L&Q

The Challenge

How do you make shared ownership and affordable housing discoverable online, across dozens of developments, when the market is flooded with major developers, listing sites and aggregators?

L&Q’s ambition to be a leading provider of shared ownership and rental properties required more than a polished brand or functional listings. Their digital challenge was complex:

• A large and changing portfolio of developments across the UK
• A need to attract different buyer personas in different markets
• A crowded SERP environment dominated by property portals and private developers
• A requirement to scale visibility while maintaining accurate, localised relevance

L&Q turned to ROAST to ensure that its developments and its social housing mission could cut through the noise, connect with qualified buyers and renters, and drive measurable performance across channels.

The Insight

When you’re marketing affordability, trust and location matter. And that means visibility must be built around user intent, not just page rankings.

ROAST recognised that shared ownership and London Living Rent (LLR) schemes are often misunderstood, making them highly dependent on education and discoverability.

This wasn’t just a content challenge, it was a precision SEO problem requiring us to:

• Identify what users really search for (by region, tenure type, and need)
• Improve visibility across both branded and generic intent
• Respond in real-time to external influences, like media coverage and seasonal demand
• Adapt fast to changes in L&Q’s development portfolio

Our strategy needed to deliver regional SEO at scale and link informational and conversion-driven journeys with precision.

The Solution

A multi-year SEO strategy built on audience behaviour, content architecture and tactical responsiveness.

Over the course of our long-term partnership (2020–2024), ROAST delivered an evolving programme of work that:

1. Built Local Relevance at Scale

We developed and optimised hundreds of landing pages across regions, developments, and schemes, from Beaulieu in Chelmsford to Barking Riverside and Kew Bridge Rise, ensuring each had strong content, metadata and internal linking to rank for high-conversion queries.

2. Optimised for Key Schemes and User Journeys

We doubled down on content for LLR and Shared Ownership, refining structure and content across high-volume landing pages. When the Evening Standard featured LLR in September 2024, ROAST had already secured top 1–2 positions for key queries, including:

• “London living rent” (+131% MoM clicks)
• “London living rent scheme” (+199%)
• “LLR scheme” (+210%)

3. Monitored Search Trends and Reacted Fast

We identified seasonal and news-driven search surges, then surfaced or created content to match such as “new build homes near me”, which rose by +6,000% YoY in impressions in 2024.

4. Diagnosed and Fixed UX Issues Impacting Conversions

When performance dipped, we analysed journey friction. For example, we found that Register Interest CTAs were too far down the page on core LLR content a likely reason for conversion drops despite ranking gains. We recommended UX fixes to correct this.

The Outcome

After a multi-year partnership built on strategic delivery and performance, L&Q changed their requirements in 2024, reducing the scope and budget of the SEO programme. Given this, ROAST declined to re-pitch ending the engagement on a high, proud of the value we delivered and the impact we created.