Equine E-Commerce Brand
SEO Case Study
Client Summary: An emerging equestrian brand designing, producing and selling high-performance equine leg cooling and protection products wholesale and direct to consumer.
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Time working with Purple Horse Marketing: Since November 2021
Equine E-Commerce Brand: The Marketing Challenge
This client came to us in November 2021 looking to gain more brand awareness and generate more sales through their website. They had experienced a "pandemic boom", with very high sales in 2020 and 2021. However, as the pandemic came to a close and the economy started to turn, work was needed to keep sales coming and help bring an expanding product range to market. Furthermore, the business was trying to compete with a number of much larger and more established competitors.
Prior to us working with this client, the website had little to no SEO carried out on it, so it was not ranking for many relevant keywords. This meant the business was missing out on a potentially major source of website traffic and sales.
Our challenge was to help our client unlock SEO as a major source of website traffic and revenue, gain search engine visibility amongst the big players in the equestrian market and build on their pandemic success to continue sustainable business growth. All of this had to be done in an increasingly difficult economic environment.
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We knew this brand was a good fit for Purple Horse Marketing. The high-performance, technical nature of the products combined with the director's deep passion and understanding of the science behind their business made our eyes light up! On explaining how our services work and how we could help the business, the client was open-minded and keen to work as a partnership with our equine marketing experts.
Our Approach
Laying the Foundations: Nov 2021 - Apr 2022
A six-month contract allowed us time to lay the foundations for SEO success. After an initial call to learn about the client's products, brand and target market, we began preparing their SEO strategy.
We carried out in-depth keyword research to identify 20 target keywords for the client, based on relevance, search volume, competition and keyword difficulty.
Based on the keyword research, we created the initial SEO strategy. This focused on targeting specific, less competitive, lower search volume keywords. By doing this, we were able to put in the groundwork for a future, more ambitious SEO campaign whilst making good, productive progress for the client in the meantime.
Once the strategy was ready, we set about optimising the client’s core website pages, including product pages, information pages and the Home page. New, optimised SEO titles and descriptions were written, incorporating SEO best practices and the focus keywords. We then optimised the page headings, subheadings and the on-page copy in-line with this strategy.
Within 1-2 months, the client’s website was beginning to climb up the rankings for those target keywords, and this translated into higher volumes of visitors to the website.
Key Results from Phase One
At the start of the campaign, the website was only ranking within the top 100 search results for 10 of the 20 target keywords. By the end of the first month, it was ranking within the top 60 for 13 target keywords, and within the top 10 (roughly equivalent to being on the first page) for four of those keywords.
Six months into the SEO campaign, the client’s website was ranking within the top 100 for all 20 target keywords. For nine of those keywords, the website was ranking in the top 10 (equivalent to being on Page 1) and for three of those keywords it was ranking in the top 3 search results.
In terms of search visibility, the client’s website had climbed from having a visibility of 3.35% at the end of month one, to 15.31% at the end of month six. This equated to them outperforming all but one of their major competitors in terms of search visibility.
This progress came at just the right time (April 2022), as the start of the summer competition and eventing seasons meant there was increased demand for our client’s products. Ensuring that the website was more visible in Google Search for those target keywords allowed our client to benefit from this important season:
Monthly orders and revenue from the website doubled between January and April 2022.
May 2022 orders and revenue from the website were significantly higher than they had been in May 2020 or May 2019.
But that was only the start!
Making Progress & SEO Migration: May - Oct 2022
SEO is never “finished”. You can always look to target higher search volume, more competitive keywords. Furthermore, your website’s SEO must be constantly tweaked and adapted to fit changing best practice and algorithm changes. If left for more than a month or so, your website SEO will start to deteriorate.
Phase two of this SEO campaign was about building on the foundations laid in the first six months.
In addition to building on existing progress, our client had their website rebuilt and then launched a brand new product range within a very short space of time. These developments presented two big challenges to the SEO:
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A new website or website rebuild requires professional SEO migration to avoid losing search engine rankings, visibility and performance
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Launching a new product range requires new, additional keywords to be targeted as part of the SEO campaign.
We embraced both of these challenges and worked with the client to successfully migrate their website SEO and launch their new product range in summer 2022.
Although this phase of the SEO campaign was busy and challenging, our client really benefitted from our SEO expertise and equestrian sector understanding. Not only were we able to handle the technical aspect of migrating their SEO, we were also able to identify and target the right keywords and write about their products accurately and confidently.
Developing and executing an SEO migration strategy involved moving the optimised website copy, SEO titles and descriptions over to the website and adapting the SEO plan to suit new pages that had been added to the website.
Secondly, we carried out keyword research to determine which keywords we would target for the new product range. This followed a similar pattern to the work carried out in Phase One.
Key Results from Phase Two
Whilst there was inevitable disruption to the search engine rankings immediately after the new website was launched, we were able to recoup this progress and continue on a positive trajectory:
Our client’s website was still outperforming most of its major competitors in terms of website visibility. Between months 10 and 11 of the campaign (after the new website launch), the website’s visibility increased by 8.31%. This is because we carried out the SEO migration and worked quickly to recover any lost website visibility. Had the migration not been carried out, all of the progress made up to that point would have largely been lost.
The list of target keywords increased to 31, to include more valuable keywords and keywords relevant to the new product range. In June 2022, the website was ranking in the top 100 for 21 of these keywords. By October, it was ranked for 27 keywords.
Of those 27 keywords, the website was ranking on the first page for 12, and in the top 3 for six.
Orders and revenue were consistently higher than pre-pandemic, despite the disruption caused by the new website launch. Again, the SEO migration was a significant mitigating factor in protecting revenue.
Going Forward
This client continues to work with Purple Horse Marketing (correct as of June 2023), and their SEO continues to improve month by month. The client’s - and our - commitment to the long-term allows us to plan and execute a sustainable SEO strategy. This includes monthly blogs, on-page optimisation, technical SEO and backlink support. The client also benefits from additional support outside of our usual remit - for example, we write content to be used as advertorial (digital PR).
As our client’s website grows stronger in terms of its search engine performance, we have been able to begin targeting much higher search volume, more competitive and more valuable keywords. This includes a blogging strategy, which we are using to help the client establish their website and their brand as a trusted creator of high performance equestrian products led by scientific research and equine welfare.
The success of this SEO campaign has been made possible by the client’s willingness to commit and trust us. We have spent many hours learning about our client’s products in-depth and developing our understanding of equine distal limb anatomy and the science behind the products we help to market. This level of dedication to our clients is invaluable in creating a long-term, sustainable partnership and SEO strategy and it is why we prefer to work on a six- or 12-month basis.
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You can find some additional results from our work with this client below. If you're ready to start making the most out of your website and want to drive long-term business growth, book your free consultation with Purple Horse Marketing today:
Driving Results For Our Equestrian E-Commerce Clients
Whilst we never guarantee results, our services have been proven to improve our equestrian e-commerce clients' website performance, boost keyword rankings and increase website traffic.
