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About The Client
Step2 is a well-known toy brand originating from the America, despite being one of the main distributors of Step2 in Australia, Step2 Direct didn’t have a fair share on the online toy market dominated by major toy wholesale distributors.
Situation
Step2 has been attempting to extend their market online, reaching out to end-customers. They felt that the site visibility through search engines was critical to enter lucrative online market.
Another thing, Step2 Direct website is hosted and built by a licenced ecommerce CMS provider who control any server related changes, this makes any in-charge SEO Agency more difficulties when implementing changes on the site.
The Problem
The Step2 Direct approached us for an SEO consultation because it was clear that – despite their tremendous brand recognition amongst consumers and the sheer volume of incoming links to their website they weren’t getting the share of natural search traffic they deserved. There was something off with their on-page SEO and they couldn’t figure out what it was.
The majority of internet traffic for Step2 Direct was coming from direct searches on the specific company name. So the company was concerned that its website wasn’t getting the highest possible volume of natural search traffic and had limited visibility in search engine results.
Step2 Direct decided to hire Result Driven SEO to address the weaknesses in its existing website’s content, visual presentation, conversion elements, site architecture and other technical issues to help drive more web traffic from search engine results to its website.
The Results
In just after 2.5 months to this point, we were able to drive an extra 161% more visitors to Step2 Direct’s web properties through natural search alone.
By implementing a number of different SEO best practices to the Step2 Direct website, Result Driven SEO team was able to bring about a 161 % increase in overall site traffic within the same time period with impressive 454% increase in page view, average page view 7.6 and unbelievable bounce rate of 0.97%, and more importantly an 187% increase in revenue.
All of these numbers were achieved within just 80 days and still on the upward trend.
Our Strategy
When addressing SEO deficiencies on the Step2 Direct, we stuck to the basics. By making substantive improvements to the company’s on-site optimisation, site architecture optimisation, conversion optimisation, URL restructure, duplicate content concerns, image search optimisation and site speed, we were able to bring about truly incredible results in a short period of time.
Technique #1 — Increase Website Conversion
Most SEO companies won’t pay attention to this very important element of your website, but increasing your website’s internet traffic will mean little if you aren’t converting them.
Before starting to fix any technical issues on the website, one of our first steps is to review the website considering visual, content and conversion issues as part of our standard SEO technical audit process. We then make recommendations on website copy, images, calls-to-action, layout, design, social engagement and maximising the conversion capability of the website.
Basically, with ecommerce website has to be able to serve potential clients as a sales person at the stores, in other words, the website has to answer all the basic questions by itself such as:
- What type of products?
- What is the price range?
- What is it for (for a girl or a boy)
- How old is he/she?
- Is there any discounted items?
- Are there any new arrivals?
- What products are popular?
- What’s about warranty
- How’s about delivery?
We need to be able to answer all the questions that a prospect would have in mind when purchasing toys, that is how they can enjoy browsing the products and purchasing selected items without bouncing off the website and look for some other websites that can help them make the purchase process easily.
We added
- Phone number above the Menu bar
- Shop by Category
- Shop by Age
- Shop by Gender
- Shop by Price
- Shop by Discount
- What’s on Sales
- New Arrivals
- What are popular products.. etc
These changes enabled our team to develop a more efficient means of directing visitors to the products they were most interested in. The result? Our actions helped Step2Direct.com.au to boost revenue growth by over 187% in 2.5 month time!
Technique #2 — Implement On-Site Optimisation Best Practices
Because SEO best practices change from time to time, one of our first priorities for the Step2 Direct website was to ensure that all on-page SEO optimisation factors met current quality standards. The following are just a few of the elements we addressed as a part of this strategy;
By custom crafting keyword-rich headings for each page on Step2 Direct, we were able to capture the full SEO value of
H tags, contributing to stronger placements in the natural search results.
Step2 Direct’s existing sitemaps weren’t up to current SEO best practice standards, which led to improper indexation by the search engines. By creating new sitemaps that prioritised the appropriate pages, we were better able to control how the search engines crawled and reported Step2 Direct pages.
Removed branded keywords from the internal page title tags across all internal pages enabled our team to reinforce the unique content found on each page, preventing portions of this vital SEO text from being filtered out as potential duplicate content.
Oversized images were resized to help increase the speed that the website loads.
Product Page URLs were rewritten to make them more keyword and SEO friendly: clean, short, keyword-descriptive URLs.
http://www.step2direct.com.au/neighbourhood-wagon
Renamed the category items by using keywords and at the same time eliminating duplicate words such as “shop-online” in every single main category url “www.step2direct.com.au/shop-online/category-name” and shortening the URL to include most important keywords within first 4 words after the domain name:
http://www.step2direct.com.au/kids-kitchen
http://www.step2direct.com.au/kids-furniture
http://www.step2direct.com.au/baby-toys
By reconfiguring the website’s existing content to improve its internal link profile, our team helped Step2Direct.com.au to uncover additional opportunities to create keyword rich anchor text and control the flow of page authority throughout the site.
Eternal links to high-value relevant content sources wherever possible
Technique #3 — Ensure Proper Site Indexing
Result Driven SEO determined that search engines weren’t properly indexing all the pages in the website. As a result, Step2 Direct was missing several vital opportunities to be listed in search results, which we remedied with the following actions;
We fixed broken links, 404 pages, and any pagination issues. We also improved the internal link structure through keyword-rich hyperlinks to enhance the search engine friendly navigation.
We added “Best Sellers” “New Arrivals” of each toy category links to each page of content on the site to improve site indexing and increase visitor engagement by providing readers with further products of interest.
Technique #4 — Maximise Social Media Marketing
Result Driven SEO was able to effectively boost Step2 Direct’s social media presence by using the following tactics;
Signed Step2 Direct up for Google Place Local and Google Authorship, increasing search engine visibility, higher click through rates.
Increase participation in and share content on Facebook, Google Plus, following key influencers and decision makers.
Added social media share buttons to the product webpage to increase the products’ online virality
Lessons
Here are some key takeaways from the case study:
Make you ecommerce website a great sales man – for ecommerce website, conversion is critically important; therefore the website itself has to be able to sell well.
Keep in mind that the goal of good search engine optimisation shouldn’t be to just increase internet traffic – it should be to increase your overall revenue! While high rankings and more visitors are great, your time and energy is wasted if this traffic isn’t helping to put more money into your pocket.
SEO requires consistent improvements – There’s no arguing with the fact that SEO is a rapidly changing field. But although most of the improvements we made to the Step2 Direct followed widely accepted SEO best practices, the sad fact is that the company’s website likely missed out on a significant volume of traffic before our efforts…simply because they hadn’t kept up with the times!
Forget DIY: Sometimes Professional Help is The Best – If you’re struggling to make the leap from website optimisation to boosting your conversion rate, get in touch with us. We’ll analyse your business, find the areas that need improvement and provide you a unique tailored solution to your business that’ll bring you the results you desire.
What separates Result Driven SEO from any other SEO company is transparency, professionalism and results.
They set the correct expectations and deliver each time.
Steven Kruyer
Managing Director of Step2 Direct