Family moving into house

How IDHL’s local SEO delivers organic growth for the Vistry Group

Moving in on the market with page 1 rankings for all locations

Specialists in the creation of new homes across the UK, the Vistry Group set their sights on not only dominating the development world but ranking at the top of the SERPs too.

The challenge

Operating under both Bovis Homes and Linden Homes, Vistry needed a way to attract new buyers and generate high‑quality leads across a wide range of UK locations. With developments spread nationally, generic house‑hunting keywords weren’t delivering the precision or intent required to drive enquiries and appointment bookings.

To succeed in a highly competitive housing market, Vistry needed to improve visibility for new build searches that reflected how buyers actually search—and do so at a local level where purchase intent is strongest.

IDHL had a clear objective: increase rankings, leads and bookings in priority locations while working within a finite budget.

Our approach

Localised SEO strategy

Grounded in data and buyer intent, our experts conducted analysis that prospective buyers typically fall into two camps: those actively seeking new builds and those who aren’t. We focused keyword research on high‑intent new build terms rather than broad phrases like ‘houses for sale’.

Recognising that national rankings offered limited value for location‑specific searches, we targeted areas with clusters of Vistry developments. Our goal was to rank for terms such as ‘new builds’ within priority locations, with the added benefit of capturing long‑tail searches like ‘new build Leeds’.

Tactical link building

Locations already ranking within the top five positions required minimal outreach, allowing us to focus efforts on more competitive developments. By analysing page optimisation and content performance, we identified where outreach and optimisation would deliver the greatest uplift.

Vistry Case Study

The results

2,479

phrases on page 1 of Google

Pos 3

'New developments near me' has gone from pos 34 YOY

Pos 4

'New housing development near me' has gone from pos 12 YOY

Page 1

ranking for all historical focus locations

112%

YOY increase in organic visibility for Linden Homes

Top 2

all current focus locations on ranked in the top 2 Google pages

279%

YOY increase in organic visibility for Bovis Homes