B2C Shopify SEO Case Study: 3x mehr Traffic in 18 Monaten
Together we look at one of our running
Shopify shop customers, discuss the measures taken
and draw valuable lessons from them. Have fun! My name is Alexander Rus
and SEO is my bread and butter. On this channel we chat
about SEO and content marketing. If you want to learn how you can sustainably acquire
customers through your website, then subscribe to this channel right now. In this episode we look at a
B2C online shop with the Shopify shop system. What is important to know: This customer has a relatively
small product portfolio, but a really popular product, which we
also use here in our offices.
The SEO support started in
January 2021 and now we will briefly take a look at the development in Semrush since then. That means here we are in January 2021. As I said, this is now a
traffic index and not Google Analytics or anything, because
logically I'm not allowed to show this data. Here we are at 8,509 traffic index. In January 2022 we were at
13,133 and since then it has improved even faster
than in the first year of care. So what was the actual
starting situation for this shop? The SEO strategy was already
defined in advance, which means that before the support, before January 2021, we made
two packages with you.
Namely keyword research including
website structure planning and an SEO audit. As always , you can find information about these packages
on our website, where it is explained exactly what we then specifically did here for
this customer, for example. The customer's website was already very appealing,
so it wasn't that they had no idea what they were doing
and we helped them from scratch, but the site was already
halfway established in principle and had good ones as well Rankings for the real main keywords, i.e. the
keywords that describe the product. What was exciting because of
the small product range was few possible product categories, which means
the only way to do it well was through filters and refinement categories
for specific uses of that product. But what was cool, and where
just huge potential for SEO existed and continues to exist, is in
terms of information needs. Otherwise, the category pages
and product pages were already flawless. They were already reasonably competitive from the domain authority
, even if really
good links were good for the link profile.
But they were basically well positioned. That means, let's say, an established brand that is already getting traffic and is already
making a lot of traffic through the shop and so on. That means it's not that easy:
What do you do in a shop like this? So. Let's get to the process: As always, phase 1: Achieve initial goals for the customer in
the first 12 months. That was our focus, as agreed with the customer:
You already ranked relatively well for the main keyword set. And now it was a matter of
covering all this information demand. By covering
these information needs in this way, we get people
to our website earlier in the customer journey. So what did we do? Top-of-the-funnel and
middle-of-the-funnel content marketing, so that was our primary focus.
That means content that is more of an advice style, but then sometimes very high up in the customer
journey and in the middle of the customer journey.
This means that most people come
to this product through their research and are not primarily looking for this product explicitly.
And based on the keyword research that we did in advance, we naturally set up
a very clear editorial plan that mapped the customer journey to a certain
extent, and then we implemented the whole thing by systematically doing this content strategy,
including graphics . That means:
writing pages, connecting them perfectly with
products, and so on. Make this content as high quality as possible with, if available, videos, otherwise
enhance it with graphics and so on. There is a very, very extensive
playlist, very up-to-date, SEO-Texte 2022, where I explain exactly how
our content process works here, for example. What we then did, shall we
say, on the side was high-quality link building. As always our approach:
We look at the niche, what are the big influencers, the big
magazines – what are the hundred websites we want links from to gain
influence in this niche. We did this research. In line with this, we designed a
linkable asset that was precisely tailored to this target group
, and then outreach.
There is also a video where I explain exactly
how our approach actually works. What was the result? Let's jump back to Semrush very briefly. So a significant traffic increase.
And now you would say: "Yes, but that was more in the direction of
information, i.e. informative keywords. That won't really have caused
more conversions." There really have been
significantly more sales and higher sales during this period, although hardly anything has been done on the
category and product pages.
But on the one hand, of course, people were
picked up earlier in the customer journey and at the same time , of course, the non-commercial
content strategy also helped to pull the commercial keywords up even
further. So.
Then, phase 2, the first 12 months are over: further development. The next 12 months. And there's just a boring
focus, but I wanted to show, with an established brand
and whatnot, how it's going. Quite often customers are like:
"Yes, there's something mindblowing coming, God knows what, a new strategy, and yes,
what about MUM and what about this update?" It doesn't give a [ __ ]. SEO is easy! Forget all that update frills. Irrelevant. What did we do in the second year of care? Continue strategy and improve on what already exists. That's exactly what it's all about:
iterating and always systematically improving everything. So what have we done? We've
updated and expanded Keyword Research. That means we looked at each other:
has the search intention changed somewhere? Are there new keywords? Are there any keywords that you
didn't discover in the initial research? Because that's always the case.
Over time, you discover more keywords, the longer and the more often you have done keyword research
on a topic.
You never do keyword research and
that was keyword research to the death. Very important. Then:
Google snippet audit. We looked at how the
snippets performed during this period. What were the underperformers,
what were the overperformers? Where do we really need to update the title tags,
meta descriptions? Then, content updating and post-optimization,
that is, based on keyword research. The intent of certain pages has
changed, which means that we have revised the pages accordingly. It turned out that some pages
might need a different twist, need to be optimized a bit
– we did that. We primarily did this for
category pages, which means that it was still content from the customer,
but also for our guides. This is again a very important mindset.
Even if we write a guide, it is not like this:
we are making a guide and it is the best guide until the end of time, but
after a year it tends to make sense from an SEO point of view to update it ,
so that you have that freshness factor again, and on the other hand you learn a lot
more over time and can do even better.
In other words, don't think like this: you do something and it's perfect,
but you do it as well as you can with the available information and then
a year later you improve the whole thing again. And again very boring,
I don't want to tell you that again: high-quality link building with the aim that
we always remain competitive, even if the competition builds more links. What was the result? And that's really important to me, that
will also be one of the lessons. That is, growth from here to here,
and then growth from here to here. That means that we tended to
deliver larger increases in traffic
and sales much faster during this period. So does that mean we didn't try hard in the first year
and we did in the second year? no And now we're going to look at
what that actually means.
So what are the lessons from this
customer example, from this case study? First of all: With most B2C online shops
, it is completely trivial. You have your product categories,
you rank those, and maybe, if people are also searching for product names,
you rank the product pages too—fair enough. But for some customers it is more complex. Let's say a B2B online shop, or as
in this case, a shop with a special product, where it doesn't make sense
that you have an extremely large number of product variants, but where there are actually few
products, but a high need for information . You have to understand how people come
to your product or service and then pick them up accordingly. That means that
every SEO strategy is accordingly… So the steps are always the same:
keyword research, SEO audit, etc. But you have to think, for
example in keyword research, at what point do I want to pick up the users,
what is lucrative for my business model.
Then number 2: Investments in company-relevant content, even if it is purely
informative, always pay off. How so? You increase your brand awareness
in a very specific context. You increase your expert status. You increase the chance of people
linking to you naturally and so on. And you have to
generate touchpoints on the Internet anyway. Every CEO believes that to this day, but people don't click on a Google
Ad and then buy from you right away. If you believe that, then you haven't understood anything,
absolutely nothing, about online marketing. Everything revolves around touchpoints. Contact points that accumulate
and then the transaction occurs. Except it's a tiny little transaction. Then it might be like this: first contact – purchase. But that's usually not the case, and
that's very important to understand.
Then: SEO starts (very) slowly and
then delivers better and better results over time, provided of course
there is still potential for growth. That means you can see it here too. This doesn't look optimal from the diagram
, but if you were to display it as a curve , the curve would of course be
flatter at this point than it is here. And it tends to be like that, that's what's
amusing when agencies talk about it: If customers quit there, then there is only
one loser – namely the customer himself.
Because if you do the right
things, then it accumulates, so compound -Effect and then it's off. That means if you trust your SEO agency
and you objectively believe what they're doing is cool and the strategy
makes sense to you in general, then even if the results aren't
great, there's no point in quitting. The only stupid thing is you. Very, very important. And finally, the last lesson. Even if you have reached your potential…
I don't want to relate that to the customer at all, because there tend to
still be keywords, but let's say, the potential would end at this point.
Then it doesn't mean that SEO is over and now I'm laying down my
arms and no longer doing SEO, but then it's still important to maintain these results
through ongoing improvements, because your competitors will tend to
always try to catch up with you .
This means that if you want to keep the same distance
, you have to make corresponding improvements so that
you can maintain this lead. And that's it.
I hope you enjoyed this case study too. Thank you so much for watching and see you
next time. Bye!.
