Ecommerce B2C Campaign

B2Bs can benefit a great deal from efficient, effective and future-proof SEO. This case study discusses how our integrated SEO campaigns helped a struggling e-commerce business turn things around in a matter of weeks.

 

Overview Of The Client

A major advantage of running an end-to-end digital marketing agency is that we get to work with businesses of all sorts – from highly localised, brick-and-mortar service provider SMEs to e-commerce businesses that target nationwide customers.

The client in this particular case falls in the latter category.

When they approached us, they had a fairly successful, tried-and-tested business model. They also had a great set of loyal customers – a huge asset when it comes to boosting the revenue via social media advertising. Despite this, the company had seen a year-long drop in organic traffic and every good thing that comes with organic traffic – new leads, new customers and sales.

We took over the website when the client was facing many other challenges in terms of offline advertising, promotions and strong competition.

Looking back at the campaign, we’re extremely happy to report that we helped the client not only gain the lost ground, but also return to their #1 position in the niche.

 

Overview Of The Project

Client
An e-commerce business operating in a consumer niche category
Mission
To arrest the slide in organic traffic numbers, improve organic traffic thereon, boost sales parallelly
Start Date
May 1st, 2018
End Date
Ongoing. Please read on for more.
Returns
Over 10x ROI over the first 12 months. Over 100% increase in organic traffic. 40,000+ visits per month.

 

Where We Started

We’ve talked about the campaign background in the introduction.

It’s important to note here that this campaign had to be handled in a way that works with e-commerce businesses. Driving organic traffic was just one aspect of the eventual goal – more importantly, we had to ensure that we helped the client clock consistent sales every week. This isn’t an easy task, because making people buy things online hinges significantly on how smooth the UX is, among other factors.

Here’s where we started:

 

B2B Digital Marketing Case Study - SEO Cardiff

 

From September 2017 to May 2018, the organic traffic had dropped massively – by over 50%. This also meant that the client was constantly ceding important keywords to competitors. We took over the website in the first week of May, 2018.

 

August 2018 Update (3 Months On)

Given the systemic damage to organic traffic, we had to consider repurposing the basic skeleton of the website – from the conversion rate optimisation to technical SEO. This meant that the first month or so was spent towards ‘fixing’ the website, and bringing it up to the standard SEO code.

As expected, this period didn’t yield any significant traffic output. This can be seen in the image below.

 

Cardiff SEO Case Study - B2B Digital Marketing In Cardiff

 

During the first three months, despite no direct SEO contributions, we were able to reverse the downward trend successfully. The organic traffic, through these systemic fixes, went up by about 15% in the first 3 months.

 

November 2018 Update (6 Months On)

Given the online-only revenue model of the client, we had to be quick on our feet. We didn’t have the luxury of investing in elaborate content marketing efforts. So, we decided to amp up our link building campaigns, while keeping the content marketing goals limited to a manageable level.

 

This meant two things – all the pages started showing considerable organic traffic numbers as we closed in on the six-month mark.

 

By the time we completed six months with the client, the organic traffic had already reached a level at which the client could afford to re-start offline marketing and promotions. This was a huge milestone for us.

 

SEO Agency Cardiff Case Study Organic Marketing

 

As can be seen, at the 6-month mark, the organic traffic had improved drastically, by over 43%. Improving the monthly visits from 23,000+ to 33,000+ within 6 months is a remarkable achievement, by all SEO standards.

 

February 2019 Update (9 Months On)

As per the initial discussion with the client, we had decided that we will hit the 40% organic traffic improvement milestone within 9 months. The fact that we already touched that number within 6 months gave us a great room to improve on our content marketing efforts during the next three months. We made positive revisions to our initial goals, raising the bar to 50% for the 9-month mark.

 

Cardiff SEO Agency - HQ SEO Digital Marketing Case Study

 

By the first week of February, 2019, the monthly organic traffic had improved tremendously. Standing at over 37,000, from 23,000+,our starting point. An overall 61% boost in the organic traffic meant that our full-scale SEO efforts were starting to pay off.

 

Overview Of The Link Building Campaign

Link building, as we noted earlier, was a huge part of this project.

Our measured link building approach combined heavy digital PR (along with social media promotions) and aggressive link building to product pages, category pages and lead-gen landing pages (including the home page) worked incredibly well.

Here are some numbers that speak volumes about this progress.

 

Referring Domains

When we got started with this project (May, 2018), the number of referring domains was pretty much stagnant at around 230.

This, clearly, wasn’t enough, for the kind of business the client was trying to set up.

Over the next 12 months, we undertook highly-targeted and specific link building campaigns that enabled us to reach out to popular blogs, niche reviewers, national and international media and relevant publications for backlinks.

 

Link Building Case Study - B2B SEO Case Study - Cardiff SEO

 

As a result, by the time we were about to complete 12 full months of link building, we had managed to lift the number of referring domains to 373 – a 63% improvement.

Many of these domains were high authority domains, and backlinks from their pages had an indirect, positive impact on the concurrent organic traffic numbers.

 

Number Of Backlinks

For the month of May 2018, the total number of live backlinks to the client’s website stood at around 15,000. Our link building campaign was based around the idea that for the kind of traffic we were aiming for, this number had to go up drastically, or we had little chance of beating the competition.

 

B2B SEO Case Study - Link Building Agency Cardiff HQ SEO

 

By May 2019 (one full year into the campaign), we had improved the number of backlinks to the client’s website by 400% (from around 15,000 in May 2018 to 60,000+ in May 2019).

 

These links were divided across a variety of domain authority levels, anchor texts and relevancy factors, giving the client’s website a fully organic, 100% natural and perfectly diversified link profile.

 

Tracking The Revenue Changes

While drawing up the campaign, the client wanted to track the changes in revenue generated over the course of the campaign. This isn’t the best way of calculating the ROIs of digital marketing/SEO campaigns, but it does give a good enough idea of the overall performance.

While we don’t have the privilege of disclosing the end-to-end revenue stats, here’s a peek into the three-month window (August 2018 to October 2018).

 

B2B SEO Case Study - Link Building Agency Cardiff HQ SEO

 

By adding approximately £14,000 per month through sales within the first six months of the campaign, we ensured that the campaign was on track to hit the 10x ROI target at the 12-month mark.

 

Keywords

Since this was a hyper-niche business, the number of keywords the website would rank for was always going to be limited.

Therefore, we decided to focus on LSI and long-tail keywords that we drew from a comprehensive competitor SEO.

Here’s how we helped the client recover lost SERP ranks across the first 12-months of the campaign.

 

Keyword Rankings Case Study - B2B Case Study HQ SEO

 

Back in May 2018, when we took over, the website ranked for close to 900 keywords on the first page of search results (#1 to #10 positions). Upon completing year-long SEO, link building and content marketing campaigns, we managed to rank the website for over 1,300 keywords (#1 to #10 positions). Of these, nearly 33% were #1 rankings for ‘money keywords’.

 

As Things Stand Today – May 2019

Over the last one year, we have delivered an exceptional and cost-effective performance for the client, as reflected in the below traffic analysis.

 

B2B Case Study Cardiff SEO - Organic Marketing Cardiff

 

A close to 100% increase in monthly organic traffic (from 23,000 in May 2018 to 40,000+ in May 2019) has allowed the client to fully leverage their e-commerce website as a sales machine.

 

To know more about how our end-to-end digital marketing services can help your business grow organically, write to us here, or click the button below to receive a free proposal.

 

 

National PR Agency B2B Case Study

At HQ SEO, we have worked with a number of clients, but this particular case – a brand new website for a national PR and marketing agency (UK) – was unique in many ways.

 

Overview Of The Client

Whenever we take on a new client for any of our service – from digital PR to overall SEO – our main aim is to first set the record straight for their website in terms of technical SEO. Since this was a brand-new website and the designers had done a fairly basic job of putting it live, we had a mixed bag of pros and cons.

The good thing was that we had a clean slate to work with. This allowed us to build the entire campaign ground-up without worrying about any baggage of the past.

On the somewhat negative side, there were the usual suspects.

Most web developers and designers – especially smaller agencies – are so much focussed on functionality and appearance (they all want the site to look great when it’s live) that factors like site speed, crawlability and indexation are inevitably pushed to the backseat. So, in this particular case, we had to fix them all before we could think of implementing any advanced link building, digital PR or overall SEO strategies.

The best thing about this case study is the fact that it gives a 100% fair and true representation of what we do as a leading SEO agency in the UK.

 

Overview Of The Project

Client
A National PR & Marketing Company, Looking To Expand Internationally
Mission
To improve overall SEO, boost organic traffic, create a profitable, ROI-heavy lead gen vehicle for the business through organic marketing
Start Date
June 1st, 2017
End Date
Ongoing. Please read on for more.
Returns
Over 25x ROI over the first 18 months. Over 15x increase in qualified leads per month, within just 9 months (each qualified lead being worth over £1,000 to the client).

 

Where We Started

As mentioned earlier, we had the advantage of starting off with a clean slate. Here’s a quick review of the organic traffic for the client before we took over:

 

SEO Case Study - Cardiff SEO Agency HQ SEO

Organic Traffic SEO Case Study Cardiff

 

Over the period May 01, 2017 to May 31, 2017, the organic traffic was really poor – pretty much non-existent for all practical purposes. This obviously meant that the client couldn’t generate any leads and had to rely on offline marketing (which is expensive and can only go so far).

On June 01, 2017 we took over. Let’s follow the progress with milestones set at every 6 months.

 

December, 2017 – Update (6 Months On)

For every project we undertake and every client we get on board, our aim is to go above and beyond the contractual requirements. To that end, the first six months are extremely crucial – this is the period in which we streamline the website for a perfect take-off down the line.

It usually takes us about 2-4 weeks to iron out all the technical SEO faults (read more about our technical SEO services here). As you can see, there was hardly any uptick during this period (June-July, 2017).

Once we’re through with this stage, the results start coming in. Here’s a December, 2017 update (the first 6-month milestone, on November 30, 2017).

 

SEO Services in Cardiff - Cardiff SEO Company

Technical SEO Services - SEO Cardiff

As you can see, we were able to set the website up for substantial traffic successfully. Within 6-months, we managed to establish a firm, positive and upwards organic traffic trend.

Here onwards, the efforts begin to pay off – literally.

 

June,2018 – Update (12 Months On)

12 months is a long time – long enough to turn a website’s vital stats around completely. It’s a challenge, given the regular tweaks Google makes to its search algos, but our team of experts manages to keep up.

For this client, the 1-year mark was really special. Here’s how our services fared, starting from June 01, 2017 to May, 31, 2018.

 

Cardiff SEO Agency - Digital Marketing Cardiff

SEO Services Cardiff - Best Cardiff SEO Agency

The numbers paint a clear picture of the growth we helped happen over the 1-year period.

 

From less than 20 users per month, we were able to launch the organic traffic into overdrive – at over 2,500 new users per month. That, right there, is a 150x increase in organic traffic, within 1 year.

 

During this period, the client estimated that they received 30+ organic leads on average, per month. This was the much-needed boost for them to amp up their other marketing campaigns that revolve around SEO – link building, content marketing and social media marketing.

 

December, 2018 – Update (18 Months On)

For the client of this size, we estimated that 18-20 months would be enough to reach the peak performance for the primary stages of digital marketing. It turned out to be a good estimate because, come November 30, 2018, we hit our target of 5,000+ new users per month (shown in the image below).

 

Cardiff SEO Case Study HQ SEO

Best Cardiff SEO Agency - Digital Marketing

For the kind of industry this client operates in, 5,000 active users per month is a phenomenal number. This, on average, resulted in over 80+ qualified leads per month. Each lead, according to the client’s estimate, was worth over £1,000.

 

Putting Our Performance In The Right Perspective

At the 18-month mark, we had not only outperformed the client’s expectations, but also been able to hand them over a website that – with regular content marketing – could keep bringing in more leads each week for them. Having such a SEO-streamlined asset at your disposal gives you a significant edge over your competitors.

Here’s an example. Our SEO efforts helped the client’s website rank #1 in Google for nearly 100 top industry keywords, by the end of November, 2018 (the ‘money keywords’ that pull in leads and revenue, over and over again).

 

Ranking #1 In Google -Cardiff SEO Case Study

The website also ranks #1-10 for hundreds of important keywords. Ahref’s generic organic traffic value calculator estimates the ‘traffic only’ value of the website at over $10,000 per month – up 100x from where we started in June, 2017.

 

HQ SEO Case Study - Organic Traffic Analysis

 

Overview Of Our Integrated Link Building Campaigns

Integrating link building campaigns within the overall SEO project is a tactic that we have developed fully in-house. Our link building experts work in tandem with our SEO and content teams to find, claim and maximise favourable link building opportunities.

 

Link Building Case Study - Cardiff SEO Agency HQ SEO

 

Within just 18 months, we managed to build nearly 27,000 links to this website – a massive feat. This immensely helped in improving the domain authority from 0 in June, 2017 to 34 in December, 2018. As a result, more organic traffic followed and kicked off a nice, cyclic effect that allowed us to rank the website for nearly 6,000 keywords – each of which continues to contribute towards the final ROI.

 

As Things Stand Today – A Summary

As things stand today, in May 2019, the website keeps attracting exponentially higher organic traffic.

 

With over 6,000 monthly visitors – almost all of whom are intent-driven and looking to do business with our client – the website keeps fuelling the client’s lead gen funnel 24×7, throughout the week.

 

Overall, we’ve generated an ROI in excess of 2,780% for this client within 18 months.

To know more about how our set of bespoke, result-driven and ROI-heavy digital marketing services can help your business, do feel free to get in touch with us.

 

 

Ecoflor Case Study

How HQ SEO Grew EcoFlor.co.uk’s Organic Traffic 1600% In 12 Months.

After over 5 years of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) consulting, we’ve figured out how to improve a business’s search engine rank in almost any space. It doesn’t matter if the keyword is in the consumer space or business space…
the formula is the same.

Like many other companies EcoFlor focused their time on optimising all the elements within their control with the hope to boost sales, they even delegated the SEO task to their technical IT guy who came back with the bad news – SEO needs real attention from an SEO company.

That’s when EcoFlor found HQ SEO.

EcoFlor wanted a reliable way to improve their Search Engine Results Page Rank (SERP) score and came to us with the task to add some SEO power to their website to improve their online revenue stream.

This was one of my favourite campaigns because it was one of those situations that I know we could really rank fast once the issues from the technical SEO audit were complete. And I mean the results speak for themselves. We’ve now moved onto bigger things with Ecoflor building content & scaling our link building services as they’ve seen the power that pre-sold leads have coming from organic search.

K9 Mobile Security Case Study

In 2017 we ran a case study for K9 Mobile Security – A security company based in Plymouth UK.

K9 came on board for a local SEO campaign targeting 1 specific location, in this case the city of Plymouth.

Local SEO is split into 2 separate ranking plans: Organic & Google Maps.

Both rankings carry a lot of weight as some users prefer the maps listings to select a business, others prefer the organic results, so ranking in both is a necessity to maximise the amount of traffic & leads we bring into the business and essentially maximise the amount of money that can be made from the campaign.

Our 2 primary keywords were “security Plymouth” and “security company Plymouth” – with a campaign length of 6 months, which ended in January 2018.

Organic Results

The results were perfect for organic rankings – 1st for both primary keywords.

K9 organic ranking results

Map Results

3rd in Maps for primary keyword 1

2nd in Maps for primary keyword 1

Resulting in a great influx of organic traffic & leads. Unfortunately call tracking was not set-up for this client, which is something that we recommend for clients but it’s not essential for a successful campaign, it just helps explain the ROI.

If you would like to get in touch about our local SEO services visit the contact page.

KeyworX Case Study – Ongoing SAAS Marketing & SEO Campaign

KeyworX is a SAAS business and hence came onboard for our saas digital marketing & SEO services. KeyworX is a brand-new business which was only established at the start of 2018. As a result, their first tool only went live in March which was an Amazon keyword tracking software. In the future they are looking to develop a suite of tools to help Amazon sellers. This is obviously a very competitive space but one we are excited to develop.

I’ve also come on-board as a full marketing consultant with equity for this business, advising in many areas of digital marketing and creating the overall marketing campaign for this business. This is not something I do for many clients as this is more a CMO role inside the company itself. If you are interested you can view this page.

For KeyworX we’ve actually done the entire process from web development, site design and full 2 year digital marketing campaign creation. This will be a running case study updated every few months with the results.

We also have permission to use the user acquisition data from KeyworX which means we can see the direct ROI we bring for Saas based companies in the future.

Looking forward to this campaign!

Update – 3 Month’s In

After just 3 months in we’re already seeing great results for our primary keywords which are now starting to index very high and will start to hit page 1 by the end of month 5/6.

Keyworx Organic Rankings Screenshot

Update 6 Months In

Incredibly we’re already generating a good ROI for this site, mainly due to the massive increase in organic rankings in the past 3 months. In 3 months we’ve 10X’d organic traffic and signs to where it was previously, results and organic traffic screenshots are below.

KeyworX Screenshot

A lot of the traffic is also coming from referral links built in the link building elements of the campaign! This is massively important for 2 reasons. The first is links are seen as more powerful when they generate traffic and secondly if people are clicking links to go through to the software then there’s clearly interested in signing up. So this referral traffic not only helps organic rankings drastically, but it also generates sign ups too.

Referral Traffic Since June 2018 (3 months)
Referral Traffic Since June 2018 (3 months)
Organic traffic by week since the site was live.

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