Wine tasters are presented with many choices when choosing which wineries to visit.  According to Angelsmith’s recent research, search and social are two of the primary channels that consumers use to make their final decision.   

Many tasting rooms aren’t located in a spot that offers a lot of foot traffic, and therefore the business needs to rely on organic search traffic to drive consumers to their doors.

Taking advantage of non-branded search terms and SEO techniques is the key to new consumers finding your tasting room. With a combination of interesting website content and thoughtful SEO practices, Google’s search algorithm will know exactly how to guide those consumers to your brand.

Problem

Panther Creek Cellars is a boutique winery in the heart of Washington Wine Country in Woodinville WA. With about 130 wineries to compete with, Panther Creek is located in the back of a long stretch of tasting rooms that don’t see much foot traffic because customers weren’t aware they existed. 

Panther Creek had a functioning website, but it had little traffic because their branded company name had low search visibility. Many of their pages were missing key technical SEO information, including titles and meta descriptions, making it difficult for search engines to understand what each page’s content was about. Users searching for the brand were also met with differing contact information across a multitude of sites. This inconsistency in information combined with their isolated location made it all the more confusing for prospective visitors to plan or even want to plan a visit. When Angelsmith first began working with Panther Creek, they were losing in search rankings for their own business name to a high school of the same name.

Solution

Panther Creek reached out to Angelsmith to help the winery improve its visibility among those searching for wine tasting experiences, and as a result, drive customers to their location.. Angelsmith began by establishing a thorough and data-driven plan for growing organic search traffic to their business website. 

To make the most of their budget, Angelsmith’s marketing team recommended a search engine optimization (SEO) program. SEO programs are designed to improve a site’s search rankings, therefore driving more qualified organic traffic to their website, while also delivering long term equity for the winery.  

Our marketing team started with a website audit, which uncovered gaps and opportunities to improve site health and usability. Next, we searched for keyword opportunities that Panther Creek could take advantage of and developed an editorial calendar and content marketing program to target non-branded keywords. We included those keywords in blog articles we wrote on topics pertinent to Panther Creek Cellars’ wine interests and posted the articles to their site.

Results

Search Rankings

• Within 12 weeks, search visibility for non-branded search terms increased 5,341%  
• Panther Creek Cellars’ website moved into the top 5 search results on Google among specific keywords.

• • Panther Creek Cellars was #1 in the search results and displayed as a featured snippet for search term “Pinot Noir Oregon”

• • Additional ranking improvements:
    • Pinot noir from Oregon, #4 up from 51+
    • Best pinot noir in oregon, #4 up from 51+
    • Basic wine terms, #4 up from 51+
    • Wine lingo, #4 up from 51+
    • Oregon pinot, #4 up from 51+
    • Wine tasting lingo, #4 up from 51+
    • Oregon pinot noir, #5 up from 51+
    • Willamette valley pinot noir, #9 up from 51+

Organic Traffic Users

• Within 3 months, organic traffic users became the leading traffic source, driven by non-branded search terms such as Oregon pinot noir, Willamette Valley pinot noir, and wine terms.  This is particularly compelling because they are located in Washington.

• Organic traffic for January 2020 through July 2020 accounted for 56% of total users, 96% of which were new users. 
  • Averaged 350 organic users per month prior to the SEO program.
  • Their average after 6 months increased to 500 organic users per month, a +42% increase in organic traffic users.

Quality of Traffic & Reporting

• A large portion (over 50%) of their traffic was bot traffic from Amazon servers, which led to flawed data being reported. After removing bots and spiders from the reporting, Panther Creek was able to gain more valuable insights about their users’ behavior.

Foot Traffic

• Tasting room visitors discovered Panther Creek Cellars through their “5 Facts About Oregon Pinot Noir” blog post once they moved into the top 5 rankings for “Oregon pinot noir” and similar terms.

Organic search consistently accounted for over 50% of total traffic and Panther Creek Cellars’ organic traffic numbers increased from around 350 users per month to 500 users per month (+42% increase). This means that users searching for information on where to find wine they enjoy, who had most likely never heard of this boutique winery before, were discovering their website through our targeted blog posts. This improvement accounted for a 70% increase in new visitors and 49% increase in returning visitors to their site in only a 3 month period. 

If you have questions about this article or would like to schedule a call for more information about how we can help you increase your website and search traffic with a thoughtful SEO audit, schedule a call on my calendar.