Guava and talkSPORT win Econsultancy Innovation Award for ‘Innovation in SEO’

Integrated digital marketing and technology agency Guava’s effective use of widgets to drive traffic to the talkSPORT website has been recognised at this years’ Econsultancy Innovation Awards, receiving the award for ‘Innovation in SEO’.

Early last year with the summer football transfer window approaching, Guava, part of the NetBooster Group, was challenged with developing an SEO strategy that would help to maximise traffic to the talkSPORT website, as fans surge online looking for the latest transfer rumour news.

Guava took the unique approach of developing a series of widgets which publishers of football fan sites such as zonalmarking.net and premiershiptalk.com could easily embedd into their sites. The widgets worked by presenting the content in an engaging, scrolling format, which increases the likelihood of those links being clicked.

Up against stiff competition from the likes of icrossing, Stickyeyes and the Met Office, the Guava campaign impressed judges by increasing traffic to www.talksport.co.uk by 400% to 4 million in just four months, pushing talkSPORT to number 1 in Google for the search term ‘transfer rumours’.

Ben Martin, head of digital, talkSPORT, said: “Guava is a digital agency which doesn’t do search by numbers. The team are creative and passionate about achieving big results and have certainly delivered above and beyond our expectations.

Teddie Cowell, SEO Director, Guava, added: “Econsultancy has always championed innovation in the industry, so to have our work recognised in this way is a great achievement for the team here.

“While social media may steal lot of the headlines, search remains the most potent and effective digital marketing discipline, which our campaign for talkSPORT clearly demonstrates.”

Econsultancy Innovation Awards 2012. from Econsultancy on Vimeo.