Royal Zambezi Lodge: SEO

Royal Zambezi Lodge (RZL) is a 5*, award-winning luxury safari lodge positioned in Zambia on the edge of the Lower Zambezi River. The lodge’s mission is to help visitors from across the world enjoy the beauty of Africa without compromising comfort or authenticity of the wild.

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Brief

The RZL team approached us to help grow their bookings for greater consistency across the year, making up for seasonal dips. Their goal was global – targeting both international markets (US, UK) and the local Zambian market. This called for a dynamic, long-term SEO strategy – one which we have been implementing since June 2024, hoping to capture traffic simultaneously across global markets. Whilst we use an omnichannel approach including paid ads, our SEO strategy needed to employ advanced tactics, technical fixes and high-quality content to sustain a consistent flow of traffic and conversions to the site each month. Our strategy needed to stay responsive to trends and market fluctuations to improve rankings, optimise conversion rates and target key terms across all audiences.

Challenges & Solutions

Saturated Market

The UK and broader European markets were challenging due to strong competition and high-ranking safari operators dominating core relevant key terms. With major travel brands occupying top spots in the SERP – we had to think more peripherally, building visibility through less-competitive, non-branded keywords and gradually shift more towards commercial terms to capture users further down the conversion funnel.

Tracking Issues

Conversion tracking was not set up correctly before we started on the account, meaning we have no channel-specific conversion data to compare against. We set up tracking across multiple platforms and digital tools we use to track our performance monthly and yearly.

Content

The site had several existing blogs and a wide range of pages – this provided great value to the local market or returning customers, however there was a gap for content geared towards prospective customers. The existing pages on site needed further refining and optimising by current SEO standards and modern ranking practices.

Our Approach

Our strategy could be split into 3 parts:

Optimise current content

An initial site audit helped us to identify high-impact pages to optimise for both a crawler and the end user in mind. We avoid location-specific pricing and instead focused on search behaviour by target market. Local users used more specific, branded, long-tailed keywords that were less competitive (i.e. ‘lower zambezi lodge’ ‘zambezi national park accommodation’), whereas UK/US users needed more broad phrasing such as ‘zambia safari lodge’ ‘tiger fishing package’ ‘zambia luxury safari’. We addressed both types when optimising key pages like Packages, Cuisine and Guest Areas. By improving CTAS, imagery and layout we streamlined the user journey and boosted conversion opportunities earlier in the visit, and in more prominent places.

Create new content designed for ranking and providing user value

We analysed the Zambia travel content landscape, reviewed high-ranking competitor blogs, and tracked trending topics to build out a monthly content strategy. By researching global keyword volumes, seasonal search trends and conducting KOB (Keyword Opposition to Benefit) analysis, we identified what users searched for and when, along with ranking feasibility. This informed high-value blogs and topics targeting different stages of the marketing funnel. Popular topics included The History of The Walking Safari, From Savannah to Suite: Why You Should Go On A Luxury African Safari and Top Reasons to Visit the Lower Zambezi in 2025 – positioning RZL as a trusted, knowledgeable voice in Zambia travel.

Improve user experience through more technical optimisations and page restructures

Working with RZL’s developers, we tackled performance issues from the get-go, to boost page speed, image quality and dynamic functionality of elements. We enhanced basic pages with features like carousels, toggles and slideshows, aligning the site with modern competitors. Our initial audit flagged CLS and LCP issues, prompting us to optimise elements like the hero banner for faster loading. We also implemented lazy loading and dynamic CTAs to reduce bounce rates and improve engagement. Using heatmaps, we were also able to identify pain points and focus on accelerating key UX areas on site that were receiving attention. Overall, we were able to refine the user journey through smarter, faster and more intuitive page design.

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Organic Search Traffic

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US Market Growth

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Top 10 Keyword Rankings Globally

Since SEO launch, we’ve achieved an 81% overall improvement in our keyword positions across the account – with an 34% increase in traffic year-on-year, leading to over 200 form submissions and 33 assisted bookings during that period.

In April 2025 alone, we received 11 assisted bookings in just the first week.

QUOTE

“Working with Talking Stick Digital has been an absolute pleasure. Their team is knowledgeable, responsive, and a real asset to Royal Zambezi Lodge’s ongoing growth. Their strategic insight and hands-on support have made a meaningful impact on our digital presence, and we truly value the partnership” – Royal Zambezi Lodge