A fictional business. The figures are a modelled scenario, not a client result.
Ski & snowboard school · Bansko · Bansko
Base station · the challenge
UK, Romanian and Israeli families booked lessons through resort resellers. The school's own site existed only in Bulgarian and ranked for none of the 'ski lessons Bansko' searches.
Twenty instructors and a waiting list every February, yet in our model 78% of foreign families arrived through resellers who kept a quarter of each lesson and put the school’s name in small print. When a parent in Manchester, Bucharest or Tel Aviv searched in their own language, Google had nothing from the school itself to show them.
Diagnosis · 8 gates
Each gate is one issue we found, marked with its trail colour to show how hard it was to fix. Scroll down the course and the skier clears each one.
Found. The whole site was Bulgarian-only, with Cyrillic URLs and no hreflang. English, Romanian and Hebrew searchers had nothing to land on.
Fix. Four language folders (/bg /en /ro /he) with hreflang pairs, Latin slugs and a right-to-left Hebrew template.
Found. Primary category was “Sports school”, not “Ski school”. No English description, no services, and off-season hours set to “Closed” in error.
Fix. Re-categorised, 9 services added with prices, descriptions in EN/RO/HE, special hours for the whole season calendar.
Found. Phone-only booking. Families abroad couldn’t book at 11 pm, so they went to resellers taking 25% commission.
Fix. A direct booking widget with deposits, linked from GBP’s “Book” button and every lesson page.
Found. 31 directory listings showed three phone numbers and a pre-2021 address on Pirin Street.
Fix. Name, address and phone cleaned across 31 citations, plus 6 new ski and family-travel directories.
Found. One “Services” page. No pages for kids’ group lessons, private instructors, snowboard or adaptive skiing, and no prices.
Fix. Eight lesson pages per language, with ages, meeting points at the gondola, prices and FAQs.
Found. A 14 MB hero video gave a 6.8 s LCP on hotel Wi-Fi and 4G in the resort.
Fix. Poster image plus lazy video: LCP down to 1.9 s; LocalBusiness and Course schema added.
Found. 23 Google reviews at 4.2★, none answered. Happy families left their reviews on reseller sites instead.
Fix. QR cards handed over at the end of each lesson, an email sent 24 h later in the family’s language, replies within 48 h.
Found. No posts after March. Summer searches from people planning winter trips found a profile that looked abandoned.
Fix. A 26-week post calendar: early-bird offers, instructor profiles, snow reports, first-lift countdown.
The strategy · 4 lifts
Built on our Local plan, sequenced so each lift fed the next: profile, pages, proof, then presence through the off-season.
Primary category changed to Ski school, with secondaries for snowboard and children’s camps. Nine priced services, a Book button pointing straight at the direct widget, and special hours loaded for every holiday week through April.
/en for UK families, /ro for Romanian school holidays, /he right-to-left for Israeli groups and /bg kept intact. Every page carries hreflang pairs, local meeting-point directions from the gondola and prices in euros.
Instructors hand over a QR card at the end of a family’s final lesson. A follow-up 24 hours later in the family’s own language asks for a Google review, and every review is answered within 48 hours. Reviews went from 23 to 148 at 4.8★.
A 26-week calendar timed to UK half-term, Romanian school holidays and Hanukkah week: early-bird offers, instructor profiles in each language, snow reports and a countdown to the first lift.
Timeline · 9 towers, 9 months
Audit, GBP re-categorised, citation clean-up begins
Site rebuilt into /bg /en /ro /he with hreflang
Eight lesson pages per language, prices published
Direct booking widget and GBP Book button
Review cards from summer camps; reply policy
Early-bird posts, UK half-term page
Romanian school-holiday campaign, RO directories
Hebrew Hanukkah-week packages, instructor profiles
First-lift countdown posts, snow reports
Results · the season board
Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.
Prior yearThis season
Climb by month, Mar → Nov: 0 · 0 · 1 · 2 · 3 · 5 · 7 · 9 · 11
640×€137.50×25%=€22,000
Direct bookings via the new widget, at the average lesson package value, at the 25% commission resellers would have taken.
77% of pre-season bookings now direct
Keywords graded like pistes: the colour shows how competitive each query is in Bansko.
| Keyword | Lang | Run | Searches/mo | Before | After | Map pack |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ski school bansko | EN | 1,900 | — | 2 | Top 3 | |
| ski lessons bansko | EN | 1,600 | — | 1 | Top 3 | |
| private ski instructor bansko | EN | 880 | — | 2 | Top 3 | |
| kids ski lessons bansko | EN | 720 | — | 1 | Top 3 | |
| snowboard lessons bansko | EN | 590 | — | 3 | Top 3 | |
| english speaking ski instructor bansko | EN | 320 | 48 | 1 | Top 3 | |
| bansko ski school prices | EN | 260 | 61 | 4 | — | |
| adaptive ski lessons bansko | EN | 90 | — | 1 | Top 3 | |
| școală de schi bansko | RO | 1,300 | — | 2 | Top 3 | |
| lecții schi copii bansko | RO | 390 | — | 1 | Top 3 | |
| בית ספר לסקי בנסקו | HE | 480 | — | 3 | Top 3 | |
| ски училище банско | BG | 2,400 | 9 | 2 | Top 3 |
Showing 12 of 12 tracked keywords. “—” before means not in the top 100.
Next lift departing
A Local plan for your town, your languages and your season.