SEO promotion of a bag and accessory store

Results of 1 year systematic work:

• Increased search traffic by 75%
• Increased sales twice

Start of work: 09.2018

Client: online store of bags, wallets, belts

The site had good traffic, but the client decided to change the contractor due to the lack of positive dynamics.

The main task was to increase SEO traffic on the client’s website, especially in the priority areas – men’s, women’s wallets, men’s bags, and belts.

We always start working on a project from the preparatory stage. We need to understand the main mistakes and shortcomings, along with the points of growth. After this, we know what we should do at the beginning of the promotion and how to choose the optimal strategy.

To do this, we analyzed the current results and the main competitors in priority areas. As we saw, there are marketplaces and very large sites in the top search results for the highest-frequency keywords, making it almost impossible to compete.

Based on this, we decided to concentrate on promoting mid- and low-frequency keywords to Google’s top (categories and filtering pages). For these keywords, Google’s top was more diverse, and the competition was less; this traffic led to more conversions and more chances to reach the TOP-3. We also saw growth points – competitors generate page headers for filtering by templates. Their pages do not contain exact content with main cluster keywords, there are not enough key entries, and texts are not everywhere.

We worked in detail with several categories every month:

• collected the widest possible semantiс core
• compiled an optimal structure for new filter landing pages and filter intersections
• wrote H1  manually for old and new pages not to use the template – in this way, we optimized every page for the most frequent keyword in the cluster and made it more readable for users
• created manual meta tags for filter pages to cover the cluster with as many keywords as possible; also made attractive snippets
• prepared technical specifications for texts on each page; copywriter wrote the texts according to it
• analyzed existing texts – many texts had to be rewritten due to low uniqueness or overspam
• prepared semantics for writing blog articles

On this project, the copywriter constantly wrote unique texts for product pages as an additional plus.

After a technical audit, we found and fixed a whole list of problems:

• eliminated duplicate meta tags
• closed, with the nofollow attribute, sitewide links to service pages (favorites, compare, login, registration, etc.); external links were closed too
• sort pages, search pages, and other duplicate pages were closed from Google indexing by the robots meta tag
• removed products, categories, and brands that gave a 404 server response from the sitemap
• corrected the robots.txt file
• improved site download speed
• removed the partial texts closing with the “Read more” button; implemented complete text display on pages
• removed the texts displayed on the sorting and pagination pages
• made URLs lowercase; set up 301 redirects

Unfortunately, the client could not implement the Ukrainian version of the site due to the technical features of the CMS.

1. Good technical implementation of filtering – correct URLs were implemented on the pages with traffic. Other filtering pages were implemented on the site not by links (via a POST request), and a URL with a GET parameter was formed after a click with closing from indexing via meta tag robots
2. The product pages had internal links to the relevant low- and medium-frequency filtering categories. The products in this niche do not bring traffic, so it was logical to transfer the internal weight to the relevant product filter pages.
3. On the listing pages, the same data from Point 2 was loaded in the list mode, only without links, which made it possible to add additional keyword entries for filtering pages, bringing a positive effect to the  website’s relevance

We analyzed the existing inbound links in comparison with competitors and found the following shortcomings:

• the site was partially promoted by low-quality links through the sape exchange (which, after leaving for another contractor, began to disappear)
• a very high percentage of anchor links were present compared to competitors
• links were only built on 9 pages of the site
• very few links led to the website’s main page
• only a small number of links from Ukrainian sites led to the client’s website

As a result, we developed a plan for link mass formation, taking into account previous disadvantages:

• increased the percentage of links to the main page
• increased the % of non-anchor links on pages with a lot of anchor links and poor results for positions
• turned on maximum randomness – formed links to medium- and low-frequency pages

What links did we build?

• crowd links (forums, comments)
• article links on trusted Ukrainian sites (substantially media) through link services and outreach

The client made an accent precisely on the quality of the links, not on their quantity. After half a year of work, the budget for links was increased by 40%, because we used all high-quality donors with low prices and did not want to reduce the dynamics.

After the implementation of good H1s, titles, and text indexing, many keyword groups reached Google’s top 20, and after building 1-3 links, they got to the top 5. Higher-frequency groups gradually began to grow too.

We should note that this niche has significant seasonality, so it is worth comparing the results with the previous year’s traffic and sales and also analyzing the dynamics by positions in Google.

For a year of work, we managed to increase traffic by 75% – below is a screenshot of a comparison of monthly traffic in 2019 and 2018.

In some priority areas, the site has overtaken all competitors.

Starting SEO work, it is very important to develop a general promotion strategy. In this project, we focused specifically on medium- and low-frequency requests for the most converting categories. This is especially important in the context of a trend when only aggregators and large sites occupy the google top in high-frequency categories.

At the same time, the emphasis on narrower categories allows you to take top positions quite quickly and with small budgets and brings targeted SEO traffic to the site.