Our Director, James Starkey explores the story behind the award shortlisted campaign that turned organic search into the leading driver of enquiries for a new UK nursery brand
Black Lab Digital has recently been shortlisted for Standout B2C SEO Campaign of the Year, by the UK Digital Marketing Excellence Awards, for its work with childcare provider Partou UK, recognising a campaign that did not simply improve performance, but built it from the ground up.
The shortlist reflects a piece of work that began without the advantages most SEO strategies rely on. When Partou entered the UK market, there were no rankings to improve, no traffic to refine, and no brand recognition to build upon. What existed instead was a clear commercial requirement to generate enquiries and applications across more than one hundred locations in a highly competitive, locally driven sector.
What followed was not an optimisation exercise, but the deliberate construction of an organic search channel, one that now sits at the centre of Partou’s UK growth.
When there’s no baseline, the strategy has to change
Most SEO campaigns begin with some form of existing performance, even if it is underwhelming, it provides a starting point, something to analyse, refine, and improve over time. This campaign began without that foundation. Partou arrived in the UK with minimal organic visibility and no meaningful search presence, competing against providers who had been building local authority for years.
That changes the nature of the work entirely. Instead of asking how performance can be improved, the question becomes how it can be created in the first place. Visibility, trust, and demand all need to be established simultaneously, and they need to be built in a way that can support both customer acquisition and recruitment from day one.
A national challenge made up of local behaviour
Childcare search behaviour is inherently local. Parents are not comparing options across regions, they are searching within a defined radius, often within a few miles, using highly specific, intent-driven queries.
This meant that while the business objective was national growth, the execution needed to happen locally, across more than 100 individual markets. Each location had its own:
- competitive landscape
- search demand patterns
- expectations from both users and search engines
Visibility, therefore, had to be earned repeatedly, location by location, rather than assumed at a brand level.
Why a templated approach would have limited growth
A templated rollout would have been the simplest way to scale, applying consistent page structures and duplicated content across locations. It is a common approach in multi-site SEO, but one that often struggles to perform in local search.
The reason is straightforward. Local search does not reward uniformity, it rewards relevance. That relevance comes from signals that demonstrate a genuine connection to a place, whether through content, listings, or contextual detail.
Instead of relying on templates, the strategy focused on building a scalable framework that allowed for local specificity. This included:
- Individually optimised Google Business Profiles for each location
- Location-specific keyword strategies grounded in real search behaviour
- Bespoke content tailored to each nursery’s catchment area
The result was not a single campaign, but a coordinated system of local strategies working together.
The infrastructure behind the strategy
What sits behind this type of strategy is often less visible, but no less important. Scaling local SEO across more than one hundred locations requires a site that is structurally capable of supporting it.
This meant aligning:
- internal linking structures to distribute authority effectively
- page hierarchy to support both user navigation and search understanding
- content architecture to ensure each location could compete locally
Without this foundation, even the most well-executed local strategy struggles to perform consistently.
When organic becomes the primary channel
As the campaign developed, organic search moved beyond being a supporting channel and became the primary driver of performance. This shift was not gradual in the traditional sense, but structural, reflecting the strength of the foundation that had been built.
Within twelve months, the campaign delivered:
- 24,700 conversions from organic search
- 281% growth in organic traffic
- Organic accounting for 46% of all enquiries
- An 867% increase in job applications
These figures are significant not just for their scale, but for what they represent. This was not a case of improving an existing channel. It was the creation of one.
What the data reveals about real user journeys
Looking beyond the headline metrics, user behaviour provides further insight into how the strategy performed. A large proportion of users who converted through organic search did so without interacting with any other channel.
This suggests that search was not simply assisting conversions, but often initiating and completing them. In categories where decisions are made quickly and locally, this becomes increasingly important. The point of discovery and the point of decision are often the same, which places greater emphasis on being present and relevant at that exact moment.
Why this approach is being recognised by the UK Digtial Marketing Excellence Awards
The shortlisting for Standout B2C SEO Campaign of the Year reflects both the results achieved and the approach taken to achieve them. What sets this campaign apart is the balance between scale and specificity. Each location required a tailored approach, yet all activity needed to contribute to a unified, measurable outcome.
This was not a one-size-fits-all rollout. It was more than one hundred local strategies operating within a single, coherent framework.
What this means for multi-location brands
For businesses operating across multiple locations, the takeaway is relatively clear. Growth does not come from treating locations as a single entity and applying uniform solutions. It comes from recognising that each operates within its own micro-market and requires a level of attention that reflects that reality.
The challenge is not whether a strategy can scale, but whether it can do so without losing the specificity that drives performance.
What this campaign ultimately demonstrates is that organic search, when approached with the right level of intent and detail, is capable of doing far more than supporting other channels. It can establish presence, build trust, and drive meaningful commercial outcomes in its own right.
When you start from zero, that is not just a constraint. It is a test of whether your strategy is capable of creating something that did not previously exist. In this case, it was.
