Case Study

How Marlife used SEO and content to reach their audience in a crowded market

Marlife
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"I highly recommend Digital Hydra to any business seeking a dedicated and experienced digital marketing consultancy. Their professionalism, expertise, and commitment to delivering tangible results make them a valuable asset for any organization."

- Catalina Opazo, Founder & Director

Project Overview

Marlife is a business hub with 2 locations in Malaga - both comprising of a large coworking space, private offices and meeting rooms. Their mission is to create the ideal environment for work, combined with a welcoming international community.

The Problem

Upon opening in November 2021, Marlife faced a lot of fierce competition in Malaga's crowded coworking sector. This was particularly noticeable when it came to attracting website visitors from search engines - outside of branded keywords Marlife was struggling to gain visibility and stand out against its competitors. 

Digital Hydra demonstrated a comprehensive understanding of digital marketing, and they contributed to enhancing our online presence and overall performance.

downloadCatalina Opazo
Founder & Director, Marlife

The Solution

During an initial discovery consultation I worked with Marlife's director to uncover their main business objectives and challenges. It became clear that Marlife's lack of organic visibility was a serious problem, but the competitive nature of some of their target keywords required some outside-the-box thinking.

Phase 1: Website audit and improvements

Audit: An examination of Marlife's website quickly revealed a number of opportunities that could be immediately actioned. In particular, leveraging title, meta tags and H1s to clearly communicate Marlife's offering to search engines and prospects browsing the search results pages.

Basic keyword research: Splitting my research into three areas I was quickly able to build a keyword list in English and Spanish to covers Marlife's main services - coworking, private offices and meeting rooms. 

SEO: Based off the findings of the audit and discovery phase I made changes to the website (both on-page and technical) to support Marlife's business objectives.

Analytics and website report: Although Google Analytics 4 was already collecting data, critical setup like conversion tracking and traffic filtering had not been done. I provided Marlife with a top-line website report on Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio), so they could easily monitor results.

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Before (left) and after (right): Optimising the copy in title tags and meta descriptions ensures that prospects browsing search engine results pages know that Marlife's services are for them.
 
 

Phase 2: Topic research and blog launch

During our initial consultation it became clear that as a newer coworking, Marlife was facing significant challenges in luring organic traffic away from long-established and larger competitors. 

Critical keywords such as "coworking malaga" were extremely competitive and difficult to rank for. My alternative strategy was to think more holistically about the pain points of Marlife's target audience - usually digital nomads, or internationals new to Malaga.

What was the real intent behind somebody searching for a coworking?

If Marlife could provide content that spoke to these problems before they pro-actively searched for a coworking, they could get in front of them first. 

Part 1 - Topic research: I deeply researched the common problems faced by those likely to seek out a coworking. I did this both online and through interviewing some of Marlife's existing clients, as well as their client-facing staff. 

Part 2 - Keyword research: I then used marketing tools to understand the approximate search volume behind each topic. This, plus the relevancy of the topic to Marlife's business objective, helped prioritise what content we would develop first.

Part 3 - Execution: I aided Marlife with the production of 4 pieces of content to launch their blog with. Two of these were deep-dive guides to help prospects choose a coworking or meeting room in Malaga. The others were guides on how to meet new people in Malaga and on the best networking groups and events in the city. 

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Marlife's simple blog addressed the urgent social and professional needs of new arrivals to Malaga, whilst still supporting their business objective of increasing the coworking's visibility. Example above can be viewed in full here.

Results

I advised Marlife that changes rolled out in phase 1 of the project may not provide immediate results, as SEO actions can often take 6 - 12 months be come to fruition.

However, just 4 months in, we saw an impact of impressions and clicks to the Marlife website for "coworking" keywords:

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Above: Screenshot from Marlife's Google Search Console account, filtered for "coworking" keywords only.

Likewise, providing clearer signals to search engines about Marlife's services improved their visibility for "meeting room" keywords, especially in Google's prominent local pack results, where they started to outrank long-established competitors with higher authority:

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Organic traffic grew in the 12 months after implementing the phase 1 changes, with traffic in April 2023 up  85% year-on-year.

Phase 2, which was rolled out around 12 months after phase 1, further built upon this increased visibility.

Traffic from search engines for November 2023 increased 30% year-on-year. Two thirds of this change was driven by blog content. Additionally, conversions for November 2023 were up 125% year-on-year.

Marlife now benefits from increased visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) for keyword opportunities identified during the topic research:

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Above: Search engine results page in January 2024 for "best networking malaga". By following best practice and providing high quality content, Marlife was able to increase it's impact even further with a featured snippet.
 
 
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Above: Search engine results page in January 2024 for "meet people Malaga". Although not ranking in the top position, Marlife outperforms several high authority websites in this space, such as Meetup, and is the only coworking in sight.
 
 

Full Testimonial

"I had an outstanding experience working with Digital Hydra for our digital marketing needs.

They assisted us in crafting engaging content for our website and optimising our SEO strategies. Digital Hydra demonstrated a comprehensive understanding of digital marketing, and they contributed to enhancing our online presence and overall performance.


What truly stood out was their commitment to excellence and their ability to tailor strategies to meet our specific needs. Their data-driven approach and meticulous analysis ensured that every decision was aligned with our goals.


I highly recommend Digital Hydra to any business seeking a dedicated and experienced digital marketing consultancy. Their professionalism, expertise, and commitment to delivering tangible results make them a valuable asset for any organization."

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Services:

  • Discovery consultation
  • Site audit
  • SEO
  • Content strategy

Business profile:

  • Company size: <10
  • Industry: Business services
  • Company type: Coworking, offices

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