Case Study: A Holistic SEO Strategy That Tripled Traffic in a Year
From a marketing perspective, getting visitors onto your website is just half the battle when it comes to SEO. The other half, from a business perspective, is making sure that those organic visitors turn into paying customers or qualified leads. Your SEO strategy should tackle both of these halves: it should contain the right content (so that Google puts you in front of relevant users) and be presented in the right way (so that users can easily find what they need and have a great experience). By doing just this, my team at The Search Initiative tripled our client’s organic traffic from 15,919 to 47,256 sessions per month since the start of the campaign. In this case study, you’ll learn how to: First though, here’s some background about the site we worked on and the main challenges that we overcame during the campaign. If you’d prefer to watch rather than read, I cover some of the key insights in this video. The Challenge The client sells industrial and commercial DIY equipment across the United States. The site was ranking well for some product-specific keywords, but was struggling to get traction on conversions. Therefore, the main goal was to improve the content on key money making pages to turn these organic visitors into paying customers. The site’s backlink profile wasn’t quite where it should be in comparison to top ranking competitors who had lots more links from relevant websites. In order to build the client’s authority and already growing brand, we reached out to websites with “Where to Buy” pages and leveraged unlinked brand and product mentions to build backlinks. We also needed to improve the client’s blog which was already bringing in some traffic for informational search queries. To drive more conversions from the blog posts, we focused on maximizing the internal linking so that users could be guided towards relevant product and category pages and improving the overall experience of the blog by adding product widgets and a related posts section. The product descriptions on the website were taken directly from the manufacturer’s page which meant they weren’t unique or entirely helpful for the customer. We created product descriptions that clearly outlined features and described the product’s use. Find out how you can overcome the same challenges for your website by following the detailed steps below. Link Building Techniques Unless you’re a household brand that attracts backlinks naturally because everyone’s talking about you and your products online, link building is still an integral part of any SEO strategy. With eCommerce SEO, there are several unique strategies and tactics that you can use to build your site’s authority and brand reputation online. In this case study, I’ll show you two specific methods: getting listed on where to buy pages and leveraging brand & product mentions. Getting Listed on Where to Buy Pages Getting listed on “Where to Buy” pages can significantly boost your products’ visibility and sales. These pages are often hosted by manufacturers, popular review sites, or retailers, guiding consumers on where to purchase specific products. If you run an eCommerce store that sells third-party products from other brands, make a list of all of the brands that you sell products of, and use this Google search to find which of those brands have pages that list where customers can purchase their products. Note: if you only sell your own products, read on to find out how you can also use a similar tactic to get listed on relevant websites. [brand name] intitle:("where to buy") If you’re targeting the UK, you can also extend this further to include the keyword “stockist” (which just means that the shop stocks a brand’s product). [brand name] intitle:("where to buy" OR "stockists" OR “stockist”) Here’s an example of a search for a fashion brand called Maharishi. If you look at the site, you can see that it lists and links to all of the places that sell this brand’s clothes. You can also find stockist and where to buy pages with the Site Explorer tool on Ahrefs by: Entering one of your competitors’ store’s domain Navigating to the Backlinks report Filtering the referring pages with the same keywords within their page titles i.e. “where to buy”, “stockists” and “stockist”. Click “Apply” and “Show Results”. You’ll see a list of stockist websites that are linking to your competitor’s site. If you don’t sell third-party products, you can still benefit from this tactic by using a similar targeted Google search related to your products. For example: You can also add variations of these searches, for example: Look for well-known review and comparison sites that dominate the search results. Pay special attention to those with “Where to Buy” sections or affiliate links to retailers. Here’s an example: You can see that this page has a dedicated “Where to buy” section. Once you’ve made a list of all of the websites that you want a link from, you can reach out to them with a simple email like this: Hi [Name], I’m [Your Name], [Your Position] at [Your Brand]. I wanted to know if you have a process for getting listed on your [where to buy | review | comparison] page? We sell [Describe your product or product range] and would love to be included. Thanks, [Your Name] By using these strategies, you can compile a list of relevant review and comparison websites that feature “Where to Buy” sections, giving you a targeted approach to getting your products listed. Leveraging Brand & Product Mentions Acquiring backlinks from unlinked mentions is considered an old technique that doesn’t work like it used to, but it’s still highly effective, if you do it our way. These mentions occur when your brand, products, or services are mentioned online, but without a corresponding hyperlink back to your site. For example, this small UK based vegan chocolatier below has over 250+ unlinked mentions that they’re missing out on. Converting these unlinked mentions from websites who are already familiar with your brand or products into backlinks, can improve your site’s SEO, driving more traffic and increasing visibility. They also serve as a key signal to Google of your brand’s online presence and reputation. There are a number of ways that you can go about finding unlinked mentions of your brand or products, we’ll show you two here. Enter your brand name (or product name) within quotation marks and click “Create Alert” You can also set how often, the source, language, region and how many results you receive. You can also set up an RSS feed or have the results delivered to your email address. Once created, this is what you’ll see: Create a separate alert for variations of your brand or product names too. Now, whenever another website mentions your brand or product, you’ll automatically get an alert. Like you did with Google Alerts, search for your brand or product name in quotes. Click “Highlight unlinked” and enter your domain so that you only see results where your brand/product is mentioned, but hasn’t linked to you. Filter by “One page per domain”, this removes all duplicates so you have a smaller list to work with. Filter even further by sorting the results based on the estimated page traffic. This is valuable as you’ll want to start by securing backlinks from pages that already have decent traffic. If you like, you can export the results or just manually sift through them on Content Explorer. If you do export, make sure to select the option for “Only pages with highlighted domains”. Here’s an example of a domain that has mentioned The Search Initiative, but hasn’t linked back. When picking which websites you should reach out to for a link back to your website, here’s what to consider: When reaching out to your prospect list, there are several tactics that you can use to increase your chances of the website owner adding that valuable backlink to your site. Subject: Quick Request + Testimonial for [Website Name] Hi [Recipient's Name], I hope you're doing well! I noticed you mentioned [Brand/Product Name] in your article "[Article Title]" on [Website Name]. Thanks for the mention! To show our appreciation, we’d love to provide a testimonial for [Website Name]. Would you be open to adding a link to our site ([Your Website URL]) in return? I think it could be a win-win for both of us. Let me know if this works for you! Best, [Your Name] Subject: Repurpose Your [Article Title] + Quick Request Hi [Recipient's Name], I hope you're well! I recently came across your article "[Article Title]" on [Website Name] and noticed you mentioned [Brand/Product Name]. It’s great to see our brand featured! I was thinking—this content could be repurposed into an infographic or video, which might engage your audience even more. We’d be happy to help with the process and provide any resources you might need. If you’re interested, would you consider including a link to our site ([Your Website URL]) in the repurposed content? Read More Read More
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