Overview
Beanstalk Digital executed a comprehensive SEO campaign for a client in the beauty industry. Over six months, the campaign led to significant improvements in organic search performance, resulting in a 266.2% increase in organic sales, 237.3% increase in organic clicks Year on Year. The organic CTR also increased from 0.7% to 1.3% Year on Year. This case study outlines the various on-page, technical and off-page SEO strategies that were implemented to achieve these impressive results.
Initial Analysis and Strategy Development
The SEO campaign began with a thorough evaluation of the client’s existing website and online presence to identify key areas for improvement and develop a targeted SEO strategy:
- Competitor Analysis – We analysed the SEO strategies of leading competitors in the beauty industry to understand their strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. This included a review of their keyword strategies, backlink sources and content quality.
- Keyword Research – The next step was extensive keyword research to discover high-value, relevant keywords that potential customers were using. This included a mix of short-tail and long-tail keywords specific to the beauty industry.
- Website Audit – We performed a comprehensive audit to identify technical issues, content gaps, backlink profiles and user experience challenges.
On-Page SEO Improvements
Several on-page SEO tactics were employed to improve the website’s relevance and user engagement:
- Content Optimisation: Existing content was optimised to incorporate target keywords naturally, ensuring that it provided valuable information to users. New content pieces, such as blog posts, product reviews and beauty tips, were created to target additional keywords and address common customer queries.
- Meta Tags and Descriptions: Meta titles and descriptions were optimised for all key pages to include primary keywords and compelling calls-to-action, aimed at improving click-through rates (CTR).
- Header Tags: Proper use of H1, H2, and H3 tags was implemented to structure the content and highlight important keywords, making the content more accessible to both users and search engines.
- Internal Linking: A robust internal linking strategy was developed to ensure that link equity was distributed across the site, helping important pages rank higher.
- .User Experience (UX) Improvements. Improvements were made to site navigation, mobile responsiveness, and page load speeds to improve overall user experience and reduce bounce rates
- Category and Product Page Optimisation. Category and Product pages were optimised by refining the content to include relevant keywords, ensuring they effectively described the range of products offered. High-quality images and user-generated content, such as reviews and ratings, were added to improve the attractiveness and usability of these pages. Breadcrumb navigation was also implemented to improve the user journey and search engine crawlability.
- Proper Canonicals Setup. Canonical tags were set up on the relevant category and product pages to prevent duplicate content issues and consolidate link equity. This was especially important for product variations and pagination. By specifying the preferred versions of URLs, search engines were guided to index the correct pages, ensuring that SEO efforts were not diluted across multiple similar pages.
Technical SEO Improvements
Technical SEO was crucial in ensuring that the website was easily crawlable and indexable by search engines:
- XML Sitemap and Robots.txt. An updated XML sitemap was submitted to Google Search Console and the robots.txt file was configured to guide search engine crawlers effectively.
- Structured Data Markup. Implemented schema markup for beauty services, product reviews, and local business details to help search engines understand the context of the content better, improving the chances of rich snippets appearing in search results.
- Fixing Crawl Errors. All crawl errors identified in Google Search Console were addressed, ensuring that search engine bots could access all important pages without issues.
- HTTPS Migration. Ensured that the entire site was served over HTTPS to improve security and gain a ranking boost.
- Page Speed Optimisation. Improved page load times by switching to better hosting, optimising images, leveraging browser caching and minimizing JavaScript and CSS files to improve user experience and search engine rankings.
Off-Page SEO and Link Building
Building a strong backlink profile was essential to improving the website’s authority and trustworthiness:
- We performed a focused outreach campaign to acquire backlinks from reputable beauty-related websites, industry blogs and publications.
- Optimised the client’s presence in local search results by claiming and optimising their Google My Business listing, acquiring local citations and encouraging customer reviews on various platforms.
Results
The SEO efforts resulted in substantial improvements over six months:
- The website achieved a 266.2% increase in the amount of organic sales Year on Year.
- The number of organic clicks increased by 237.3%.
- The average organic position increased by 8.2 positions Year on Year.
- The organic click-through rate improved from 0.7% to 2%, reflecting the effectiveness of the meta tag improvements.