The Bruxelles, j’arrive! Blog Project

This may come as a surprise, but I used to hate French.

Like every teenager across the UK, I had to attend classes as soon as I started secondary school. And it was a special form of torture.

Our teachers could barely speak French. They’d lose their temper if we got an answer wrong. And we were forced to SING ‘an introduction song’ in front of the class on a weekly basis. Like I said, torture.

I’m convinced this is why so few Brits speak a second language. We’ve been traumatised. But I’m sure that if we all had a teacher as good as Marie-Ange, things would be very, very different.

About Bruxelles, j’arrive!

Marie-Ange is a Belgian French teacher based in Italy. She offers online lessons through her business Bruxelles, j’arrive!, mainly serving busy professionals living in Belgium.

With over 15 years of experience teaching French as a foreign language, Marie-Ange knows her stuff. And her glowing testimonials prove it!

See why the UK needs her!?

All in all, Marie-Ange was pretty confident with what she was offering. She just needed to get the word out there.

Because although she had a popular podcast and a thriving social media page, it was taking a lot of time and energy to keep up with. She wanted a less demanding way of attracting new students, so she could take a break without feeling bad about it.

Enter: an SEO-optimised blog.

The project

Marie-Ange knew exactly what she wanted when she came to me: a series of Google-friendly blog posts that would bring more people to her website.

She wanted to use this space to share her expertise, show her teaching philosophy and ultimately, convert more students.

As one of the few teachers working in this niche, Marie-Ange had a BIG advantage. There were tons of people asking Belgium-specific questions in Facebook groups and on Reddit, but virtually no helpful (or original) articles around.

So, we made a plan to fill that gap with content that:

1) Positioned her as the language and culture expert that she is

2) Took her ideal students through the stages of customer awareness

3) Was optimised to rank well on Google

The process

While some of the keywords we targeted were easy wins, others were a liiittle more competitive. This meant we had to make sure Marie-Ange’s blog posts were more unique, original and relevant to the search term than everything else.

This is tricky when you don’t know much about the thing you’re selling. There’s only so much you can research, which is why so many articles say the same useless thing in ten different ways.

As a French teacher and a French learner, we made a good team. I used my personal experience of her students’ journey to empathise with their challenges, and Marie-Ange shared her perspective as a teacher to offer actually useful advice.

But Marie-Ange’s students aren’t just looking for language lessons. They also want to learn about Belgian culture so they can feel more at ease in their new home. So, we also made sure to weave in unique cultural insights that only a Belgian would know.

The results

A few months after publishing the first few articles, Marie-Ange was getting messages from her followers saying how useful they found the content:

Around six months later, the number of people finding her website from Google each month had increased by a huge 4455%.

And after nine months of regularly publishing blog posts, she was coming back from her summer break with more students than ever before.

The blog has proven to be an invaluable marketing tool for Marie-Ange, particularly when she hasn’t been able to post on social media.

Here’s what Marie-Ange said

“Between the end of October 23 (when I activated Google Analytics) and February 24, site traffic tripled. Google search has clearly become the main source of traffic (4,000 visitors over the period in question compared with 400 for the second source (direct traffic), which was not the case before. I have at least five regular 1:1 customers who have arrived via Google search in the last months.

One thing that I’ve noticed and that I really appreciate is the sustainability of the results. For personal reasons, I did very little marketing for several months, and the customers kept coming in thanks to organic search. It’s an investment, of course, but a long-term one.”

Read some of my favourite articles

It wouldn’t be a case study without sharing a few links to my work. Here are some of my favourite articles – but there are plenty more where they came from:

If you want to learn more about Bruxelles j’arrive! and what Marie-Ange offers or connect with her, you can check out her website here.

Or, if you want to get results like these for your business, click here to read about my blog content packages or book a call.

June 10, 2024