The Brief
WCRF were not ranking highly for searches around bowel cancer. The singular landing page they had on the subject was quite lengthy, attempting to capture all search terms in one place. We developed an SEO strategy whereby the bowel cancer content would be expanded into a multi-page hub, increasing their brand awareness in the cancer sphere and showcasing their expertise on bowel cancer.
The Charity
World Cancer Research Fund International is a not-for-profit organisation that leads and unifies a network of cancer prevention charities, one of which is World Cancer Research Fund in the UK. They champion the latest and most authoritative scientific research from around the world on cancer prevention and survival through diet, weight and physical activity to help people make informed lifestyle choices to reduce their cancer risk.
Our Approach
We planned the hub such that all relevant content areas around bowel cancer were covered, as informed by comprehensive keyword research. This involved creating each new landing page from scratch, writing the content, and supporting with design and optimisation. We also advised on how to place the pages within the navigation.
We designed the Hub to be maximally accessible to both users and search engines, by structuring it around a central hub page that linked to every subpage, and having those subpages link to each other in a cohesive way.
The previous content lacked compelling calls to action, so our optimisations included the addition of CTAs on every page, focussed on donations or the cancer health check tool – a priority asset for the charity.
The Hub went live in July 2023, and we have closely monitored its performance since, through a variety of Analytics tools.
Results
By September 2023, the Bowel Cancer Hub was seeing a 133% increase in organic clicks YoY, compared to the previous bowel cancer page. It was also ranking competitively for 51 priority keywords (including ‘main symptoms of bowel cancer’) that previously were not being ranked for.
In its first year, the Hub generated significant and sustained improvements in traffic across several priority keyword areas:
Clicks to the Hub followed a steady upwards trajectory throughout 2024, consistently exceeding the increase in impressions, meaning that not only were more people seeing WCRF’s content in bowel cancer search results, but that content had become more ‘clickable’ i.e. better serving users’ search needs.
Overall, the Hub campaign successfully increased WCRF’s presence in organic search as experts on bower cancer prevention, helping cement them as an authoritative source on bowel cancer. This increased their brand awareness within the cancer sphere and established a platform they could then apply to other cancer types.
“Uprise Up have been an excellent partner in helping us strengthen our visibility and authority around bowel cancer. Their strategic approach, from planning the hub structure to creating new content and optimising it for users and search engines, made a transformative difference. The uplift in clicks and priority keyword rankings has exceeded our expectations and has helped position WCRF as a trusted source of bowel cancer information. We’re delighted with the results.”
Head of Digital at World Cancer Research Fund