The Objective
This e-commerce site sells high-end chocolate products in the USA and around the world. The campaign’s goal was to increase conversions and improve traffic by revamping the client’s link building strategy and carrying out a detailed SEO audit.
The Website History
The client sought out The Search Initiative’s services to improve their traffic metrics by carrying out a thorough on-site SEO audit, increasing conversions, and developing a credible link building strategy. Over the last two years of working with this client, we have managed to do just that.
The Issues
Crawl and Index Management
An abundance of 404 Pages and Broken Links
Speed Optimization and Lack of a Content Strategy
An abundance of 404 Pages and Broken Links
Speed Optimization and Lack of a Content Strategy
Course Of Action
An SEO audit of the client’s website highlighted multiple issues that are typical of e-commerce sites. After analyzing data from Google Search Console and Ahrefs, we decided to prioritize fixing poor crawl and index management, broken links, optimizing the website for speed, and improving the client’s content strategy.
E-commerce sites often struggle with broken links, as they clear out pages with sold-out or discontinued products without taking care of the links leading to these pages. We crawled the client’s website in search of the broken links and manually removed them. Wherever possible, we resorted to replacing the links leading to broken pages with new ones that linked to relevant, working pages. We have applied simple directives to prevent Google’s crawlers from recognizing URLs of no use to the users, as well as non indexed pages that we deemed unworthy of popping up on the search results page, thus resolving the crawl and index management issues.
Page speed optimization was another key factor that resulted in increased traffic on the client’s website. To accomplish this, we moved the site to Cloudfare’s content distribution network, which allowed for quicker connection time for users located further away from the client. We also took advantage of its optimization tools which reduced the loading times for on-site content.
Finally, we have completely revamped the client’s content strategy by creating original content that could be later used to funnel users to the product pages. Many e-commerce sites ignore topical relevance in favor of creating product-specific content. We created more shareable, informational content that targeted high-volume keywords relevant to the client’s niche, and added internal links to the money-making pages within those on-site content pieces.
In addition to the steps outlined above, we have helped the client build authority by creating a Google My Business account, sourcing positive reviews from their customers, as well as expanding the client’s outreach efforts to include high-ranking, topically adjacent blogs, improving upon the existing link building strategy.
E-commerce sites often struggle with broken links, as they clear out pages with sold-out or discontinued products without taking care of the links leading to these pages. We crawled the client’s website in search of the broken links and manually removed them. Wherever possible, we resorted to replacing the links leading to broken pages with new ones that linked to relevant, working pages. We have applied simple directives to prevent Google’s crawlers from recognizing URLs of no use to the users, as well as non indexed pages that we deemed unworthy of popping up on the search results page, thus resolving the crawl and index management issues.
Page speed optimization was another key factor that resulted in increased traffic on the client’s website. To accomplish this, we moved the site to Cloudfare’s content distribution network, which allowed for quicker connection time for users located further away from the client. We also took advantage of its optimization tools which reduced the loading times for on-site content.
Finally, we have completely revamped the client’s content strategy by creating original content that could be later used to funnel users to the product pages. Many e-commerce sites ignore topical relevance in favor of creating product-specific content. We created more shareable, informational content that targeted high-volume keywords relevant to the client’s niche, and added internal links to the money-making pages within those on-site content pieces.
In addition to the steps outlined above, we have helped the client build authority by creating a Google My Business account, sourcing positive reviews from their customers, as well as expanding the client’s outreach efforts to include high-ranking, topically adjacent blogs, improving upon the existing link building strategy.
