SEO for a recently created American website on Shopify

Signed by the NDA
Subject: heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems.
Objectives: to get the site into the search results.
Increase traffic from 19 to 200 users per week.
The number of promoted requests: 850.
Project platform: Shopify.
Region: USA.
Introduction: September, 2019.
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The results:

  • the increase in the number of users per week from 19 to 254
  • the growth of the number of sales from 0 to 160 per month

In September, 2019 the owners of Patrzstop — a startup online store selling equipment for heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems — contacted us for a promotion campaign.

Advertising and SEO failed to bring new orders to the client — not a single request on the subject was in the top.

When the client contacted us, the site had been very recently created (developed in 2018)

The target group of the project was small companies which professionally repaired ventilation, heating and air conditioning systems.

At the very start we had quite a number of difficult tasks to meet.

The first task was to collect semantics.

The client didn't know what the sections should be. The store owner provided us with a list of products and selected top 100 with the highest margins. We thoroughly studied them, the demand, and found out which sections they could belong to. Then we offered our vision based on the demand, analysis of the competitors and the existing nomenclature. This was rather difficult since the site had actually had no categories.

Our team found out that there were quite a lot of competitors in the field of HVACR (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning, Refrigeration) and they were quite strong: they had the large number of external links, pages, traffic channels — social networks, feedback services and so on. In the beginning our client had had only 1 link and even that one had been of poor quality. The site hadn't had any positions in the search results at all! That's why during the development of sections we started tracking them down to the depth of 200.

Patrzstop wanted to promote its services into the US. The client intended to get a quick result (by SEO standards, at least) - in 4 months, but even to think about this as of something possible-was a delusion. In the US, all sites are at least 10 years old or more, so one would need at least six months of hard work to make visible changes.

In SEO, a good result is obtained when everything, what we recommend, based on the needs of the business, is done. We suggested a strategy for the build-up of links - free and paid ones - but, unfortunately, the client considered it to be redundant. The thing is that the budget for links should be quite large, since their cost starts from $ 50 and can grow indefinitely. Therefore, in a few months we managed to purchase some of the links, all the rest were free so we received them independently.

PROBLEM

The site's being developed on Shopify presented a major problem: due to the specifics of the code it is simply impossible in most cases to make improvements over there.

SOLUTION

Only the change of the template and configuring of the plug-ins could solve the problem, and this was a significant limitation for SEO. We had to take this step, because without it we couldn't have advanced at all.

It was also rather difficult to find a proper copywriter who could write texts on such a technical subject as HVACR and would do it as an expert. However, we still managed to find such a specialist and began creating content.

So for the first 6 months our team managed:

  1. To set up objectives via GTM, plug the e-commerce module for the recognition of an approximate profit.
  2. To collect the semantic core, prepare the site's structure. Then, within six months, we created sections, filled them with new content and set tags.
  3. To work on the top 100 most popular product cards in terms of sales: tags, descriptions, feedback. We added them to the main page, and also raised them in the list of products within the sections.
  4. To create many internal product pages and redistribute them into different categories.
  5. To connect the Google module using a plug-in which sent customers an e-mail letter with a request for feedback on a product and then displayed it on the site.
  6. To integrate a new feature: a plug-in for selecting similar products.
  7. To work on the relinking process.
  8. To analyze the link profile of competitors, develop an individual strategy for building up.
  9. To conduct a technical audit and develop terms of reference for the site's improvements.
Interim results achieved:
  1. Our team created 300 promoted pages instead of previous 32 ones.
  2. We boosted the number of indexed pages on the site. There used to be 1620 indexed pages and later the number became 5967 ones in Google, speaking about Bing the initial number was 363 and then it skyrocketed to 5400 pages.
  3. We managed to increase the number of sales from 0 to 130 per month from all internet traffic channels.
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Our next steps:
  1. We collected the semantic core every month since the product range was constantly expanding.
  2. Our specialists created the new section "Tools" and undertook the activities of the optimization: added subsections with products, unique texts, tags, images, worked on internal linking.
  3. We developed the strategy of maintaining a Youtube channel to attract additional referral traffic to the site. Unfortunately, the client failed to maintain it systematically and later completely stopped.
  4. Our employees kept filling the product categories with content since the client increasingly expanded the range of products.
  5. We created the new "Sale" section. The competitors also had this section, which was rather useful since it provided more conversions on the site due to the purchase of products at a discount.
  6. Our team adjusted the link build-up strategy to the budget: connected forum links as well as free ones.
  7. set up redirects to categories after the deleting of the cards of absent products. The client began to have problems with the range of products with discontinued production, but with the activated redirects users wouldn't just simply leave the site if they failed to find the necessary product, but would be able to choose a replacement in the general category. We continued to optimize the cards of the available products: our specialists wrote unique tags and descriptions and attached instructions and manuals.

Given the site was on a platform poorly suitable for promotion, we had a small budget for links and the client began to have disruptions with the product range, we managed to achieved great results for 12 months of work:

  • organic traffic of more than 4,000 visitors per month;
  • +3000 of direct and referral traffic;
  • increase of sales on the site by 160%;
  • significant increase in revenue from all traffic channels.
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Comparison of the indicators at the same periods with a difference in years in Google Analytics:

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