Today's pace of life barely gives us time for health. “Wholesome” products in the store near the house are rarely sold, and you don't want to run to a far-out store after a busy day.
Online health stores offer an assortment of rare products. But even among them, you have to try to find exactly the catalog that suits the range and prices.
Store4u website is an online store with a wide selection of health products, including:
- food;
- spices and herbs;
- drinks;
- home and personal care;
- cosmetics;
- intimate care products;
- perfumery products;
- seeds and fertilizers;
- eco food.
During its relatively short period of existence, the store has gained about 3000 satisfied customers.
The Client came to us with request:
- increase in traffic to the website;
- increase the number of sales;
- increase sales of products, advertising of which is prohibited in Google Ads;
- getting customers in a cheaper way than now.
Since the client collaborated with our agency on contextual advertising (case with setting up a Smart Shopping campaign, case with setting up Merchant Center and Google Shopping). It is not surprising that he also turned to us for SEO optimization.
In this case, we will talk about how we achieved an increase in website traffic and explain why an optimized website can become one of the main sources of conversions.
1. Before optimization
One of the optimization goals is to increase organic traffic to the website. At the same time, the number of clients is also increasing. Overall, this is a predictable process.
The Client enquired to us with a desire to increase the existing traffic by 2-3 times (200-300 thousand users per month) and get clients at a lower cost.
Traffic on the Client's website at the beginning of our cooperation - 2-3 thousand people daily.
Fig. 1 — The Client's website traffic (free traffic) for September 27, 2019 (before the start of optimization work)
Traffic dynamics for September 2019 (all traffic channels):
Fig. 2 — Total traffic from all traffic channels
2. Work algorithm
Search engine optimization for projects within the promotion is performed both for the internal structure and content, and for the external link mass. The semantic core is being built and content is being written on topics of priority for the Client.
While working with the Client's project, we had up against difficulties in implementing technical recommendations. I wonder which ones? Let's talk about this further.
2.1 Website audit
Technical audit is the first stage of SEO work. The specialist checks the website for errors and generates a document for the Client with an indication of the faults and tips for correcting. There is a problem that often arises at this stage: some Clients do not want to make all the fixes. This time we ran into problems in the functionality of the platform on which the Client's website works - Prom.ua.
The platform has closed code and 80% of all technical recommendations are either impossible to implement, or it is possible, but partially. As a result, we spent a lot of time communicating with Prom.ua support and figuring out which of the recommendations we can still implement. There was no cooperation from the platform support - the prom employees did not make changes, but advised how to do what could be changed.
What difficulties did we face?:
- Sitemap. Simplifies navigation and can be scanned by crawlers, but closed from indexing. The difficulty is that the sitemap file is generated by the platform automatically and cannot be edited.
- Buttons “Buy” and “Contact us”. It is better if the buy button has the same label for each product presented in the catalog to improve behavioral factors. The difference between the two elements is that the “Contact us” button signals an error in the selected placement category or price. Prom.ua thus fights against dishonest sellers who artificially lower the price. If all the data is correct, and the button label has not changed, you need to send a request to technical support and wait until the problem is dealt with there.
- Filter optimization. You need to optimize filters for keywords to increase conversion traffic.
- H1 headers, meta tags and URLs are not optimized on the website. Links to pages of groups with filters are closed from indexing. This is one of the security measures of this cms.
- External links that lead from the Client's website to other sources should not transfer their weight to external resources (nofollow attribute). Meanwhile, the closed source code does not provide an opportunity to update the attribute of links.
- Improving download speed. This can be done only through the content (many photos = long page load). But the Client must have images for the presentation of goods, so it was not possible to achieve a significant increase in speed.
- Broken pages. Content on them is not available, and it was not possible to set up a 301 redirect. Prom.ua technical support offered to remove pages from the search through the webmaster interface to resolve this issue. As a result, the pages were deleted and simply re-created. Fortunately, there were less than 70 of them.
Prom.ua allows you to sell goods both through your own catalog and through your website. But significant changes in many elements of the website structure are impossible due to the closed system. So, read on to learn more about how organic traffic increased more than 8x after optimization!
2.2 Website structure enhancement
By agreement with the Client, we have enhanced the site structure and added new subcategories. This gives a plus to the number of landings, respectively, plus to the number of users and clients. This technique also improves navigation, and, as you know, visitors love when everything is easy and understandable.
It is important not to overdo it here: it is one thing when you try to navigate in 5 different sections, and another thing when you are looking for the desired section in 20 similar titles.
Fig. 3 — Our suggestions are highlighted in green
Example structure for expanding the “Medicinal herbs” category:
Fig. 4 — List of possible subcategories for the “Medicinal herbs” category
2.3 Flypages
This is a block with an image, price, payment options and other information about the product. The visual arrangement of elements and their balance relative to each other should be comfortable for perception and encourage to buy the product.
It is better to decorate with bright colors to attract attention and use triggers to make the user think and make a purchase.
Fig. 5 — Price block is worth doing bigger
Post-audit recommendations:
- make the price block and the size of the “buy” button bigger;
- highlight conversion blocks;
- place a photo of the product on the left, and basic information about purchases, gifts, payment options on the right.
The selling card should immediately draw attention to itself, then it will bring maximum benefit to the business.
2.4 Link building process
The number of external links leading to the Client's website affects its rating among users and search engines. If a person often comes across links that lead to the same resource, then he himself will want to visit this website. Moreover, it is very likely that he will even buy some product. Some people are helped by reviews, and they tend to buy products only after reading reviews on forums in discussion groups on the topic of interest.
Link building takes place gradually, a specialist should carry out the purchase of links and reviews, otherwise you risk losing money and rating immediately. The market the Client works with is the whole of Ukraine. For us, this fact became a guideline in building up the link mass - the priority was the domain zones ua, com, info, kiev. By following this strategy, the link profile will look like a naturally built-up mass due to usefulness, expertise, and not due to money.
Fig. 6 — Domains and pages linking to the Client's website at the beginning of optimization
The study of competitors makes it possible to understand the general trends of the market area and find those sources for which you need to place external links. However, there may be thousands of them. The search for the required domains in the list is carried out according to the requirements. Such as the index, the presence of a page in the Google cache, a certain amount of link mass, etc.
We used the purchase of drop domains for additional effect. These are websites that have not been renewed and are now open for registration. Their advantages are that:
- they give full control over links;
- related/thematic domains are well received by search engines.
3. Deliverables
The project was in progress from October 2019 to July 2020. The number of transactions has tripled for 9.5 months of work.
Fig. 7 — Number of sales before the start of work on SEO
Fig. 8 — Sales after suspension of SEO
This is due to the growth in the website traffic. The traffic growth was 195%, and the number of new users increased 3 times.
Fig. 9 — Comparison of the period while working with the project October 2019 - July 2020, with the previous similar one: November 2018 - September 2019
Total traffic increased by 730%:
Fig. 10 — Changing in the amount of free traffic
Fig. 11 — Comparison of traffic volume for September 2019 and November 2020
Look at the last graph - it raises the question: Why did the main increase in traffic occur after the service was stopped?
As we have mentioned on the blog many times, the main results from SEO appear after six months and beyond. This is because a sufficient effect is achieved for the manifestation of positive changes. It takes patience to work, change and correct mistakes.
In a moment we see how the indicators begin to grow up, and the Client sees this too. Search engine optimization has a long-term effect, but the secret is that the website needs to be dealt with constantly. Then you will see a steady increase in the number of users and transactions.
Growth in the first months will be unstable, as an example, traffic results for the period December 2019-January 2020 compared to November 2019-December 2019:
Fig. 12 — Traffic growth +43%
and growth for October 2019-November 2019 compared to September 2019-October 2019:
Fig. 13 — Traffic growth +12%
Encouraging results with so many aspects worked out due to the closed nature of the content management system, isn't it?
It is the search engine optimization of the website that can turn it into a successful income stream, which can even become the main profit contributor. Sure thing, it will not do without nuance insights, but SEO is the determining factor for success in such a business.
Conclusion
This case shows that the effect of search engine optimization will be noticeable even with significant restrictions on website changes. Gradual building up of the link profile, writing optimized texts, work on the website structure helped us achieve significant results in traffic and profit growth, which can be seen in the "Deliverables" section.
If you have not used the SEO service yet, think about it, because we develop solutions individually for the needs of each business indeed.
