Introduction:

Over the last 3 decades, Ribcraft have built themselves up to the global leader in their highly specialised field and through this process have naturally grown an established high level customer base which globally includes several militaries, police organisations, emergency services, tourism companies and everything in between.

Regardless of their experience and status, their online presence across the globe was severely under optimised in part due to them “not needing to rely on it for growth”. However when Toby reached out to us with a number of outcomes in mind, it was clear that the team at Ribcraft wanted to maximise their online potential to unlock far more inbound opportunities from commercial organisations.

When we first met with the team at Ribcraft, they had just launched a new website in the UAE – a developing market and a hub for their operations across the middle east. They were also planning to refresh and launch a new website for the EU region for their main office based in the UK.

The Aligned team were engaged with the broad task of maximising their digital footprint in these two regions, and generating qualified enquiries from large commercial organisations.

Problems:

During our discovery and digital strategy process, we uncovered a number of issues with Ribcraft’s global online presence and created a process to grow and thrive.

1. The new website in the UAE was completely under optimised for search engines and thus they were missing key first mover advantages in this new developing market.
2. Just because their office was in the UAE, didn’t mean all their customers in the region were. There were some fantastic opportunities in neighbouring countries like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia that were not being capitalised.
3. In the UK, while their existing website had some good “page one” rankings for core keywords like “rib boat” and “rib boat manufacturer” across UK and Europe, their website overall experience was slow and very outdated leading to a much lower conversion rate.
4. Without a highly precise website SEO migration, moving to a new website in the UK could risk 10+ years of search engine positioning and relevant traffic.
5. Like in the UAE, their overall online coverage was fairly limited to the UK, even though they could easily build customised boats for organisations across Europe.

Solutions:

The Aligned team created a multi layered solution for Ribcraft UAE and UK to solve their issues and reach their goals of generating multiple commercial intent opportunities.

1. We performed a complete on page SEO strategy and overhaul of the recently launched Ribcraft UAE website that focused on the entire Middle East region and not just the UAE. This lead to Ribcraft leading search engines for a number of keywords that were directly relevant to their intent in the developing market.
2. We created and launched a strategic SEM campaign utilising Google Ads and Google Display across all their target countries in the Middle East to reach a new audience.
3. In the UK, we performed a precise website SEO migration when their web team was ready with the new website. This included URL restructurings, complete on page SEO, 301 redirects, site map edits, content development and more. Once the website went live, we continued our SEO efforts.
4. Once live, we developed a strategic SEM campaign utilising Google Ads and Google Display across the UK and some neighbouring countries to continue expanding Ribcraft’s leading position in Europe. This campaign still continues to grow every month.

Results:

While we have continued to work closely with Ribcraft globally to date to support them in their ongoing growth mission – the results so far have been very positive.

In the UAE, Ribcraft is the clear stand out digital winner in the RIB boat space, completely dominating search engines across the Middle East regions. This has resulted in multiple new enquiries from their ideal target audience to help them grow this new market.

In the UK, Ribcraft now organically dominates 95% of the RIB industries core target keywords in the number one position including “rib boat”, “rib boat manufacturer”, “rigid inflatable boats” and many more. They have taken top spots from their largest competitors and continue to grow their organic traffic which to date has increased by 200-300%.

The SEM campaigns are bringing in even more qualified traffic from across the UK and Europe which are converting into qualified high value enquiries. Their website conversion rate has significantly lifted due to the improvement in website quality and user experience.

Toby, Adelina and the Ribcraft team have received multiple multi million dollar contract enquiries from their ideal target organisations around the world and this continues to grow.

It has been a pleasure working with the team at Ribcraft thus far and we look forward to seeing them achieve their global business goals long into the future.