Shop SEO Case Study x2 (mit Agentur) inkl. Erkenntnisse
We look at the two results
from two medium-sized online shops together, discuss the measures and
draw valuable lessons from them. Have fun! My name is Alexander Rus
and SEO is my bread and butter. We chat on this channel
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. So in this episode we look at two of our
online shop customers – from the start time to the results and the initial situation
to the solution of the problem. We start with example number 1:
An online shop for building materials. Of course , to see the results,
we jump right into ahrefs. We are here in ahrefs now.
The customer launched in Q2 2021. It was still a very young online shop, which means it
only started shortly before the SEO support. I think you can see the development very nicely. We're now at just under
26,000 organic traffic according to ahrefs.
As you know, ahrefs is more likely to underrate
than overrate. A current domain rating of
23, so still relatively low. With the backlink profile, you can also see very
well that this domain did not actually exist before and only then has it
really got going. So. That was the
starting point for this shop. From what I've seen so far,
the setup wasn't actually bad at all, especially for someone who's
really building an online store for the first time.
The
website structure was the main problem. The category pages were just thin, so no content at all
, just products, and the page – like I said, now it
doesn't have high domain authority either, but when it started
it just had next to no domain authority. And we always divide projects
into two phases, so to speak, although you can never say how long the different phases last. That means there is phase 1: simply achieve the first
goals and get the whole thing going. And then the second phase:
really developing the whole thing further and then getting a shop that is
simply better than the competition. In this case, what was
phase 1, achieving the first goals? What was the focus? Just turn the bad structure into
a good website structure.
Develop category pages, that means, let's say fatten them up, make them more relevant and increase domain authority
through link building. And the steps involved were super simple: Very classic, you will
see that in other of our case studies…
Of course, each project needs an individual solution, but the steps
are actually always relatively the same. Step 1, if you have an online
shop that does not perfectly cover the important entry points with demand, i.e.
that has a structure problem, then I do a keyword research
including website structure planning. You have this current state, develop
a target state and then look: What makes sense to bend and what
would be too expensive? That means we looked at: Where is there really demand and which
lucrative sites are urgently needed? Where are structural changes necessary
that actually have an impact? Step #2:
Bottom-of-the-funnel content marketing. Bottom of the funnel means where
things are really commercial and where sales are really generated. Accordingly, we have the most important category pages, i.e.
the products with the highest demand and the highest margin –
we have revised these category pages – in terms of text in the first step,
i.e.
Increased the amount of text on the page from zero to "cool". Then number 3:
Quality link building. That means we had a site
that hardly had a domain rating. So the basic directories were
there, but not much else was there, and the competition was significantly higher.
That is, Dream 100 research. We looked at this niche:
Who are the 100 most important people and what are the 100 most important websites
that we absolutely want to get links from? Then we looked at what they
typically link, built a suitable linkable asset, and then did outreach
on that linkable asset.
And I think you can see relatively well
that the whole thing has developed nicely. Then, while the shop was
somewhat satisfying for us , we still made iterative
UX improvements. That means we made mockups.
Above all, of course, for the conversion-related pages.
That is, home page, shop category pages, and product pages.
What can be improved there, how can it be better tailored?
Of course, this is again a super special target group with an online shop for building materials
– that means everything is tailored to it. And we've implemented a few more subtleties in
terms of technology. But that was
n't the big lever with this shop.
For most stores, technology is
the biggest lever, but there were just a few small canonicalization issues, a
few mobile display issues, and of course, which is classic with an online store
, the indexing had to be partially tweaked because certain pages were buried too deep were
and were therefore not indexed. And that's how the whole thing developed quite well. And now we're in phase two
: we always call it further development. The focus here is simply to
further develop and scale the shop that is already working.
You can also see how the traffic is developing. And that
's insanely boring now, but all we're doing now, which of course isn't
easy, but it's easy to tell: bottom-of-the-funnel content marketing.
That means further, what are now
the important category pages that are to be expanded with texts,
and since diligently revise existing category pages and introduce new category pages,
based on the keyword research. Then, more quality link building until we get to the point where
we're absolutely competitive. What is competitive? We have the same domain
rating as our absolute top competition – but we're not there yet.
And that will be again and again, building linkable assets, doing outreach and so on. Of course, there is always potential in
terms of partners and suppliers and so on, but this potential is
exploited relatively quickly. The only link building that can be continued for a very long time
and that can be scaled very well is simply linkable asset, outreach – boom. And of course now with time
we will… Now we have a shop and now we want to make a legendary shop, which
means there are always UX improvements.
There are new features to introduce,
there are new developments regarding shops and so on and that's where we are now.
That's the exciting point – that's when it gets really cool, and I think you can see extremely well
how quickly the whole thing then develops. But what is really important to me
is to show that SEO takes time. That means: Boring, boring,
boring, boring… Boom! And then all of a sudden:
exponential growth. And that's what most don't understand.
They think: "Yeah, let's try SEO for 12 months." But it really can be, nothing happens
until month 9 or month 12 and then it's off. That's very important and that's one of the
lessons to be learned from this example: You just have to be patient. It's like, you roll a ball up a hill and
then you eventually get to the top and up until then it was super exhausting.
And suddenly everything goes
by itself and every measure scales wonderfully. This is learning number 1 from this video. So.
Then we come to the second example: An online shop for jewelry in
an extremely competitive niche. Now I would say that this
is a medium-sized shop, the customer itself was relatively small at the beginning
and started in quarter 1 of 2020. We're currently
at around 50,000 organic traffic right now, ranking
in the top 3 for absolute top keywords. Which, to be honest
, we didn't really expect. That means you can now see the progression:
Just Q1 2020, start here, that means you can see the point at
which we then started quite well anyway.
Regarding backlink profile:
Relatively low domain rating. You also came to us with a relatively
low domain rating. You can see relatively well what
happened here in the collaboration. That means it was definitely a focus. Briefly on the initial situation:
This page had quite a problem in terms of URL management.
Most online shops have this, that the shop system generates many URLs
that are of no interest to anyone and, to a certain extent, clutter up the index for Google. That
means you waste crawl budget, important parts don't get crawled and you
get all sorts of problems, and of course you dilute the average page quality.
That is, bad, bad, bad.
Then, thin category pages again,
like most shops. Very, very strong competition
and suboptimal website UX , although I would say that we
haven't finally solved this problem yet. So.
What were the phases of this project now? Just phase 1: achieve the first goals. The focus was just
extremely extreme, creating a foundation that makes good organic performance possible at all
, because that wasn't a starting point where we thought:
"Let's start, we'll destroy everything." It was a lot of basics needed. That means, first of all, an easy quick win:
snippet optimization for the SEO-relevant shop category pages in the main navigation.
That has already delivered a small bump. Then:
technical foundation. This means that we have put an extremely large amount of
time into URL management, so that only the really important filters are
indexed, that no URLs are indexed that are unnecessary, so that we can really increase the
average page quality. Improve internal linking. Improve performance – boom. As I said, that sounds like 5 minutes of
work – but it was definitely more work.
Then, again in the classic way:
bottom-of-the-funnel-content-marketing. That means, together with
the customer, we have found out what the products are, where they generate the highest margin, where there is
correspondingly high demand. We then systematically revised these most important category
pages and added highly relevant texts. Then again quality link building.
That was a site that had existed for a long time, which means this web shop already
had the basic backlinks.
That said, in order for us to get the whole thing moving,
it really took the good backlinks. I already explained it anyway:
Dream 100 research again, linkable asset creation &
outreach – always the same system. You shouldn't make such a science out of SEO
. People always want “300
different link building methods” – no, there are always few link building methods that
work well and everything else is a waste of time.
That's harsh but true. Then just iterative UX improvements
was very difficult with this shop. Also simply in interaction
with the existing shop system. That means we just did what was
possible – introduced urgently needed shop features to stay competitive
and created suitable mockups for them. That was incredibly exhausting, but of course it
still bore fruit. And then where the big steps were, we were in phase
2, further development. And here was the focus: We finally have
a working shop, and we will continue to develop it
and scale what works.
That means bottom of
the funnel content marketing again. Further category pages expanded with highly relevant
texts and created new entry points. That said, we really looked at each other through
keyword research: Ok, we're ranking for these keywords now, this is
where Google thinks we're relevant. Is there still potential around here
for the existing product portfolio? Is it still possible to introduce new product category
pages? This is always a massive win for online stores and is always so
easy when you do something like (I 'll just take a Zalando example again,
men's moccasins and then a dedicated page for men's brown moccasins. And there
's so much potential with these refinements for an online shop and often so much
sales because the more refined the keyword is, the clearer the intention and of course the higher
the conversion rate of this traffic. Then what we did with this customer:
Based on We did middle-funnel content marketing on this topic
– namely publishing buying guides in the blog. That means, advisory content that picks up the user at
an early point in the customer journey, but at a point where we already know, they
or he wants to buy what we offer in our online shop.
Very important.
What often happens is
that online shops think: "Yes, Alexander said we need
informative content, we're doing a blog.” And then they either make content way too
high up the content marketing funnel or after conversion.
no We always build the content marketing funnel
from the point of conversion upwards. And if we are incredibly strong as a brand, then
we can think about what to do in terms of retention, i.e. customer retention and loyalty, but
first we pick up the fruits that are hanging down. That is, right at the conversion or before
the conversion—that is, buying guides.
So. Then, continue iterative UX improvements.
We have learned from our experience of more than 13 years:
Big relaunches are always associated with a lot of stress.
If somehow the technical foundation isn't that bad, it's always
much better to iteratively improve the site and systematically revise things
than to make one big improvement. That means we always look at what
the competitors have for features that are simply game changers and build them. We look at the American
market in this industry – what has huge potential there? – and so on and
develop the site accordingly. I can only warmly recommend you, because
America is simply 20 years ahead of Germany and 30 years ahead of Austria and so
on – you can learn a lot there. And what can we
learn from this project now? Always, and I think you can learn that from the
first example, as soon as the technical, visual and structural foundation is in place for
a shop – and that's not so basic – many people will now think:
"Yes, but that's with me already like that." Probably not, because otherwise it
would work wonderfully.
As soon as you have the technical setup,
good URL management, good performance , i.e. clean core web vitals, the whole thing looks
good visually, suits the target group and the whole thing is well structured, then it is almost
only about perfecting the category pages , meaning I make them even better,
that can be, more relevant through text, or I improve the UX on those pages
or whatever, and increasing the domain authority. And then online shop SEO
is really cool and then things really get going. So. I hope you like this new format, where I tell you
about our customers to a certain extent, but without showing the customer brand, because I'm only allowed to do that
in the rarest of cases, but still like it.
If you want to see case studies now, where we
really show the customer and where you can look at it all yourself and where you can
also see the history of this project, then take a look at our website.
We now post very, very extensive
case studies there at regular intervals, also with customer testimonials. I think this is very exciting for
anyone who runs an online shop. As I said, we have case studies
on different page types, but they are definitely very exciting for online shops in
this context of this video. Otherwise, thanks for
watching and see you next time. Bye!.
