Moving a credit union off direct traffic and onto search

The situation

In 2024, between 51% and 82% of sessions on the Sheffield Credit Union website were direct traffic, depending on the month. That sounds healthy until you think about what direct traffic actually is: people typing in an address they already know. Almost everyone visiting was already a member.

Organic search was doing very little. In February it accounted for 8.64% of total traffic. So a credit union with a genuinely loyal base was invisible to the much larger group of people searching for financial services and never finding them.

What I did

The work was a straightforward SEO investment, aimed at high-intent search rather than volume for its own sake. The important decision was to optimise for what people actually needed once they arrived, not just for getting them through the door. Ranking for a term is worthless if the page then fails the person who clicked.

What happened

Organic search went from a minority share to commanding between 49% and 62% of all sessions across 2025. In March, organic sessions were up 240% on the same month the year before. February's total sessions grew 80%, close to double the previous year.

The quality moved with the volume, which does not always happen. Engagement rates rose from an average of 55% in 2024 to consistently above 65% in 2025, peaking at 70.6% in June. By October we were tracking 955 key conversion events, which is the number that actually matters to the organisation.

Partnership work alongside the SEO produced a 147% rise in referral traffic by September, so the site is no longer dependent on any single source. That resilience is worth as much as the growth.