Services Industry.
Objective: Working alongside Butcher & Gundersen to help LCL Awards understand their online presence and brand identity by auditing their website and competitors.
Butcher and Gundersen focus on clarity and simplifying communication, they help you answer the questions of who your brand is, what makes you different, and why people would buy from you. This may lead to a client restructuring their website to make the whole customer journey easier for their target audience.
In this case, they analysed LCL's website for brand representation and who their target audience was; and conducted a competitor audit to identify LCL's unique positioning. From here they gave recommendations alongside our own.
The LCL website has been unloved from a customer journey and interaction perspective. It was there to serve a function… (and we now wanted it to also) provide a service.
Mark Krull
The Challenge
LCL Awards faced several challenges with their website and understanding their online presence:
They scored quite poorly when it came to technical performance, for example, they had no structured data, no meta descriptions or headings, and were not tracking any data.
They had low visibility for general searches and relied heavily on branded search terms, which was limiting their reach.
Their user journeys were unclear for their two target audiences, training centres and candidates looking for qualifications.
Key Issues Identified by B&G
Scattered Information: Content and essential information were dispersed across the site, making it difficult for visitors to quickly find what they needed.
Weak Brand Identity: The website did not fully reflect or reinforce LCL’s brand identity, limiting its ability to stand out and connect with the target audience.
Unclear Differentiation: The site lacked a clear message that distinguished LCL from competitors. This made it challenging for potential clients to understand LCL’s unique value and expertise.
Our collaboration with the B&G team was a positive and insightful experience. The partnership combined B&G’s focus on creating an emotional journey for visitors with the JLC team’s data-driven approach, yielding a well-rounded strategy. Both teams independently identified similar issues and solutions, reinforcing the need for targeted improvements to align LCL’s brand and optimise user experience.
Our Solution and Execution
We conducted a thorough SEO audit for LCL Awards and produced a comprehensive report which included some of the following:
Traffic and Keyword Positioning
One of the initial observations was a decline in website traffic, despite an increase in the number of keywords LCL Awards ranks for. Most of these keywords were in positions 21 to 100 (pages 3+ on Google), indicating low visibility. This trend suggested that while they had ranked well for certain terms in the past, they had lost some key placements over the last two years. Addressing this decline would require improvements in content relevancy, user engagement, and keyword targeting.
Content and Site Purpose
As aforementioned, the website’s content was scattered, making it unclear what role the website served. We gave suggestions for a well-defined content strategy and clearer structuring that could help effectively target training centres and candidates seeking certifications.
Technical SEO Analysis
Technical SEO Overview
The audit revealed a high number of critical errors and warnings that needed immediate attention. These issues were negatively impacting the site’s organic search performance, so addressing these errors would be essential for improving the site’s ranking and usability.
Crawlability
Crawlability is a measure of how easily search engine bots can access and navigate through a website’s content. LCL Awards’ crawlability score was generally positive, but we identified a high number of temporary redirects, which might have been unnecessary or incorrectly set up. Additionally, some important pages required more than four clicks to reach, which could hinder user navigation and search engine crawling.
Site Performance
Site performance assesses how quickly a website loads, which affects user experience and search ranking. LCL site’s performance was above average, with only a few slower pages. Most flagged issues were related to site structure, plugins, or Google Tags. While these didn’t require urgent attention, we recommended developers review these points to identify potential improvements.
On-Page SEO Elements
Internal Linking
Internal linking refers to links between pages on the same website, helping users and search engines navigate and understand site structure. A high number of orphaned pages (pages without any internal links pointing to them) and weak pages were found. We recommended that important pages should be better linked to improve their discoverability and support a more cohesive site structure.
Markup (Structured Data)
Markup, or structured data, is code added to a webpage to help search engines understand the content. Schema markup, for instance, enables specific search features, like rich snippets.
The LCL Awards website lacked schema markup, except for basic Facebook metadata.
Meta Elements
SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions
SEO titles and meta descriptions are HTML elements that summarise a page’s content for search engines and users. The homepage and many other pages lacked optimised titles and meta descriptions, which are critical for attracting clicks. We recommended creating unique, keyword-focused meta tags to improve visibility and engagement on SERPs.
The Results
Following the audit, we set up their Google Analytics, Tag Manager, and Search Console to track performance effectively. On the SEO side, we conducted extensive keyword research, organising keywords into groups based on different courses and categories. This included identifying 109 keywords currently ranking between positions 11-20, which present opportunities to advance to page 1 of Google.
To increase brand awareness and drive related searches, we also recommended they develop a content strategy that includes breaking their own news and creating blog updates with a consistent tone and engaging, relevant stories.
Since the implementation of our strategies, LCL Awards has started to see improvements in their online visibility. Initial results showed an increase in engagement rate by 10% and since February, ranked queries have increased by 180%, and visibility has increased by 148%. We also added FAQs to the site and they resulted in a 27% increase in impressions and 12% reduction in average position throughout the period of the test. The client has also begun to apply some of the branding recommendations from the audit independently.
Conclusion
The SEO audit and strategic recommendations provided LCL Awards with a clear roadmap for improving their digital marketing efforts. The process has laid a solid foundation for ongoing optimisation and growth in organic traffic.
Working with the JL Creative team was a good experience... I would recommend the service to other businesses in a similar position.
Mark Krull
Have you not yet implemented digital marketing strategies and want to increase your organic traffic and rankings on search engines? Or are you looking to solve a particular problem and want to take your marketing to the next level? Either way, a website audit can be a game changer and JLC is here to help.
Contact us today by filling out the form below.
If you want to find out more about how to conduct a website audit, check out our blog!