Using the example of an Australian toy store, David explains how, using SEO best practices and effective tools, he increased organic search traffic by 116% in 4 months.
Only white magic!
E-commerce is a big business. How big is it? In the U.S. alone, e-commerce sales exceeded $300 billion in 2014, up 310% over the past 10 years:
total sales
But big money is becoming the basis for competition. According japan mobile phone numbers database to Alexa.com, the number of English-language sites in the e-commerce segment that are in the top million by popularity exceeds 110 thousand. And these sites are fighting for the top positions in search results in their niche. Can you guarantee that your site will be among those occupying the top positions? Fortunately, we have good news for you: the SEO of most e-commerce sites is complete crap.
So, if you have the right knowledge and work hard, you can easily improve your site, which will give you an advantage over your competitors and increase your search traffic.
We will illustrate this with two examples that will clearly demonstrate:
How an Australian toy store grew organic search traffic by 116% in 4 months;
How a UK fashion retailer recovered from a global traffic crash caused by duplicate content.
There's no magic or secret tricks here - just working SEO tips you can use to improve your own site.
Let's look at the first example.
case number one
Case Study #1: How an Australian Toy Store Increased Organic Traffic by 116%
Australian children's toy retailer Toy Universe has seen organic traffic grow over the past few years, with search traffic up 20% in January 2015 compared to January 2014.
january2015-traffic
Great growth! But compare this figure with the difference between January 2016 and January 2015 - 116%! This is the growth we wanted to see. More importantly, doubling the traffic volume doubled the sales volume.
january2016-traffic
"Sales in the last quarter increased by 35%. And, importantly, they doubled in three weeks in January - unthinkable in the toy market, where the first quarter is traditionally considered a failure, and it is difficult to achieve growth at this time," comments Magda De Berg from Toy Universe.
This growth is the result of SEO work done between September and December 2015.
Note: We compared year-over-year to mitigate the effects of seasonality. It would be statistically incorrect to say that traffic increased by 542% between August and December, although it did.
As you can see in the illustration below, the traffic volume in December in the children's toys segment is much higher than in January - we are seeing a doubling compared to the previous period.
December 2015-traffic
Search Traffic in December
Let's take a closer look at the results.
To make things easier, we'll break each action down into 3 steps:
Problem: A bottleneck in SEO has been identified;
What we did: an action to improve or enhance;
Why We Did It: Why This Matters for Ecommerce SEO
Switching to HTTPS
The first change was simple: we switched the domain from http to https.
Problem: Frontend is implemented in http.
What we did: switched all pages of the site from http to https.
Why we did it: For two reasons. First , online stores have a lot of forms that collect personal data about users. It’s a good idea to encrypt this information, not just credit card data. Second , Google has reluctantly confirmed that https sites rank slightly higher than http sites.
Bottom line: If you run an online store, use the https protocol for all pages of your site - read this guide to make sure you do it right.
Category Page Optimization
Problem: Tags too short or too long, lack of consistency.
What we did: We developed a template for tag headings and added keywords that called for a purchase or a target action.
Why we did it: The simplified tag format makes it quick and easy to implement changes and ensures consistency in search results. Including purchase-motivating phrases will bring in a long tail of traffic from people searching for products in “ready-to-buy mode.”
