236+ links helps travel brand boost visibility in UK market

PaulCamper is the AirBnB of campervans, they allow private owners of campervans and motorhomes to rent their vehicles through their website, giving security to the renter and the owner.

The challenge

PaulCamper was well established in Germany and the Netherlands and wanted to break into the UK market during the staycation boom.

Their challenge was that they had no presence in the UK and a number of established competitors that were ranking well and had a deep-rooted presence. Their website was new and therefore had no links and limited visibility in the SERPs.

PaulCamper enlisted Impression to help them:

• Build their visibility online
• Position them as a leader in the staycation market
• Improve the strength of their website to attract their target audience

The strategy

Our strategy adopted a layered approach, using campaigns with a travel and regional focus, supported by relevant reactive content that positioned PaulCamper as experts in the UK travel industry.

Building a strong UK presence

We set out to establish PaulCamper as a competitor to other similar businesses in the UK. To achieve this, we delivered several campaigns to position our client as an expert in their field and we built high-quality links from national UK and regional publications. We optimised all campaign copy to link to key, target pages, as agreed with PaulCamper.

In one reactive PR example, we focused on educating campers that were planning to go on a staycation that summer on the different rules and laws related to camping across the UK. The advice and insights ensured that campers were set up to have the best (and safest) experience. Outreached during the summer months, its topical nature made the campaign incredibly newsworthy and this activity alone achieved 40 pieces of coverage including placements in the Sun, The Express and the Reach PLC network.

In one data campaign example called The UK’s Spookiest Places we analysed over 13,000 entries on the paranormal database to find the most haunted locations in the UK, by doing this we were able to target national and regional locations, including providing journalists at regional publications specific examples of hauntings in their location.

Enhancing local visibility

Although there are no bases throughout the UK, we improved visibility by running campaigns with local angles to allow us to target regional media. The locations that we selected tied in with which areas were impacted the least by COVID-19 at the time.

Improve rankings and site metrics

With their UK website being brand new, one of our top priorities has been to strengthen the domain rating and improve rankings of target keywords. This will ensure that as more people start to become aware of PaulCamper’s brand, their website will be positioned well in the SERPs.

Our digital PR integrated with PaulCampers internal marketing and SEO teams as well as their traditional PR agency.

The results

Improved focus keywords

In only 6 months (June 2021-Dec 2021), we improved the rankings of 10 focus keywords by 193 places. One example, ‘camper van rental uk’ jumped from position 96 to 18.

Expanded and grew organic keywords

Their total number of UK organic keywords also increased. Starting with just 175, this grew to 1,099 with 34 keywords within the top 3 positions.

236 new links

So far, we have built 236 high-quality, relevant links and generated 38 pieces of coverage. See some of the publications that we were featured in below:

• The Telegraph
• The Sun
• Daily Express
• Metro
• Daily Star

During this time period, search visibility, impressions and clicks have all increased substantially. Metrics are currently at their highest, despite being out of peak season!