Short Term Needs for a Long-Term Strategy
At The Missing Link, we used our in depth knowledge of SEO to help an eCommerce startup drive revenue on a newly launched product with limited budget. With their company having just launched in late September we had to act quick to capture consumers during the holiday buying season. Our accelerated SEO strategy exceeded all of our goals and has sustained strong performance.
The Results:
Revenue:
300% growth in 3 months
Channel Performance:
SEO became the top revenue driver accounting for almost 40% of total site revenue
The Challenge
Working with a newly launched eCommerce startup, Salt, we were tasked with driving awareness and revenue for the holiday season.
Timeframe: The company launched in September and needed to capture holiday shoppers.
Brand Name: Salt is the most popular seasoning in the world, so when a user Googles anything with the word salt in it there is a lot of competition.
New Website: Google doesn’t trust new websites right away. Sites typically struggle to rank in their first year, especially when they do not have a good amount of backlinks.
Our Strategy
At The Missing Link, we have several robust year-long SEO offerings that drive top results. However, with the sense of urgency here we needed to condense the time frame and focus first on the low hanging fruit.
On-Page Optimization
Foregoing our up-front tech audit and in-depth landscape research, we initially focused on on-page optimization for branded keywords. These keywords were carefully selected so they also target the top unbranded keywords we would want to go after. In fact, with most startups we target keywords this way and focus on only one keyword per page. With the initial target keywords set as a combination of branded and unbranded, it allows us to rank on our target branded terms and also gives us a head start on the unbranded keywords. This makes phase two of the engagement a little easier.
With the target keywords in place we began our optimization. We started off with meta data, updating both the title tags and the meta descriptions. Although we optimize these for the target keyword of each page we also focus more on readability. The meta data is what shows up in the search engine results, so we want it to read well in order to entice a click.
Image Optimization
After the meta data, we shifted our focus to image optimization setting both filename and alt tag descriptions of all images to target our desired keywords. This not only helps the page itself to rank, but enhances rankings for image search, which can also drive quality traffic.
Site Speed
Next we did a deep dive into site speed. Although the desktop speed was very fast mobile was very slow. With more people browsing the web on mobile devices vs desktop and Google having moved to a mobile first ranking system, we knew this was the next priority we needed to tackle. A lot of the site speed issues we uncovered required in-depth technical work by the client’s development team. This included reducing JavaScript’s, enabling lazy loading, minimizing CSS etc. We worked closely with their development team to guide them through these fixes. Other items were a little simpler such as image format types as well as adjusting image sizes. For items that did not require their developer, we implemented the changes ourselves.
Results
Although we had to stray from our normal SEO strategy and focus on quick wins, we exceeded our goals in the short time frame (three months).
At the launch of their company in late September, our client had a heavy focus on paid social media. With this being a brand new company that was all that was really driving performance. When our engagement began, organic traffic was not driving any revenue at all. As you can see you in the charts, by the end of the first month organic drove 16% of total revenue. That 16% remained steady through November. In December, because it can take Google a while to notice website changes, we really started to see results. Even though all channels grew and more budget was pushed into social media, our SEO performance surpassed them all. In fact, for the month of December organic traffic drove 38% of total revenue.
Summary
While SEO is a long-term strategy that can consistently drive high ROI the strategy can be adapted to gain traction early. That is why, at The Missing Link, although we focus on long-term success, we prioritize low hanging fruit to gain quick wins for our clients. After quick wins are gained, it is important to continue on with a stable SEO strategy. Google updates the ranking algorithm multiple times a day every single day. Without a consistent SEO strategy, performance will decline as Google evolves and more competitors enter the space.