National Garden Scheme

Significant organic search visibility improvement for the world's most popular private garden visiting scheme.

Services

Development
Insight & strategy
Programmatic SEO
UX/UI Design

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Company

Founded 1927
London, UK

Industries

Charity & Non Profits

Expanding organic search visibility for an iconic British charity

Increased organic search traffic by

51%

Improved top 10 rankings by

223%

Doubled Google search impressions

5.3M to 11.5M

Project highlights

The National Garden Scheme (NGS) entrusted Totally with developing a bespoke site to better serve its mission of promoting exceptional gardens across the UK. A separate JavaScript-based web app with rich functionality for search and bookings already existed, but since it had a different remit, it was underperforming in capturing search traffic. Our goal was to create a search-optimised platform while capitalising on NGS’s vast database and useful content.

Project Scope

The new WordPress site pulled data from NGS’s existing garden database, showcasing detailed information such as location, plant and garden types, seasonal highlights, and visitor amenities. We designed custom templates that were not only visually engaging but also strategically optimised with semantic markup to ensure better understanding by search engines. By implementing programmatic SEO, we automated the process of optimizing a large number of pages, allowing NGS to rank higher in search results for many relevant keywords.

Programmatic SEO and Internal Linking

One of the key enhancements was the strategic internal linking between related garden pages and regional listings. This approach helped distribute link equity across pages, ensuring that even lesser-known gardens benefited from the high authority of the site. Our SEO work also focused on optimising meta titles, descriptions, and on-page details to ensure that each page provided maximum relevance for search engines and users alike.

Results

Our efforts produced outstanding results:

51% increase in organic search traffic: The programmatic SEO approach allowed NGS to rank highly for hundreds of relevant keywords, leading to a surge in organic visitors to the site.
223% improvement in top 10 keyword rankings: This not only increased the overall visibility of the gardens but also ensured that more pages were landing in high-traffic search positions.
Search impressions doubled from 5.3M to 11.5M: This significant jump demonstrated the effectiveness of the semantic markup and content optimization.
17.5% increase in bookings: By bringing in more organic traffic, we helped convert a larger percentage of visitors into bookings for garden visits.

Improved visibility across all search engines, not just Google, thanks to a structured data approach and on-page SEO.

Data Reporting and Analytics

To complement the enhanced website, we also developed custom dashboards using Google Analytics and Looker Studio, giving NGS’s team actionable insights into key metrics. These reports helped track user behaviour, keyword performance, and geographic trends, ensuring NGS could make data-driven decisions to refine its strategy further.

This in-depth approach allowed National Garden Scheme to significantly boost both visibility and user engagement, ultimately supporting their mission to share and celebrate Britain’s finest gardens.

We love the wide variety of projects we get to work on as it keeps our minds stimulated. We won’t take on anything we don’t think we can deliver and we won’t take on anything that we don’t believe in.