An SEO Case Study

When we first discussed this project with the client, there was very little SEO work done on the site apart from post-launch basic changes. Normal post-launch SEO includes content SEO work on alt text for images, sitemaps, seo-friendly URLs or slugs, and technical SEO work on speed – and of course setting up a caching plugin, so things are snappy. Modern Houseware sells products in many different categories, including glassware, plasticware, and housewares for cleaning and cooking. It was ranking in some cases for keywords related to those products, but not exactly where we wanted them to be.

Initial keyword volume searches and competitor analysis showed us that there were a few that we really wanted to focus on, and they had quite a large search volume, as well as some big competitors in industry.

An SEO competitor analysis is a research process that identifies and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of a competitor’s search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, providing insights into their keyword targeting, content marketing, link building, and technical optimization tactics to inform and improve your own SEO efforts. By analyzing your competitors’ SEO strategies, you can uncover opportunities to outrank them, identify gaps in the market, and develop a more effective SEO plan to drive organic traffic and online visibility.

Running our normal reports told us what we already knew – not enough content, very low keyword density, and a lot of the meta descriptions and titles on the site were not optimized to have the best performance possible. The plan was simple; devise a new way to display the content (in an SEO friendly way) on each category landing page, each product line landing page, and give clear calls-to-action for the missing content that was previously there.

We went through each category landing page, re-wrote the entry content, meta description, unified the titles (we made them all look the same and have the same content in the same place, with the keyword first), and also focused on the wholesale aspect of the company, as well as the fact they were based in Canada.

On the homepage, we added clear header tags, wrote SEO friendly content, and moved onto the inside pages. We switched the entire title focus to “Wholesale Canadian Goods Supplier” and optimized the page for that phrase.

Sometimes the challenge with multi-word keyword phrases is finding “natural” sounding language and sentences that don’t sound forced and fake.

Utilizing multi-word keyword phrases in SEO can significantly improve search engine rankings by targeting specific long-tail queries, but it also presents challenges such as increased competition for phrase variations and potential keyword cannibalization.

Effective optimization requires a delicate balance between incorporating relevant phrases and avoiding keyword stuffing, making it a nuanced aspect of search engine optimization. On the inside pages, the decision was made to write an overall introductory paragraph, and organize the header tags on each category landing page in a clear and concise manner. We optimized the description and title for each subcategory, set up alt-tags for each sub-category, and clear calls to action to enter the category.

I wrote a plugin for the site, which hooked into the shop loop and re-wrote it from the ground up. WooCommerce is one of the most extensible platforms for e-commerce out there, and has hooks for everything. In this case we opted to clear the entire page, and show only the content we wanted. It required hours of debugging and testing, but after a lot of effort it was looking the way we had envisioned.

The client had originally wanted us to display the products in alphabetical order, starting with the first alphabetical category, and once that category ran out of products then it would automatically move to the next category and start over. In theory this sounds simple, but I couldn’t find anything that worked in that manner, where mid-page it could switch between categories and still maintain the order of products and counts. So, we built it from scratch. Diving into a project like this helped pave the way for the SEO portion in the next step.

After writing the initial layout code for the shop section of the site, we switched gears to the category landing pages. We wanted to display a few items from each subcategory and have it be both understood by search engines and friendly to customers. Each category landing page had an image at the top already, so that was incorporated into the design and flow, and the subcategory heading tag, description, and CTA was added to each image.

A well-structured header tag layout is crucial for SEO as it helps search engines like Google understand the hierarchy and organization of a webpage’s content, making it easier to crawl and index. By using header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) in a logical and consistent manner, you can improve the readability and accessibility of your content, while also signaling to search engines the importance and relevance of your keywords.

Once we finished writing all of the new descriptions and optimizing the keyword density, we waited to see what happened, and monitored the algorithm changes over the following months.

Now, these results aren’t perfect, but they do showcase how putting in the time and effort to consistently produce high-quality, keyword-rich content, businesses can significantly improve their search engine rankings and drive more traffic to their website – even if the keyword difficulty is high.

Search engine keyword difficulty refers to the level of competition and challenge involved in ranking for a specific keyword or phrase on search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. It is a metric used to gauge how hard it is to outrank existing websites and achieve a top spot in search engine results pages (SERPs) for a particular keyword.

The number in the search engine keyword difficulty metric typically represents a score that indicates the level of competition for a particular keyword or phrase, with higher numbers indicating more challenging keywords to rank for. This score is usually calculated based on factors such as the number of search results, the quality and relevance of existing content, and the strength of competing websites, with scores ranging from 0 (low competition) to 100 (extremely high competition).

Mastering SEO can be a challenging and ongoing process, requiring continuous effort and adaptation to ever-changing search engine algorithms and best practices. However, by understanding the fundamentals and staying up-to-date with the latest trends and techniques, individuals and businesses can improve their online visibility and drive more traffic to their websites.

For instance, keyword stuffing, the practice of excessively repeating keywords in website content to manipulate search engine rankings, is no longer an effective SEO strategy due to Google’s algorithm updates, particularly Panda and Hummingbird, which prioritize natural language and high-quality content. Today, search engines reward content that provides value to users, rather than those that artificially inflate keyword density, making keyword stuffing a tactic that can actually harm a website’s SEO.

Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a webpage compared to the total number of words, playing a crucial role in SEO by helping search engines understand the content’s relevance and authority on a specific topic. However, it’s essential to maintain a natural keyword density, typically between 0.5-1.5%, to avoid keyword stuffing and ensure a better user experience.