Roku Inc., The Roku Channel, Roku Originals, Roku Support, and Roku Community

SEO and Email Marketing Campaign Overview

Roku supplies affordable and easy-to-use devices for watching and streaming TV shows, movies, and music. This audio and video equipment manufacturer also provides its customers with Video on Demand (VOD) streaming services. A web version of The Roku Channel is available to customers in the USA to stream live shows, movies, music and much more. They sought Coalition’s help to grow their brand engagement and improve rankings of ad-supported content on their streaming platform. Additionally, the client wanted to increase their account signups, website traffic, video engagement time and video views on the web version of The Roku Channel. As the leading SEO agency, we designed, recommended and implemented on-page and off-page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies that helped grow brand loyalty and revenue levels for this Audio and Video Equipment Manufacturing and VOD Streaming Service brand.

Roku logo

Our team enacted prioritized strategies that resulted in improved organic and overall traffic, as well as improved placements in the knowledge panel in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for The Roku Channel, Roku.com, Roku Support and Roku Community.

“With the help of Coalition Technologies, we were able to meet deadlines and launch the new products successfully. Their holiday marketing campaigns also gained positive results. Overall, the team was collaborative and had an effective workflow.”


Bryan McNally, DIRECTOR OF CRM, Roku, Inc

Problem

Roku has several business divisions, including but not limited to: Roku Inc., The Roku Channel (TRC), Roku Originals, Roku Community and Roku Support. They are located in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and across the world in over a dozen other countries. To develop a successful campaign strategy unique to the Roku brand, our team conducted an in-depth review of the client’s goals, key performance indicators (KPIs), best practices and industry practices.

The Roku Channel, roku.com, Roku Community and Roku Support websites had several 404 errors. The brand’s search engine ranking positions were negatively impacted by site-wide duplicate URLs. Several of the Roku Originals previously aired on other streaming platforms, but were not currently being attributed to Roku on a number of high traffic third-party websites. The client wanted these potential viewers to know that these titles were now available on Roku. Additionally, The Roku Channel as a free streaming platform app was not included in the “Where to Stream” options on third party websites, which is prime real estate for referral traffic. The client wanted their customers to be able to view the brand’s content easily with just one click.

Roku Support was recently replatformed and after its migration, the division saw decreases in organic traffic and slow page load speed. The client sought improvements in key Roku Support metrics. Roku Support’s campaigns should decrease the click through rate (CTR) for the Contact us and Support Buttons, increase the website’s organic traffic, and improve keyword rankings and website impressions. With Roku Support being a self-service platform, the client wanted its users to find the content easily, rather than clicking the Support Button at first.

Roku Community’s website has extensive content for its users. The client wanted users to be directed to the content they needed, and for Google to be mapped to the website. Some of Roku Community’s KPIs were increasing website traffic, account creations, the number of ranking keywords and average position in Google Search Console. We analyzed the brand’s competitive landscape, prioritized, recommended and implemented the best strategies for The Roku Channel and Roku Originals, Roku Support and Roku Community that would attain the brand’s KPIs and achieve positive results.

The client expressed their concerns on the existing content and design of the brands’ email campaigns for the Roku Channel. They felt that they were not able to market their products to specific audiences and demographics. Their email marketing campaigns’ designs and content were overused, and it was difficult to assess what worked and what didn’t in their previous email campaigns. Also, the brand’s Merchandising program was unable to offer personalized emails. The client wanted to win back customers who had not used their Roku services in 30 days or longer. From the email marketing campaigns, Roku hoped to see increased participation in their program, as well as increases in device registration and usage on accounts. Lastly, they wanted to see increases in sales revenue from the updated marketing campaigns.

Solution

Website Improvements

Roku’s team had some clear goals for their websites. Among them were improved website security, website crawling and indexing, and page load speed. User experience (especially mobile experience for the web version of The Roku Channel) needed to be improved. Our team verified and monitored the SSL certificate’s installation, its validity, and reviewed all of Roku’s websites for possible malware, domain blacklisting, and virus attacks. We monitored the websites’ host status and resolved all their server and DNS resolution issues.

Our design team created custom art, promotional banners, and other infographics which were added to many of Roku’s pages. Audits of Roku’s websites showed multiple duplicate URL links. These were negatively impacting the divisions’ search engine ranking positions. To enhance user experience, we recommended removing the duplicate URLs from the divisions’ websites, in order to eliminate the possibility of split page ranking or split inbound links.

We prepared and provided the client with several sitewide SEO improvement strategies. One of these was the breadcrumbs schema for Roku Community pages. Once these codes are dynamically generated across the Roku Community website, search engines will be able to understand the website’s structure, which could lead to improved click-through rate. Our team found several missing pages on the Community and Support websites, and some that were missing from the websites’ XML sitemap. We provided redirect suggestions to the brand’s development team who successfully deployed the URL redirects.

SEO Improvements

After installing security improvements on The Roku Channel’s website, we submitted the websites’ pages to search engines for indexing. All pages were optimized to comply with search engines’ content standards and most recent algorithm updates. We fixed website issues including crawl issues, content bloats, redirects, and cache issues. Images, videos, and source codes were also optimized. Title tags, meta descriptions, and alt image attributes were added across the pages. We also provided SEO improvement recommendations to the client for Roku Support and Roku Community websites.

Throughout our partnership, we ensured that Roku’s content is visible to search engines and shoppers regardless of cookies and the support for Javascript. Revised schema codes for Roku Support were shared with the client that can further improve traffic and the brand’s search prominence.

Our team assessed the user behavior metrics for each of Roku’s websites pages, and made suggestions to optimize the websites’ content. A/B testing was conducted on Roku’s landing and checkout pages. To further increase traffic to The Roku Channel, we provided the client with optimized content. Optimized metadata signals to search engines what visitors can expect to see when they visit any given page. We provided title tags and meta descriptions for all the content we supplied. Schema codes for Roku Originals series and their relevant titles were provided to the client.

Link Building & Public Relations

We continuously performed reputation monitoring for Roku. We analyzed the brand’s negative content positioning in search engine results and made recommendations to the client on how to improve the brand’s positioning. Our team monitored The Roku Channel’s metrics in search engine results and implemented appropriate on-page and technical updates to further improve Roku’s performance.

Our link building experts reclaimed and established links with other streaming providers, enacted citation building, and populated widget links with relevant Roku-driven content. We identified high search volume queries, and worked closely with the Roku team to make improvements that will positively impact impressions and engagement of the brand’s content. Coalition also helped with review generation strategies for all Roku brands. We also worked closely with Roku’s press team and suggested key points to emphasize in their press releases and announcements.

Additional Updates

Roku needed help with being branded as a one-stop shop for customers to watch their movies and shows. Instead of users having multiple streaming sources or accounts, Roku Channel users can use this one comprehensive app. We worked meticulously to publish content that informs users of the availability and functionality of the app.

The Roku Channel owns several catalogs of video content and has licenses to host others. From the Roku app, customers are able to view free Roku owned video content and are able to sign up for a paid plan with another streaming service platform to view premium content within the same app. Roku-owned video content was being cited on third party websites without credits being attributed to Roku. The brand wanted viewers to know that these shows were now available on Roku, and that Roku Originals is featured on film and television review-aggregation websites.

Coalition’s team successfully had the webmasters of these review-aggregation websites update their details and links to Roku’s owned shows.

We ensured that Roku’s content was continuously refreshed for topical relevance. Improvements were also made to the FAQ sections on Roku’s websites. Today, users are able to access articles, forums, and blogs on all the websites, and are able to easily find solutions to their queries.

Email Marketing

Coalition created several email templates for Roku’s national promotional campaigns. We developed new copy-writing guidelines, revamped the brand’s designs and content and launched email campaigns that communicated the brand’s voice. Several email designs and templates for their automations, evergreen campaign series, tentpole, and holiday campaigns were crafted to build customer base and loyalty, launch new products and increase sales revenue.

The brand wanted to showcase the capabilities and affordability of Roku’s devices, as well as the wealth of resources available on its platforms. The email templates for email campaigns and automations for Roku contained readable texts, and images targeting their desired audiences. Email automations were launched to target prospective users and to win back users who have not used their Roku services over an extended period as well as abandoned cart users.

Final Product

Results

Roku wanted to grow their business divisions, build engagement with their customers, increase organic traffic, and increase keyword ranking positions and search engine visibility. Our SEO and development team recommended redirect strategies for missing pages and non-canonical URLs and XML sitemap improvements for Roku Community and Roku Support. Many of roku.com’s images that were deemed too large by Google were resized and optimized.

Roku Support

For the period October 2022 through April 2023, Roku Support saw a 25.47% increase in users, and a 27.15% increase in sessions; when compared to the previous 6-month period ending September 2022. Roku Support also saw improvements in new users and its bounce rate. New users increased by 8.81% and bounce rate improved by 3.58% for this same comparison period. Our on-page and technical SEO strategies led to improvements in the bounce rates, average session duration and improved page load speed for Roku Support. Goal conversion rate for Roku Support for this same period was 14.15%.

25%

More users

27%

More sessions

9%

New users growth

Roku Channel

The Roku Channel also saw improvements in several of its metrics for the period October 2022 through April 2023 when compared to the previous 6-months. Users increased 24.34%, sessions grew by 21.06%, and new users increased by 20.38%. Goal completions also increased by 28.82%.

24%

More users

21%

More sessions

20%

New users growth

20%

More goal completions

Roku Community

Roku Community saw a 4.81% increase in users for the period October 2022 through April 2023 when compared to the previous 6-months. The main goal for Roku Community was to provide self-service help for all of Roku’s consumer products, and the goals of SEO initiatives were to ensure that this content is discovered by customers when they need it. When compared to the 6-months ending September 2022, the number of sessions per user decreased by 2.79% and the average session duration decreased by 4.18% for the 6-months ending April 2023. These results show that users were able to find and have their questions answered more efficiently.

5%

More users

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