Case study on the promotion of an online pharmacy for veterinary drugs

Contents of the case

/01 Initial data
/02 Whole works
/03 The main problems
/04 What is done
/05 What result did you get?
/06 Media content

Media

Traffic dynamics

Serpstat data

Keyword dynamics

SE Ranking data

Initial data

Organic traffic

44463

Conversion

0,35%

Age of the site

23 years

Region of promotion

Ukraine

Whole works

/01Technical optimization
/02Extending the structure, SEO filters, and page optimization
/03Increase organic traffic
/04Increase conversion rates
/05Promotion of priority keywords to the top of Google

Issues and overall strategy

At the beginning of the work, the site already had positions for general key queries and attracted a certain amount of organic traffic. But despite the peak seasonality, the conversion rate was quite low and many of the client’s target keywords were not ranked at all. More than 90% of the traffic was information traffic, which hardly converted into sales.

The site had not been promoted before and at the start had a large number of technical problems that greatly hindered the effective work on SEO promotion. Among them: duplicate pages, incorrectly implemented pagination pages, a large number of unnecessary pages in the Google index, incorrectly configured language versions of the site, etc.
The main focus was on technical optimization of the site and work with its structure and SEO filters. Also, at the beginning of the work, the client informed us that they were planning to switch to another CMS in the near future, so the task was to optimize the current site for further structure transfer.

What was done

Technical optimization

Before proceeding directly to SEO optimization, a comprehensive technical optimization was carried out. Based on the preliminary audit, technical errors were identified that negatively affected the ranking of the resource. We worked on the following items:

Setting up CNC links
Technical duplicate pages
robots.txt
Setting up auto-generation of sitemap.xml
Restriction of indexing of individual pages of the site
Optimization of outbound external links
Correction of links/pages with 404 code
Multilingualism of the site. Setting up hreflang
Optimization of pagination pages: Indexing and canonical links
Implementation of Product micro-markup for product categories
Closing the developer version of the site from indexing.
Adding and configuring SEO filters for priority product categories.

Semantics

The semantic core was collected from scratch. In the process of analyzing and collecting the semantic core, we found many HF and SF queries that were not ranked. Some product groups were completely absent from the search results, although pages (categories) were created and filled with products. The bulk of the key queries that were in the top were low-ranking queries that brought in minimal traffic.

Structure

An SEO filter is a great option for expanding the semantics of an online store. Before that, the filter was only partially implemented on the site, so it was impossible to work with it without additional technical changes/edits.

Key features of the SEO filter that were emphasized:

static URL CNC;
auto-generation of metadata and h1 header with the possibility of manual editing;
availability of a text block for SEO texts;
exclusion from indexing of a filter containing 2 or more parameters.

The implementation of this functionality helped to quickly expand certain product groups with additional keywords, and after fully optimizing these pages (adding SEO-optimized texts, meta tags, headings, etc.), the SM and LF queries almost immediately began to rank in the TOP10.

Content

SEO texts for the main product categories were already written on the site, but they did not take into account all the semantics with which the customer was asked to work. Therefore, it was decided to replace the texts in the order of priority categories. In addition to updating and continuing to update the content on the main pages, we continue to work with filters: writing optimized content that allows you to quickly move up the SERPs. The terms of reference for writing content were created based on the analysis of competitors using Artificial Intelligence.

Usability

Since the client had already planned to switch to another CMS before working with us, the development of the new design also started earlier, so no additional usability analysis was performed.

Link profile

Within the budget, work is underway to increase the link weight for priority pages/product categories of the site. The main methods used are analysis of the link profile of the main competitors and further placement of anchor article links through outreach and nofollow links (the first 3 months of work – crowd marketing, and then through the placement of submissions in directories, as the analysis revealed that submissions give a more pronounced result).