When it comes to return on investment, very few online marketing methods are as effective and profitable as SEO. In this case study we will discuss how we implemented a successful SEO strategy and grew an online stores organic Google traffic by 20% and over 38,000 clicks in just 6 months.

Client Background

This client is a well-established online e-commerce store that sells electronics and electronic accessories. They have been around for quite a few years and were not a brand-new website by any means.

They hired us because they were ranked lower than their competitors for important terms, and most of their current site traffic was coming from paid ads, which can get expensive. They wanted to grow their organic search traffic and rank higher than competitors for terms related to some of their most popular products.

No matter how big a website is and how many visitors it gets, it is sometimes surprising how many have no real SEO strategy in place. Often, companies decide to work on their organic traffic only once they have analyzed how much they are really spending on paid ads. Because of this, there are usually many opportunities to grow organic traffic, which is why we love working with these kinds of websites.

We knew right away that there was plenty of opportunity for growth here and we were excited to get started.

Comprehensive Site Audit

The first step to any successful SEO campaign is conducting an audit of the website to determine if there is anything holding it back from ranking high on Google. In our initial audits, we look for things like manual Google penalties, poor on-page optimization, URL structure and much more.

In this case, it was not that they did something wrong, it was that they were doing nothing at all. No meta tags, no link building, and no overall focus in regard to search engine optimization. We knew we had a lot of work ahead of us, but we also knew it was all going to be worth it once we started feeling the impact of organic growth.

Keyword Research

Once the initial site audit was complete, it was time to get down to the nitty gritty. It is our job to identify and then rank our clients for the most important terms in their industry, and that is exactly what we aim for.

In the case of e-commerce sites like this one, we typically like to begin by asking the client for a list of their best selling products. Since most of their traffic was coming from Google Ads, we know right away that any terms or products converting well in Google Ads would perform even better with organic traffic once we are able to get them a top 3 ranking.

After analyzing previous ads data, analyzing competitors top performing keywords, and taking into consideration our clients best selling products, we narrowed our focus down to the most important search terms, that were most likely to yield more conversions and increase overall organic search traffic. Once we have our focus terms list, it’s GO time.

Target Page Identification

When we have our focus terms list, we can put all energy towards ranking for those terms. We have already done the research and we know these are the most frequently searched terms in the industry. We now determine which pages on the clients site are most likely to rank for these terms, and then optimize those pages for our focus terms.

After some careful analysis, we were able to identify which pages on their site were most likely to rank for our focus terms. We did this by combining a few tactics. We analyzed search results, site behavior, most viewed pages and pages related to their most popular products. Once we identified our target pages, we then added well optimization meta titles, ensured the page was properly indexed and made recommendations for adding content to these pages.

We were confident that given the sites aged domain name we would see an immediate impact, but our work was far from over.

SEO Strategy and Execution

Now that we had our target pages optimized, it was time to get started with content writing, outreach, and link building.

It is always better to see consistent growth and solidify positioning at first, which is why we use a gradual approach in our SEO work. In the first three months with us this client was on our Basic SEO plan, which includes:

• 5 Content placement links published on industry related sites.
• Content writing for website exposure (for content placement links).
• On-page SEO optimization (ongoing process).
• Creating and implementing optimal meta title, description, and keyword tags for focus pages.
• Google Analytics Setup + Monitoring
• Google Search Console Setup + Monitoring
• Keyword Research
• Monthly reporting
• Personal Account Manager

The plan was to start with the basic plan and gradually grow into the Premium SEO plan. You must crawl before you walk, and then you can run. These are words to live by when it comes to successful, long lasting SEO.

After 3 months on the basic plan, we were already seeing progress in the form of keyword rank improvements, organic traffic growth and increase in sales generated from organic SEO traffic. Everything was being tracked, so the improvement was as clear as day. The more consistent SEO work we did, the more visible this client was becoming in search results.

Once this client upgraded their plan, things started to take off. Our Premium SEO plan has all the benefits of the Basic plan plus more links, more diversified link building, increased priority to requests and more.