The Challenge
Our client is an independent shop selling unique, high-quality products for crafters, artists and makers. With both a physical store in West Yorkshire (not far from our Splitpixel HQ) and an online shop, they approached us looking to boost their online visibility for a broader range of searches.
The Goal
Their goal was twofold:
- To attract new customers through general searches for terms such as sewing tools, supplies, and gifts.
- To improve visibility for their higher-end product range and specific branded products.
Returning customers play a key role for our client, so attracting new visitors would naturally create more opportunities to grow their loyal customer base.
While the business already saw strong sales through other channels, they wanted to reduce reliance on certain marketing activities, such as attending events and exhibitions.
The Solution
Taking a broad approach that comprised both SEO and Google Ads campaigns, we focused on the products and keywords that would be the most significant revenue drivers.
Our SEO approach began with comprehensive keyword research, using several methods to identify opportunities from both existing rankings and broader live search data. Data from Google Search Console was essential in finding quick wins and understanding the site’s current organic performance.
We combined this with fresh keyword research to uncover new opportunities, including search terms for which the website was not yet ranking highly, but had strong search volume and intent behind them.
From here, we mapped out keywords to their relevant pages and began foundational on-page optimisation. This included improving meta titles and creating new product and collection descriptions (with support from the client’s product/collection expertise) to give users more detailed, engaging information about each product collection.
The Results
Just over six months into our activity, our client has already seen excellent progress organically.
Comparing the most recent three months with the previous three months, we can see:
- 29.4% increase in overall organic clicks
- 34.5% increase in UK organic traffic
Organic click improvements across high-intent keywords include:
-
- sewing gifts: up 129.82%
- sewing accessories: up 147.37%
- embroidery supplies: up 51.67%
- sewing supplies: up 306.25%
- embroidery thread: up 800.00%
- gifts for sewers: up 178.57%
- gifts for sewers uk: up 153.33%
- hand embroidery supplies uk: up 135.71%
Driving growth in non-branded search clicks
Particularly important is the breadth of the terms that improved. Many brands will appear to have great search traffic – but it may come entirely from branded terms, i.e. users simply searching for the company name, rather than typing in the web address directly. Everybody does it!
But that relies on someone knowing the business exists – it’s not effective for finding new customers. So how were we able to provide these results for non-branded terms?
1. Improved average positions for key terms
Keyword rankings across Google have seen significant improvement. For example, within the UK, the terms:
‘sewing gifts’ improved from position 2.4 to 1.8
‘sewing accessories’ improved from 6.5 to 3.5
‘gifts for sewers’ improved from 4.6 to 2.4
Even small jumps in positions can have a major effect on click-through rates (CTRs), especially within the top three positions on the search results page. As a guide, estimated CTRs by search position are:
Position 1: 39.8%
Position 2: 18.7%
Position 3: 10.2%
This shows how even a small improvement in rankings can drive noticeable increases in traffic.
2. Improved meta titles
While meta titles should be optimised for keywords, they also need to entice users to click. Rather than keyword-stuffing, we refined titles to better appeal to the target audience.
For example, including “UK” in some titles helped reassure shoppers that our client is a local, trusted supplier rather than a business dropshipping cheaper products from overseas – something that is important to crafts enthusiasts and professionals. This simple trust marker helped encourage more clicks.
3. Relevant content
Category content is often overlooked when setting up an ecommerce site. After all, Amazon don’t do it! But it can make a massive difference on improving search performance, as users tend to search on broader categories as much, if not moreso, than they do for individual products.
By adding fresh content to the category collection pages that better matches user search intent, we helped Google understand each page more clearly, while also providing visitors with more useful, engaging information.
Next steps
Our initial focus has been on optimising collection and brand pages, which has already delivered measurable success. We are now expanding our SEO efforts across individual product pages, where there will be a particular focus on improving visibility within Google Shopping results.
We are really pleased with the progress so far and the positive impact it’s had on overall website sales. With our client’s generous loyalty scheme, this growth in new website visitors will hopefully continue to grow and strengthen their returning customer base.
Our client recently celebrated 10 years in business, with a bustling birthday party at their Todmorden store – we’re delighted to have played our part in reaching such a fantastic milestone!