The Problem

One of the first impactful clients I remembered working with was an optical and sunglass retailer. He came to me having previously struggled with his brick-and-mortar location in Tallahassee, FL. He aspired of being able to utilize his online presence for organic lead generation. He came to me with a WordPress website that was somewhat archaic, rudimentary and had non-existent web traffic. In fact, the previous three months for this client offered an average of 15.62 clients per month with an average bounce rate of 78 percent. Essentially only three to four visitors to the page took an action when on the page. My thoughts were, “Why would they?” All the content on the page including blog posts was more than a year old. The overwhelming majority of his store traffic was return customers or word of mouth customers.

The client had predetermined expectations that fixing “SEO” was a matter of clicking a few buttons and fixing an error or two. In a few instances that may be the case, but in this scenario, we needed a complete revamp of strategy. It’s important to note, I needed to redirect his expectations, in that what we really need are incremental victories that lead to long term results.

1. Identified & remediated technical/on-page issues within the framework

• Ran a full audit of the website utilizing SEMrush and Screaming Frog.
• Redirected broken internal links (404 errors) to other relevant pages within the website.
• Created and implemented an accurate sitemap (both XML and HTML format)
• Submitted the updated sitemap to Google search console, which to my knowledge, had not been done to this point.
• Revamped H1 tags on pages (some were pushing the 80-character mark).
  • The home page and an older blog page had two H1 tags initially.
  • Rebuilt the tag structure so that all H1 tags throughout the site were 30-50 characters.
  • Best practices typically call for 40-60 characters, however, one of my objectives with this client was to reduce the site bounce rate.
• Created internal linking with applicable anchor text in the older blog pages.
• Researched LSI, primary and longtail keywords with a difficulty score of 25-50.
  • The reasons for doing this are to provide enough search volume, while not trying to compete in an overly saturated keyword field.
  • I’ve found that extensive research and little creativity goes a long way! Another aspect to watch out for are “brand signals.” I took this into account for the popular eyewear brands such as Oakley or Ray Ban
• Researched competitors to gain insight on the industry trends, target audience, products, and services.
  • Compared the findings to the company initiatives.
• Collaborated with team of copywriters to create/recreate meaningful and impactful content to the site, utilizing the aforementioned keyword and competitive research.

2. Off-page SEO research, recommendations, and collaboration
   • Verified and made necessary corrections with appropriate teams regarding directory and social media business information.
   • Link earning campaign:
     • Created a VERY targeted link earning campaign to drive the newly created on-page content, which focused on two fronts, authority, and relevancy.
     • We focused on optical industry-based journals, trade publications etc.
     • We also focused on authoritative link earning with local chamber of commerce’s, universities, and newspapers.
   • Ensured that created content was driven utilizing all social media platforms.

The Results & Conclusion

The first thirty days saw little change in organic traffic, the client had 17 visitors to his page in January and 16 in February with a bounce rate 70%. March is where the things began to take off with 41 total sessions and a bounce rate 56%. The clients total sessions were up to a total of 352 by August with a bounce rate 41%.

This case study exemplifies the common struggle many small businesses face today. Throughout my time working on SEO related tasks, one point has always stuck with me, “different problem, same solution.” What I mean by that is by sticking to tried and true best practices of SEO, coupled with ingenuity and creativity; your SEO campaigns are bound to grow and flourish.