BALI website audit reveals listing performance

Over the past three months, the British Association of Landscape Industries (BALI) main website has been monitoring site traffic via an extensive third-party audit carried out by BALI Digital provider and Registered Affiliate member Adtrak. The digital marketing agency, who are also Google Premier Partners, provided an in-depth report following the audit which the team at Landscape House has now reviewed.

The audit revealed several interesting findings which BALI would like to share with members in order to improve the traffic to the website, and most importantly, to increase the number of profile visits for member listings and to increase the overall ranking position of the BALI website on Google.

Some of the main findings included:

• The website is fully compatible on mobile devices which Google use as one of their ranking factors when determining where a site sits within a search
• Although the website is mobile-friendly, 75% of site users are mainly operating on a desktop compared to 23% mobile and the remainder on tablet
• The search bar on the homepage, where users find a member, received a high level of engagement observed by click maps and recordings over the last three months
• The online directory performs well with a high level of engagement with the available search functions and member contact details
• News pages brought in 10,000 unique visitors in the last 12 months, with 37,000 impressions. Want your story to be added for free? You can upload your content.
• BALI has the highest domain authority (Google recognise it as being trustworthy and informative with a healthy level of backlinks) and some of the highest traffic within the landscape industry when compared to other industry organisations

The audit also revealed several interesting outcomes around member profiles. In short, the profiles that have been updated with content (logo, main photo, contact details, social media links, projects, testimonials and meet the team bios) were all in the ‘Top 20’ bracket with the highest level of engagement from site visitors. A lot of engagement was monitored across projects and meet the team pages, with visitors looking for examples of work and the faces behind that work to help build trust. The average time spent reviewing a member’s profile was just over 2 minutes. This proves that a fully completed profile will work a lot harder in generating potential new referrals to your business than an incomplete profile.

It’s also worth noting that for Google to locate your profile on the search engine, you must include keywords in your main company description and projects, where possible. These can range from types of service to location-based words where the project was carried out. Adtrak has put together a list of suggested top keywords based on a recent list extracted from Google, below (please note this list is not 100% accurate as keywords vary depending on the search criteria, such as user’s location, and should only be used as guidance):

So how do I update my profile?

For BALI members who have a website profile as part of their membership, you can start to update the content by logging in to your member’s area, also known as the My BALI Area, and clicking the Update Directory Profile button. This section allows you to update key areas of your profile such as the logo, main photo, latest projects, client testimonials, industry accreditations and team members pages. BALI Registered Contractor Kings Landscape (Milton Keynes) has kindly allowed members to use their profile as an example of a completed directory listing. Earlier this year, BALI published a helpful top tips page on updating the profile which can be accessed here.

If members find they are struggling to update their profiles or would like further assistance please contact Marketing and Communications Officer Trushali Chudasama at trushali.chudasama@bali.org.uk or a call can be set up to go through your My BALI Area in more detail. If you are not currently a Registered member and would like to know more about upgrading membership to allow for a website profile to be added, please contact Sales Officer Alex Newberry at alex.newberry@bali.org.uk.