Case: SEO Promotion of Online Confectionery Supply Store "Kondishop"

kondishop - sale of confectionery raw materials and accessories for confectioners Promotion period: 22 months.

https://kondishop.com.ua

Site status: new site.
Objectives:

What we did:

1. We conducted a full technical audit of the website and drew up a technical task for website optimization.

2. We collected a commercial semantic core of queries according to the assortment of the online store.

3. We created technical specifications for expanding the site structure.

4. In accordance with the new structure of the site, we drafted technical specifications for the creation of landing pages for products that can be grouped.

5. We created technical specifications for optimizing the current pages.

6. We created meta tags for all pages of the site: Title, Description, H1.

7. Developed a technical task for adding a blog to the website.

8. We created terms of reference for writing content for the blog.

9. We conducted a link audit of the client's website and competitors.

10. We developed a strategy for increasing the link mass using crowd marketing links, local links (registration in regional directories), and eternal links.

11. We implemented regular link building (getting backlinks from relevant websites).

Technical optimization of the site

Domain name of the site

Initially, the site was hosted on the domain konfectioner.com.ua. Since the site was still under development and there was no risk of losing traffic during the move, we made a proposal to move the site to a domain using the Latin alphabet (search engines, including Google, do not perceive Cyrillic characters as well as Latin) before any work on the site began.

Technical audit

After moving the site to a new domain, we conducted a technical audit and found errors:

• cyclic links (the page itself refers to itself).

• links to broken pages (links to pages that return 4xx or 5xx codes).

• duplicate pages - the same product was available at different URLs (page addresses).

• no canonical tags (pointing search engines to the main page, if there are similar or duplicate page content).

• service pages are opened for indexing (usually, technical pages do not have useful unique content, which is negatively perceived by search engines, so it is better to close them from indexing by bots).

• pages of the site were available at different addresses, for example, you could get to the page itself in two ways, through the URL with "/" at the end of the address or without (when a page is available through different URLs, it is perceived as a duplicate).

• duplicate page META - when switching pages of the product listing, the user is redirected to another page with a unique URL (META should be unique for each page within the site).

• robots.txt and sitemap.xml files are missing (the robots file is needed to indicate the pages that the bot should not visit and those that can be accessed; sitemap is a sitemap that helps the search engine bot crawl the site, the map contains information about the page: priority and date of the last change).

After identifying the technical deficiencies of the site, a detailed technical task was drawn up for the developer to fix the problems.

We also developed recommendations for adding a Ukrainian-language version of the site.

Internal optimization

Collecting the semantic core

The basis of search engine optimization is the semantic core, which a specialist relies on throughout the entire project life cycle.

When collecting semantics, we were guided by the product on the website, the current structure, and competitors in the targeted search results.

We used commercial and regional queries (for example, "buy..." and "...in Dnipro").

All queries were divided into groups (clusters) based on common features. For example, the cluster "Gel food coloring" included all queries related to gel coloring.

Website structure

After collecting the entire semantic core for the site, we made recommendations for expanding the structure (adding new categories, rearranging products on the site). After implementing the recommendations, it became possible to expand the site's presence in search results for medium and low-frequency queries, which are usually more targeted.

Content

The developed structure and collected semantic core of search queries are the basis for working on the content on the site. We created a technical specification for writing unique optimized texts for landing pages and product cards, created META (title, description) for landing pages (we developed a template for the rest). We created a content strategy for blogging (at least 4 articles per month are published on the site). We set up internal links to distribute Pagerank (page rank) across the site and give landing pages more weight in the eyes of the search engines.

* traffic indicators before and after starting a blog

Link building

We developed an optimal link building strategy and an internal linking map to promote the website for the Ukrainian market. In the process of optimizing the site, we received

• more than 70 natural links from relevant websites;

• 150 thematic crowd marketing links;

• 35 links from regional directories;

When promoting a new website with zero links in a highly competitive niche, it is important to start building a high-quality link profile gradually.

*link building rate, the number of referring domains is considered

The graph shows "jumps" in the indicators. It often happens that a website is included in junk directories of websites - this explains both the jump and the drop in the number of donor domains. As part of our regular work, we cleaned the links, removing all low-quality links.

*example of junk directories from which links have been removed

Promotion results

As of September 2019, the site was not present in Google search results, and the first significant indicators were achieved in January 2020.

*Growth of key phrases during the period of SEO promotion

Growth of positions in Google by the core queries

Below are some of the queries that have ranked in the top ten positions in the Google search engine.

*tens of key phrases (results after the end of 22 months)

*Example of search results for a top query

Growth of organic search traffic

For 22 months, organic traffic has shown growth with seasonal dependence, so in the off-season (summer) the traffic was ~10,000 users per month, in the season (fall/winter) ~16,000 users per month.

*Organic traffic indicators

Conclusion about the project

This project stands out for its highly competitive niche, a large number of direct competitors, and a large number of products. After 5 months of work on the site (full development of content and link building), organic traffic reached measurable levels and began to generate revenue.

During the promotion, we worked on the site's content, focusing on its quality and relevance. Thanks to close cooperation with the client, we achieved positive results - an increase in organic traffic and positions in search results. The ROAS of the project was 650% based on the results of the promotion.