Case Study: Saddle Skedaddle
Technical SEO, domain migration, international expansion and PPC for the UK’s leading cycling holiday brand.
The Challenge
Saddle Skedaddle is a well-established brand with a strong following in the cycling holiday market. But when they came to us, their digital performance was stalling — and getting worse at exactly the times that mattered most.
Year-on-year search traffic was down 18% during key seasonal periods. Technical issues were causing widespread content duplication across the site. Their marketing team could see the problems but lacked the specialist knowledge to diagnose or resolve them. And they were planning a US market launch with no clear strategy for how to do it without undermining their existing UK performance.
"We chose to work with Cameo because we felt they understood us right from the start."
— Adam Walker, Head of Sales and Customer Experience, Saddle Skedaddle
What we did
Fixing the duplicate content problem
The immediate priority was the content duplication issue. We identified and excluded over 13,000 duplicate pages from Google’s index — a significant technical project that required careful execution to avoid further disruption. Resolving this was the foundation everything else was built on.
Domain migration
Skedaddle needed to migrate their UK domain as part of the groundwork for international expansion. Domain migrations are one of the highest-risk moments in a site’s life, particularly for a brand with years of accumulated search equity. We planned and managed the migration carefully, maintaining visibility through the transition rather than waiting to recover from it afterwards.
International SEO: US market launch
Launching in the US while protecting UK performance requires precise technical architecture. We designed and implemented a regional site structure using a neutral .com domain with market-specific subfolders, ensuring no cannibalisation or duplicate content between the UK and US versions. We also adapted content and metadata to reflect genuine differences in search behaviour between markets — ‘cycling holidays’ versus ‘bike tours’ being the most obvious example — and future-proofed the structure to accommodate further regional expansion.
PPC expansion
To complement the SEO work and maintain visibility during the migration period, we expanded Skedaddle’s Google Ads campaigns with a focus on non-brand lead generation. We restructured campaigns, refined bidding, and optimised targeting to grow non-brand leads by 286% while keeping cost per lead within target.
Analytics and tracking
Throughout the engagement, we implemented improved analytics capabilities so Skedaddle’s marketing team could make genuinely data-driven decisions — tracking performance across both markets clearly and understanding what was driving bookings rather than just traffic.
"We just wouldn’t have found that without Cameo, it’s not something we would have been able to do in-house."
— Adam Walker, Head of Sales and Customer Experience, Saddle Skedaddle
The Results
Beyond the numbers, Skedaddle’s marketing team had a clear strategic framework for the first time, with a roadmap they could execute with confidence rather than reacting to problems as they emerged.
"We’ve created quite a close bond and we’re able to crack on and create some great things. Anyone who’s looking to really take that digital strategy to the next level: I think Cameo are the people for you."
— Fran Wilson, Marketing Manager, Saddle Skedaddle