Upstate Studios

After receiving a substantial investment from the Cotton-On Group in late 2022, Upstate Studios set out on an ambitious expansion plan, growing from 6 studios to over 50. This growth necessitated a strategic digital plan to support revenue targets for the new locations. The challenge was finding a way to drive awareness, new member sign ups and waitlist applications for new studios – all prior to open dates. The website wasn’t initially equiped from an SEO view to do this and Upstate where looking for ways to be more agile in promoting and marketing upcoming studio launches. . Hyper-local targeting was essential, as potential members typically choose a studio close to home or work. It was critical that new studios gain high Google Search rankings quickly to reach target waitlist numbers prior to the studios opening.

The first step to meet these challenges of this was to create modular landing page template which could be quickly spun up, ideally by Upstate 3-6 months prior to the actual launch date. These pages were critical to allow for promotion of the new studios as ‘coming soon’ to meet the new member/waitlist goals. We worked closely with Upstate to ensure the template was optimised best for converting new enquiries and maximising search visibility. This meant easy to edit modular content blocks to allow for location-specific content, location-related imagery and creative and call to actions. The template allowed for location-specific SEO to be done as well as other promotion. We also overhauled the website architecture to improve UI to better reflect the existing studio footprint. This allowed for a simple, yet optimised expansion of the location pages within the URL framework. Meta Titles were optimised with relevant keywords and location-specific information to boost visibility and click-through rates (CTR). Heading Tags were structured for content clarity, improving user and search engine comprehension. Site speed optimisation was performed to further enhanced the overall user experience. Over the next few months and ongoing, a robust link-building strategy was executed. High-quality links were built to signal local community connections, industry relevance, and authority. This included local links and citations, niche-relevant links, and high-quality PR & Blog links. Off-page optimisation efforts were complemented by on-page optimisations, such as content quality improvements and local schema optimisations to reinforce business information clarity for search engines. The results of this strategy were remarkable: – For the existing 6 locations, 50% of the keywords reached top 3 positions on page 1 within 6 months – Within 120 days, 100% of the new locations achieved page 1 rankings on Google, surpassing the goal of 50% – A huge 105% increase in organic ‘new users’ v the previous 12 months By integrating a dynamic approach that could adapt to evolving needs and growth, Upstate Studios not only met but exceeded its SEO objectives across all locations. This success underscores the effectiveness of a flexible and scalable SEO strategy in navigating rapid expansion while maintaining strong online visibility and rankings. Over the next 18 months, Upstate will be rolling out another 30+ locations, all primed to take advantage of the scalable strategy we put in place.