Maleomi

A broad-based approach

When working on the maleomi.pl website, we decided to take a long-tail SEO approach, which works well with e-commerce businesses. In order to reach customers on different stages of the buyer’s journey, we chose to target different types of keyword phrases. Yet, we focused on more detailed phrases the most.

At the beginning of the cooperation, we came up with an initial list of keyword phrases, which was then accepted by the client. We started the optimisation process with just 87 phrases to rank for – but after 9 months, we already had 498 phrases on the list. During the first 3 months, we focused on increasing the visibility of the website and the number of its views in the search results. We improved the main page to have it ranked for relevant, general phrases and then created more complex, long-tail phrases on the top of that. We could already notice the growth in the number of website visits back then. We strove to improve the ranks of the website in the search engine results and the number of its views, which eventually led to an increase in traffic and sales.

That was precisely our plan from the very beginning 🙂

Problem no. 1: The website wasn’t ranking for almost any general phrases

The key to driving traffic and increasing the rank of the website properly is to have a well-optimised main page. Because of it, “the strength” is transferred all the way to every subpage and thus, brings more value to the website in terms of SEO. Without a proper main page optimisation, there’s no possibility to generate traffic effectively. Basically, it’s like having a house without a front door!

At the initial stage of Maleomi’s website optimisation, we chose general phrases that described the brand well – we left “online store”, but added the phrases connected to the store’s offer, such as home decor, kitchen accessories, etc. The phrases were not displayed directly on the main page, though, which is why we had to make sure Google actually associated them with the website’s content. We wanted Maleomi’s customers to have the website displayed for such keyword phrases since it would allow driving traffic from general queries and have more visitors who were at the beginning of the buyer’s journey, not decided for anything in particular yet.

Steps we took:

1. Selecting the right phrases – research & consultations with the Client
2. Adding the phrases on the website

In order to associate those general phrases with the website, we wanted to “inform” both the search engine and its users what keyword actually referred to its content. Because of that, we performed a number of activities to highlight those phrases, such as:

1. Changing the title on the main page.

Before:

The title wasn’t valuable for the search engines and its users. Hence, we optimised the title and description.

After:

2. Optimising the existing content.

3. Preparing, optimizind and adding content to the main page

The Client wasn’t fully convinced to this solution, but the text was eventually added at the bottom of the website and didn’t interfere with the website’s design. It was divided into paragraphs and had proper headlines, words in bold, and internal links to important categories.

The results:

The website started to be displayed in search results more often, also for the general phrases, not only for brand-related ones.

It was just the beginning, though. Improving the main page was actually a prelude to other activities revolving around categories, subcategories and products. These were also our next steps.

Problem no. 2: General, high-volume keyword phrases far in the search engine results

Despite the size of the website, branding activities and quality content, most of the subpages were not optimised. As a part of the broad-based approach, we focused on gradual optimisation of subpages with categories, subcategories and products. We paid attention to more detailed phrases at first, in order to increase the ranks for the general ones as well.

Our aim was to increase the ranks for phrases with the conversion potential, which was also in Client’s interest. We also wanted to boost general, competitive phrases, such as lunchboxes of food containers, and their variations.

Thanks to our optimisation efforts, we managed to increase the rank for the phrase “lunchboxes” from the 8th to the 3rd position with the volume of 121000, and “food containers” from 21st to the 6th position with the volume of 3600.

Problem no. 3: Alright, but how to overtake the manufacturer in the search results?

The Client wanted to have the site displayed at the top of search results for a very difficult, highly competitive keyword phrase, which was also the name of the manufacturer. Impossible? Not necessarily!

Pusheen is a popular cartoon cat, which can also be found on a range of products. Maleomi offers many different Pusheen products and wanted to promote them in search engines as well.

We started from the 52nd position – the phrase was searched by 495 000 search engine users monthly, which indicated that it was highly competitive.

It wasn’t an easy task – we put a lot of effort into getting the Maleomi website to TOP10 pages ranking for this keyword. We took advantage of the site optimisation along with link building, copywriting, and external linking.

We gradually increased the rank for this phrase – we were featured in the TOP5 for a while, then in the TOP3 where we had to compete with Allegro and the site of the manufacturer – but we finally made it! 🙂

We were taking care of the growing numbers of incoming links throughout the whole year of our cooperation.

When building links, we focused on constructing proper anchor texts, so that they had a positive influence on the optimisation efforts and contributed to good link profiles:

Anchor texts that included different keywords made the broad optimisation process much easier. The approach we took paid off, and we were steadily increasing the ranks for long-tail phrases.

Proper optimisation activities resulted in the increased visibility of the website. It started to rank higher for more and more keyword phrases, including long-tail ones. The increase of the position in search results and the number of views also led to a higher number of website visits and thus, the increase in sales.

Visibility:

Data from Senuto tool:

Data from Semstorm tool:

Organic traffic from Google Analytics:

During our cooperation, the number of visits to the website (from Google search results) increased by +101%↑ – from 5310 to 10678 visits, whereas the number of page views increased by 150%↑ – from 89 109 to 224128 views.

We managed to increase the ranks for the following keywords:

• pusheen – from the 52nd to 1st place, increase by +51↑
• lunchbox – from 7th to 3rd position, increase by +4↑
• thermo cups – from 40th to the 11th place, increase by +29↑
• monbento shop – from the 5th to 2nd position, increase by +3↑

Comparing all the data to the traffic from the previous year (December 2019 to December 2018), we managed to improve the organic traffic by 230%, and the sales by +415%.

SEO Specialist’s Comment

Stores with home accessories & decor are quite a challenge. We need to compete with market giants and it may seem like an impossible task. This particular project taught me that there’s no such thing as impossible and if we do our work well we can even beat a producer website. When, every morning, checking an extremely competitive keyword “pusheen” you see it in the first position – you know you did a good job. Maleomi captivates with beautiful and high-quality products and great visibility charts! 🙂

Gosia Tarnawska

SEO Team Leader