E-Commerce Case Study: From 42 to 21.9k Visitors in 12 Months
With big-name competitors dominating the search results, this founder of a DTC tech ecommerce brand felt like SEO was a losing battle.
Before I stepped in, the company leaned heavily on grassroots word-of-mouth and repeat customers.
Their online store wasn’t structured to attract or convert organic search traffic. There was no content strategy, no optimization framework, and no clear way for shoppers to even discover the brand through Google.
After conducting an in-depth market and sentiment analysis, I broke down it’s competitor strategies and found buyer-intent keywords—many of which were being overlooked. These keywords became the foundation for revamping their product and collection pages.
Let me show you exactly how I helped this brand 1000x its organic visibility in just one year.
Market Analysis
Since we were starting from scratch, my first priority was understanding how their products fit into the broader market. Every successful brand solves a specific problem for a specific group of people—and rather than guessing who that group is, I rely on data.
There are a few key ways I use data to shape both SEO strategy and brand messaging:
1. Competitive Analysis
The goal here is to figure out how to make my client’s products stand out.
Their niche had some dominant players with first-mover advantages, big PR budgets, and strong brand awareness. But after digging into competitor sites, content strategies, and customer feedback, I spotted gaps.
My client’s products filled a need that no one else in the space was addressing.
Next, I focused on identifying the people most affected by those gaps. That insight became the foundation of our strategy—helping us figure out which search phrases to target and how to position our messaging so that visitors convert into buyers.
2. Sentiment Analysis
To write copy that actually converts, you need to understand how people feel—not just what they search.
That’s where sentiment analysis comes in. I scraped user-generated content from reviews, Reddit threads, social media comments, and other platforms to understand real-world opinions around similar products.
If you read enough of this content, you start to see patterns: what frustrates people, what excites them, and what they wish existed.
If your products already solve the pain points customers are vocalizing, that’s your unique selling point.
We took things a step further and used the insights from this analysis to design a customer survey. This helped validate what we saw in the data and allowed us to better understand how past customers discovered and decided to buy the product.
3. Survey Analysis
Skipping this step is a big reason why many new eCommerce stores struggle to convert.
I treat an online store the same way I would a physical store. You wouldn’t design a retail space without clear signage, tailored messaging, or a layout that encourages purchases. And you definitely wouldn’t use surf-themed posters in a winter gear shop.
That’s why we used surveys to take the guesswork out of our targeting. We offered incentives to existing email subscribers.
The goal was to find out who our buyers really were—what motivated them emotionally, what they were searching for, and what made them finally hit “Buy Now.”
The results helped us build a detailed customer avatar and fine-tune our entire content strategy around it.
Keyword Research
One of the biggest mistakes I made when starting out in SEO was assuming customers were searching for exact product names.
They’re not. Search behavior is way more nuanced.
I realized that by not deeply understanding the target customer and their buyer journey, I was missing out on dozens of high-intent keywords.
People rarely type in your product name unless they already know your brand. More often, they’re searching for a solution to a specific problem in language that makes sense to them.
Take organic energy drinks, for example.
If you understand your customer, you’ll realize some may search “organic energy drink”, but many will also Google:
“Plant-based energy drink”
“Clean caffeine drink”
“Natural energy boost without caffeine”
“Best energy drinks without jitters”
“Coffee alternatives for focus”
See the difference?
They’re buying a feeling—energy, focus, clarity—without the crash that comes from traditional options like Monster or coffee.
When you understand the problem they’re trying to solve, and how they describe that problem, you uncover long-tail search terms your competitors are ignoring.
That’s why knowing your customer inside and out is the foundation of effective SEO.
Website Structure
I started by assigning a unique target keyword to each collection and product page to avoid any overlap or internal competition.
Once the keyword strategy was locked in, we optimized each page by naturally incorporating the target keyword into key on-page elements: the meta title, meta description, URL slug, H1 tag, and the first sentence of the body copy. This gave Google a clear understanding of what each page was about.
We also studied top-ranking competitor pages and related keyword variations to help us write product copy that satisfied search intent and matched how customers searched and talked about the product.
We added relevant FAQs to the bottom of each page to improve topical depth, increase time on site, and give us more chances to rank for long-tail searches.
To boost internal linking, we strategically linked related product pages to each other and connected every collection page to major traffic hubs like the homepage and About page. This helped spread link equity throughout the site and created a seamless experience for both users and search engines.
Easy Links
Once we built high-quality, SEO-optimized landing pages for their products, the next goal was to increase the chances that Google would rank them for our target keywords.
The best way to do that? Earn backlinks from other trusted websites.
Google uses backlinks as a signal of credibility—if reputable sites are linking to your pages, it’s a sign that your brand is trustworthy and worth ranking. And there are a few key places where Google expects legitimate businesses to show up.
That includes:
Relevant business directories
Product review websites
Social media profiles
These are often the lowest-hanging fruit in off-page SEO. They’re easy to build, help establish your brand’s digital footprint, and can quickly move the needle in competitive spaces.
So we started by getting the brand listed in all the right places. From there, we layered in more advanced link-building strategies—but this foundational step helped validate the brand and gave our landing pages the authority boost they needed.
Content Marketing & Link Building
While building links, we also started creating a mix of top- and middle-of-funnel content to give the website more context and topical relevance.
We knew that if we wanted to outrank the bigger players in the space, we needed to show Google that our site was an authority on the topic.
One of the best ways to build that relevance is by internally linking to your product and collection pages from other content that addresses related topics. This signals to Google that your website covers the subject in depth, increasing the likelihood that your buyer-focused pages will rank for relevant keywords.
Since the site didn’t have an existing blog, we built out an initial batch of 10 blog posts focused on top- and middle-of-funnel keywords.
One of those blogs started pulling in 800 monthly visitors within a couple of months. The rest were indexed, but didn’t gain much traction.
We started writing on keywords centered around trending topics and middle-of-the-funnel content that answered questions buyers were asking.
We leveled up the content by adding infographics, expert quotes, mini case studies, and videos.
These engaging articles made building quality links from other sites a lot easier.
That shift made a difference.
Two of those blogs hit 1,000+ monthly visitors within three months. We also started dominating SERP features—winning Featured Snippets, showing up in People Also Ask boxes, and positioning the brand as a go-to resource in the niche.
Putting These Results in Context
When I first started working with this company, they had almost no online visibility—500 impressions and 40 clicks to their pages over the previous 12 months.
But if you build your store on a solid SEO foundation, buyers who are already looking for what you sell will start to find you within months. That’s the power of
SEO compounds. Stack enough small wins, make data-driven adjustments along the way, and eventually, you’ve got a boulder that keeps rolling with less and less effort.
That’s exactly what happened with this brand.
The campaign started off slow, as expected. Their website had a domain rating of 13 and was up against competitors with DR 40 and above. Their product and collection pages were barebones, and they had no content strategy in place.
But over the course of 12 months, we built a scalable SEO framework that will carry the brand through its next phase of growth.
We earned backlinks from trustworthy sites, built topical relevance through on-page SEO, optimized product copy, and developed a content marketing strategy rooted in search intent.
Now that Google sees the site as a trusted and authoritative source, our top-performing pages are gaining more traction.
We’re using that momentum strategically.
By interlinking high-performing blogs and collections pages to underperforming ones, refreshing outdated content, and continuing to build links, we’re now in the optimization phase—where visibility turns into consistent, qualified traffic.
The brand is now getting 1000x more visibility than when we started. That means they’re ranking for far more keywords and showing up in front of the right audience.
The next step is lifting rankings across the board to convert that visibility into even more traffic and sales.
If you’ve got a great product but your website isn’t getting the visibility it should, a solid SEO foundation can change that.
Click the link to book a strategy call if you want to learn how to use this framework to grow your online store.