Objective:

Our client was a national producer of custom home goods looking to increase their rankings in Google and other search engines. Their goal was to compete with larger, “big box” stores in the home goods space.

Although the client was already seeing healthy growth in website traffic and revenue, our team saw an opportunity to accelerate that growth by writing optimized content for category pages. We wanted to improve keyword rankings for these pages and also provide a better user experience with helpful, informational content.

Strategy:

Our team planned to target highly specific search terms that incorporated “custom” terms since this was a unique selling point for the client and an advantage over the big box stores. We also wanted to incorporate broader keywords with high search volume in order to boost traffic. Ultimately, our goal was to write unique copy for the category and subcategory pages.

First, our team conducted in-depth keyword research to determine the most relevant keywords that had moderate-to-high search volume and low-to-moderate competition. Since our client was a small business selling made-to-order items, we wanted to avoid highly competitive terms dominated by enterprise brands and terms that indicated mass-produced products.

Next, we narrowed our keyword targeting for each category page, selecting primary and secondary keywords. Primary keywords represent the most accurate description of the items in the category, while secondary keywords are typically related or semantically similar terms that customers might also be using to search for those products.

Results:

Our team started optimizing category and subcategory pages in Q3 2020 and the optimizations were uploaded at the beginning of Q4. Keyword rankings consistently grew from October 2020 to April 2021. As of April 30, 2021, keywords had grown 68% (668 vs. 398) for the cutting boards categories and 114% (342 vs. 160) for the live edge categories.

Keyword growth for cutting boards categories

Keyword growth for live edge categories

The keyword increases for these two categories also contributed to increased organic traffic. Entrances to live edge and cutting board categories and subcategories increased 136% year over year from October 2020 to April 2021 (13,669 vs. 5,788 sessions). Although traffic was already increasing at the beginning of 2020, growth accelerated from November 2020 through January 2021, right after our optimizations were uploaded to the site.

Year over year comparison of organic traffic to the Live Edge and Cutting Board categories and subcategories

New users also increased 145% YoY (10,968 vs. 4,479). This indicates that the keyword improvements from our optimizations led to traffic from individuals previously unfamiliar with the client’s brand.

Lastly, we also saw an increase in transactions. From October 2020 to April 2021, users entering the website on these category pages completed 52 transactions, an increase of 18% over the previous year. These category pages alone brought in $8,030 in revenue.

Case Study Highlights

Industry: Ecommerce Home Goods Brand

Goals:

  • Improve organic keyword rankings for category pages.
  • Increase organic traffic and revenue from users landing on category pages.

Results:

  • 114% increase in keyword visibility for top product categories.
  • 136% increase in traffic YoY from October 2020 to April 2021.
  • 18% increase in transactions from users entering optimized category pages.