A destination marketing organisation, ranking where visitors actually search.
How we rebuilt Visit Newcastle's technical SEO and content alignment, and grew organic traffic 64% to a 52k/mo peak by ranking where travellers actually search.
Where Visit Newcastle was when we walked in.
Visit Newcastle is the official destination marketing organisation for the city, responsible for promoting Newcastle's tourism, events, food scene, coastal adventures and visitor economy. The website is the primary platform for showcasing the city to travellers planning their stay. By mid-2023, despite strong brand recognition, the site faced significant SEO challenges that were quietly limiting how well visitors could find the city's experiences online.
The brief was a focused SEO programme: rebuild the technical foundation (the site was carrying canonical errors, pagination problems, and a substantial backlog of legacy 404s), align content to how visitors actually search for destination experiences, and provide the internal team with frameworks to scale ongoing publishing. Within 18 months, organic traffic had grown 64% and the site was ranking for the destination queries that drive real tourism behaviour.
- Canonical + pagination errors quietly suppressing visibility across key pages
- Hundreds of legacy 404s hurting crawl efficiency and user experience
- On-page content not mapped to how visitors actually search for Newcastle experiences
- No structured content opportunity framework, leaving publishing decisions ad-hoc
- Complex internal stakeholder workflow requiring clear guidance to scale
- Site visibility under-performing relative to brand recognition
Three moves that turned a strong brand into strong search visibility.
- 01
Fixed every technical SEO blocker first
Canonicals, pagination, 404 cleanup.
Before any content work, we resolved the technical blockers that were suppressing visibility: canonical errors, pagination structure, internal linking inefficiencies, and the substantial 404 backlog that was costing crawl efficiency. The foundation work wasn't visible to a casual visitor, but it was the prerequisite for everything else to compound.
- 02
Built a content mapping system from real search behaviour
Visitors → queries → pages.
We developed a comprehensive content mapping system based on the actual queries travellers use when researching Newcastle. The system identified high-value destination queries (accommodation, things to do, food, events) and aligned existing pages to those opportunities, ensuring the site showed up for the searches that drive real visit intent.
- 03
Worked with the in-house team for scalable publishing
Frameworks, not bottleneck.
Visit Newcastle has a complex internal publishing workflow with multiple stakeholders. Rather than create a dependency on us, we built frameworks the internal team could use directly (content briefs, optimisation checklists, performance review templates) so the SEO improvements could continue scaling without an agency in the critical path of every page.
- Comprehensive technical SEO audit Mo 1
- Canonical + pagination + structural fixes Mo 1–2
- Legacy 404 cleanup + redirect mapping Mo 2
- Content mapping system (queries → pages) Mo 2–3
- Priority page optimisation + content refresh Mo 3–6
- Internal publishing frameworks + checklists Mo 4
- Monthly performance + ranking reporting Ongoing
The full picture, by the numbers.
Monthly organic sessions (clean samples). Pre-engagement baseline (Jan-May 2023) sat around 25k/mo. Engagement begins June 2023; the climb to the Oct 2024 peak of 52k/mo reflects the combined technical foundation work and content alignment compounding.
How the destination marketing engine got rebuilt.
Three areas of focused SEO work across the long-running partnership: technical foundation, content alignment, and internal capability building.
Technical foundation Fixed every blocker before adding any content
The first months were diagnostic + repair work. Canonical errors were sending mixed signals about which URLs should rank. Pagination was preventing deep content from being indexed properly. Hundreds of legacy 404s were wasting crawl budget. None of it was visible from the front-end, yet all of it was suppressing what the site could rank for.
- Canonical errors resolved across the entire site
- Pagination structure rebuilt so deep content was indexable
- Legacy 404 backlog systematically cleaned: every URL either restored, redirected, or formally retired
- Internal linking restructured to feed authority into the high-value destination pages
The technical work was unglamorous but indispensable. By the time the content alignment phase began, the site was capable of compounding the authority that subsequent work would produce, instead of leaking it through structural problems.
Content alignment Mapping pages to how visitors actually search
Destination marketing content is often written from the organisation's perspective (event calendars, official categories) rather than the visitor's. We rebuilt the content mapping around how travellers actually search, then aligned existing pages to those queries.
- Query research across the visitor journey: research → comparison → booking-intent
- Content mapping system identifying the highest-value destination queries
- Priority page optimisation: titles, meta, on-page content, internal linking
- Outdated content refreshed; new content briefed against the same query map
The site started ranking for the destination-led queries that drive real visit decisions: things to do, places to eat, where to stay, events on this weekend. The 76% growth in top-3 rankings is from this work compounding: the queries that matter, ranking where visitors actually look.
Internal capability Frameworks the in-house team could use directly
Visit Newcastle has a complex internal workflow with multiple stakeholders contributing content. We built frameworks the team could use directly, so the SEO improvements would continue scaling without an agency bottleneck in every publishing decision.
- Content briefs templated for the internal team to use on any new piece
- On-page SEO checklist for the multi-stakeholder review workflow
- Performance review template surfacing the right metrics for the right stakeholders
- Quarterly strategic reviews aligning the team on the next phase of opportunity
Capability transfer is the underrated part of an agency engagement. Many agencies create dependency; we built frameworks the Visit Newcastle team could use independently. The site continues to compound through the team's ongoing publishing work, which is the only sustainable model for a long-running DMO partnership.
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