Sandford Orchards

Sandford Orchards are a craft cider maker based in the heart of rural Devon. They were founded in 2002 and remain a family-owned business today. They are proud to be based in the oldest working cider mill in the UK and they are blessed with some of the finest cider orchards in the world.

They first approached The PHA Group as they wanted support in driving new organic traffic to their website and to raise awareness of their brand in key locations within the Southwest. To achieve this, they were looking for us to produce both evergreen and topical content that established Sandford Orchards as an authority in the cider drinks niche. In addition, they wanted to rank more for key terms and pass this authority to core product landing pages. Thus, allowing Sandford Orchards to expand its organic presence and growth through a content-first approach.

Before approaching The PHA Group, Sandford was already publishing content. This includes recipe ideas that would inspire existing customers to use cider in exciting new ways. However, as they intended to grow their customer base and improve their sentiment with local audiences, it was believed that new content should be closely aligned with the correct search terms to increase local visibility.

Following a review of the market, we noticed a gap for helpful, well-written content that would educate and inspire new cider fans. This created a huge opportunity to position Sandford Orchards as thought leaders ahead of their competition by sharing better content.

To achieve this our SEO team carried out a content audit, competitor analysis and keyword research to identify the right keyword opportunities for Sandford’s audience. This data was then used to build an editorial content calendar that would drive consistent traffic and allow Sandford Orchards to publish fresh and inspiring content every fortnight and share it on their social channels.

Our expert writers from the PHA Social team created the carefully researched guides in line with SEO briefs and recommendations, taking care to make sure the new guides were useful for readers as well as demonstrating expertise, authority, and trustworthiness to meet Google’s goals.

The content recommendations centred on two types of guides. The first is topical content to tie into recent or local events, and the second is evergreen content that would continue to provide value over time.

Through our content-first approach, we have helped Sandford Orchard drastically improve visibility for their product landing pages. In addition, we have improved authority, increased keyword rankings, and boosted revenue. This includes a 47% increase in overall keyword rankings from quarter to quarter and a 148% increase in the total number of keywords ranking in positions 1-5. As a result, they are now ranking in the top 1 and 2 positions for new local search terms including ‘Devon cider,’ ‘Cider farm Devon,’ and ‘Cider producers near me.’

Furthermore, they have also seen an increase in revenue of 54.3% through organic channels and a 65.2% increase in new users to the Sandford Orchards website. Overall organic clicks have increased 110% quarter to quarter.