qantas website seo audit 2016 - big brand seo website audits

QANTAS.com.auSEO & Content Strategy

Caveat• Lack of full version tools and information from key tools: Google

Analytics and Google Search Console• Lack of knowledge of exact goals and revenue structure of the

subsidiary businesses• Only considered the airlines aspect of their business for the analysis• Target pages of the website and external links to competitors sites

were out of scope• Sampled data used where detailed information not available• Analysis by no means completely accurate because of lack of native

data• Jetstar not considered as a competitor to avoid cannibalisation

Landscape Analysis• Qantas Group (includes Jetstar) - 62% market share in

Australia & 14.9% internationally in the airline industry

• International competition primarily from Singapore Airlines, Virgin Australia and Air New Zealand

• Domestic competition from low-cost carriers like Tiger Airways and Virgin Airlines

• Qantas dominant in the premium airline segment

• Serves low-cost airline segment via its subsidiary Jetstar Airways

• Strong tie-ups with Emirates Airlines and American Airlines allowing it to better serve the Middle East and North America

Continued…

• Domestic search market brimming with comparison sites (e.g. Webjet) and travel companies (e.g. Last Minute, STA Travel)

• Strong demand for comparison sites and travel agents/companies

Keyword research

• Conducted using Google Keyword Planner • Found terms related to Qantas• Selected commercial keywords with high

search volume to leverage the brand authority• Excluded informational keywords and

keywords with brand name• Conducted analysis for select few with high

potential and belonging to different categories

Selected keywords

Keyword: “business class flights”

Trend in Australia

Target page

Keyword: “cheap flights”

Keyword: “domestic flights australia”

Keyword: “flight ticket”

Keyword: “sydney to singapore”

Trend in Australia

Keyword: “flight deals”

Trend in Australia

Target page

Big gap

Issues

• Inconsistency across keywords usage on target pages – URL, title and H1

• Use of informational keywords or low search volume keywords

• URLs not optimised to include keywords or remove redundant keywords

• Lack of target pages – homepage ranks for most keywords

Recommendations• Create separate pages to target a new keyword

category. E.g. a page for ‘flight deals’ in Australia• Optimise the target page URL by including

keywords and getting the pagename as close to the root as possible

• Use same keywords in URL, title and headings• Follow the keywords with the brand name in title

e.g ‘Business flights | Business class tickets | Qantas’ over ‘Qantas business class tickets | Qantas’

Competitor Analysis

Metrics

Main competitors (organic search)

• Flight comparison site: Webjet http://www.webjet.com.au/

• Airline carrier: Virgin Australia http://www.virginaustralia.com/au/en/

Content comparison

Webjet Content – Diversity and Topics

Virgin Australia Content - Diversity and Topics

Temporary redirect (302)

Site Audit

Permanent redirect (301)

Not responsive

Menu bar and text cuts off

Looks alright on all tablets..

Mobile Site (in sub-directory)

Recommendations

• Make the website responsive • Add content to the mobile site (implement

hide/show)

Indexing issues – Case-sensitive URLs

Recommendation

• Permanent redirect all case-sensitive URLs to their respective URL with all characters in lower-case

Desktop site speed

.com.au and .com URLs indexed

SSL set up

http & https URLs indexed

2 versions of homepage

https://qantas.com does not resolve

Expired contest pages indexed

Other issues• Alt tags missing• Page errors• Common content duplication• Irrelevant meta descriptions for pages e.g.

“##LOC[OK]##. {1}. ##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##. {1}. ##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##. Skip Navigation Links. qantas.com. |. Skip Navigation Links. Home ...”

• Poor URL optimisation e.g https://www.qantas.com/fflyer/dyn/program/welcome should be changed to https://www.qantas.com/frequentflyer/program

Recommendations• All versions of a URL, be it - http, https, www, or non-www

- should resolve to a single URL. Enable permanent redirects for this.

• Implement only permanent redirect on all pages• Consistency in the usage of www or non-www across all

URLs on the site• Permanent redirect expired content pages and Not Found

(404) pages to the most relevant pages• Move in-line Javascript and CSS to external files• Improve site speed by using browser caching

Link Audit

Anchor-text distribution

Backlinks relevancy & diversity

Backlinks sorted by Trust Flow

Link auditing process• Profile backlinks from low trust flow and domain

authority sites first• Disavow links from not-resolving, deindexed and poor

directory sites• Disavow keyword-rich anchor-text links from low

authority sites • Use URL Profiler to profile the other sites on metrics

such as text-to-HTML ratio, titles, keywords etc.• Manually check all suspicious websites and disavow as

required

Findings

• Hundreds of links from websites with low-authority (e.g. domain authority [DA] <20)

• Websites with high authority (e.g DA>40) not passing enough trust due to industry irrelevance

• Websites belonging to aviation industry but only containing links and no content e.g. http://www.italy-ex.com/info/link

• Most backlinks have brand related anchor-text

Recommendations• Ensure linkage to the correct version of a page e.g. http,

https, www or non-www• Update anchor text from “quantas” to ‘Qantas’ or any brand

related term like ‘qantas airline’ that fits in with the context• Preference for backlinks from text over images in the future• Update image backlinks to text backlinks where possible • Update the backlinks to destination URLs for redirected pages• Update the backlinks to 404 pages • Use keywords in anchor-text only when using brand name

e.g. flight tickets from Qantas airlines• Leverage brand to get more links from brand related anchor

texts viz. Qantas, Qantas Australia etc.

Most shared articles with backlinks

Content Strategy

Article on AWOL

Article on Business Insider

Article on Architecture & Design

Majority of fresh content…posted on another domain

No engaging content on the site…for e.g.

and…

Formula for content success

When and where to share

Recommendations • Continue with current PR and outreach strategies• Get editorial backlinks through brand mentions and

long phrases with keywords like “Book your air tickets with Qantas” today

• Focus on news sites with large circulation, popular travel forums and social sites; shares from influencers in the travel and aviation industry

• Create engaging articles in-line with the brand identity with viral-potential

• Add/update content on high authority/ranking pages

Other suggestions

• Remarketing through Facebook and Google Display Network to website visitors

• Instagram Ads promoting

Thank you

Any questions?