How We Created a DMO that Grows With Each Google Update

The Challenge

We don’t always get to flex all of our strategic muscles on projects, usually because of time, budget, or scope constraints.

Back in 2023 we took a shot at launching our own website, Marthas Visit, that would serve as a playground for our fun ideas.

Our goal was to create a brand that served visitors of a market we know well, Martha’s Vineyard.

We wanted to have room to play, but also create pages and features on the site that delivered real and meaningful value.

Website Principles

• Provide as much value as possible to visitors.
• Focus on high-quality, human-made content.
• Create native tools (maps, ferry schedules, etc…) that enhance user experience.

Content Investment

We hired a local social media and content marketing agency, Shored Up Digital, to create a series of articles. We had worked with Angela and Marnely on past projects and knew they cared as much as we did about keeping it real.

We handled the keyword research and article planning, and they wrote content that was packed with value.

Afterwards, we went back through the content and linked everything together.

In total we spent ~$3500 for 25 articles, and this has been one of the best investments we made. The content, combined with a strong content strategy, and a great user-experience helps the website to continue to grow.

We have barely touched the website since 2023, and the website continues to attract around 50k visitors a year.

We have clients who spend more than $3.5k/month on paid ads and get less in return for that ad spend.

Think about that. For a one time payment of $3.5k, we have received the same amount of traffic as a business that has spent $84k in the same amount of time and will continue to spend $3.5k/month to keep the traffic coming in.

This confirmed our beliefs that investing in organic is the best long-term strategy.

Magic Functionality

Interactive map

We identified a large segment of users searching for a map of Martha’s Vineyard. This seemed like a great opportunity to build a unique feature that no-one else had. So, we built “The Interactive Martha’s Vineyard Map”.

Realtime ferry schedules

Another top keyword topic we identified was ferries. There was a large cluster of users figuring out how to get to Martha’s Vineyard. We noticed that no-one else had a comprehensive schedule of all of the ferries.

We created a real-time schedule, pulling data from relevant ferry websites and created one large page for visitors to get all of the information in one place. To this day, this page is the highest trafficked page on the site

Beaches

As part of our effort to create a strong information hierarchy on the website, we created a beaches directory which linked to the map, beaches, and towns together.

We focused on creating high quality content on these pages, and that paid off. A writer for CNN Travel stumbled upon the page and linked to it in his article. This backlink boosted the site’s domain authority and since that backlink, the website has taken off.

Simplifying complex information architecture

Our goals for presenting the information on the site were to directly address questions people would come to the site with, and create ways to discover new information.

Through our keyword research, we identified two main ways users categorize their searches:

| ### Locations (Towns) | ### Tourism Activities | |-- | -- | | Edgartown | Things to Do | | Oak Bluffs | Getting Around | | Vineyard Haven | Shopping | | West Tisbury | Places to Eat | | Chilmark | Places to Stay | | Aquinnah | |

This informed us about how users were thinking about information, enabling us to align the site architecture with how users naturally search. To match these patterns, we created two top-level structures: “/{town}” and “/{activity}” with thoughtful content on each page.

Rentals

We also noticed a large volume of queries focused around finding a place to stay. Like many tourism markets, there’s a shortage of housing on Martha’s Vineyard and properties book up fast. For many vacationers, finding the place to stay is the starting point to their vacation, before figuring out what to eat or which tours to book. It was important to make sure they had a bed to sleep in first.

We created another top-level structure to address this, “/vacation-rentals,” “/rental,” and, “/book.”

The /book route was create as a separate top-level route for expanding bookings to other types of tourism activities (kayaking, bus tours, etc.).

The final structure

The final architecture is intuitive, directly addresses user search patterns, and creates a clear hierarchy no more than three layers deep:

www.marthasvisit.com

• -> /{town}: (Edgartown / Oak Bluffs / Vineyard Haven / …)
• -> /{activit}: (Things to Do / Places To Eat / Places to Stay / …)
• -> /{guide}: (Ferries / Weather / Map)
• -> /{beaches}: (Lucy Vincent / Moshup / State beach / …)
• -> /{vacation-rentals}: (Edgartown / Oak bluffs / Waterfront / Pet Friendly / …)

Linking everything together

To enhance user experience and encourage exploration beyond why users first came to the site, we built a series of components to link everything together.

For example, we wanted to establish a strong connection between vacation rentals and their location, so we made sure users could navigate easily to towns in the vacation rental search.

The principles we adopted in the final architecture make it easy for people to find and discover information:

1. Intuitive navigation
2. Clear information hierarchy with nothing buried more than three layers deep
3. Interlinking related content to encourage discovery

On towns page, link to rentals, beaches, and other towns:

Results

CNN article, resulted in website being picked up my many other news outlets.