Skip to content

Case Study: Bowen Island Dog Ranch

This local business needed help pivoting to new services in 2020-2021. I provided SEO Consulting and developed a custom WordPress theme from Photoshop design files.

Website design provided by Bowen Island Dog Ranch.

  • Custom WordPress Theme
  • Photoshop to WordPress
  • Gutenberg Block Patterns
  • SEO Consulting
View Details
LIve SIte

I recommend Pete to everyone I meet for WordPress help.

We needed a major website upgrade to launch new services and kick-off a content marketing campaign to help our business pivot once the Pandemic hit. Our old site was difficult to update and several theme features were no longer working well after WordPress updates.

He converted our in-house Photoshop design to a responsive, Gutenberg-ready WordPress theme, optimized for SEO. He also created a series of training videos to help our staff learn how to manage the new website.

From recommending features to save us time and improve our users’ experience, to presenting a detailed plan for how to improve our local SEO, Pete offers us valuable insights on how to enhance our business strategy through our WordPress site. We’ve already seen better engagement and more leads from our website.

I definitely plan to work with him in the future.

~ Karen Munro

Custom WordPress Theme Development

What Was Needed

After an initial assessment, the new website scope included:

  • a mobile responsive design
  • build blog archive and post templates
  • speed optimization
  • a staging site for major site upgrades
  • custom typography
  • staff training on site updates

I also helped the Bowen Dog Ranch with SEO Consulting (see below).

How I Helped

I designed a custom WordPress theme with the following improvements:

  • responsive Block Patterns
  • reduced plugins by 50%
  • optimized images for fast loading
  • custom WordPress dashboard
  • staff training videos
  • improved page load speed
  • improved site security

These improvements helped to improve the click through rate (CTR) for organic search traffic.

With these improvements, page load speed was cut by 58%, down to 2.6 seconds from 5.2 seconds (site wide – Google Analytics).

Time spent on the site increased more than two-fold.

GTMetrix Report for Old Website – Nov 2020
GTMetrix Report for New Website – June 2021

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

An SEO Overhaul

The Bowen Island Dog Ranch hired me to provide SEO Consulting to improve organic search conversions, on-page SEO optimization and Local SEO.

After a comprehensive SEO audit, we identified these areas to address first:

  • Keyword Research was needed for over 60 pages of content
  • Competitor analysis for Local SEO and search SEO was needed
  • Backlinks from out-dated SEO were of poor quality
  • Existing blog content not ranking in search engine results
  • On-Page SEO had not been done on pre-existing content
  • Many Technical SEO errors needed fixing before launch
  • Google Analytics had not been configured to filter out spam bots and AWS app traffic
  • New content needed SEO copy writing improvements

How I Helped

I provided SEO Consulting with a content marketing plan for the business to implement over the next 12 months.

SEO Consulting improvements:

  • On-Page SEO for new and existing content
  • Technical SEO audit
  • Provided backlink and guest post opportunities analysis
  • Keyword research and Competitor analysis
  • SEO Copy writing review and revisions of content (60 pages)
  • SEO strategy

Initial improvements (first quarter post-launch):

  • Traffic back up to pre-Pandemic levels (June 2021)
  • Organic search Click Through Rate (CTR) increased by 56% from a monthly average of 1.6% to 2.6%.
  • 58% decrease in page load times (site-wide)
  • Bounce rate decreased from 64% to 39% (site-wide) – a 38% reduction

Need some guidance?

I offer free consultations and paid comprehensive audits with that give you the steps you need to take to improve your website and your business online.

Book a Consultation