Irish E-commerce Business Case Study

Their website rankings were hit by the 2020 December Core Algorithm penalty

and are looking to regain SEO rankings and better PPC optimisation.

It's a successful Irish E-commerce business on Shopify that delivers their products nationwide.

Services provided:

SEO

Google Algorithm penalties are one of the worst things that can happen to your SEO and business (if it relies on rankings). The site got an average rankings decrease from an average position 3 to 11 (second page). That is a big decrease in traffic since the site ranked really well for high volume searched keywords in Ireland.
It is important to be very experienced in SEO - especially technical since Google doesn't give you any hint into why they penalised the site's rankings.

There are no guarantees when will the traffic recover from an algorithm penalty. Sometimes a month later, often only when a new core algorithm is introduced (3,4 times a year only) or never.

Backlink Audit

The site did have a lot of spammy backlinks that made around 80% of the backlink portfolio. However, upon disavowing them, there were no visible gains.

Technical SEO Audit

A detailed technical audit of the site was made. The site had a lower speed score which was corrected by installing a different plugin.

Content Audit

The content wasn't enough focused on the keywords. This was a particular challenge because we didn't want to change the tone or design of the site to fit in keywords.

Results

Here is a screenshot of some of the top keywords movement after 6 months. The Diff is a difference in rankings and Vol is the monthly search volume for a target keyword in Ireland. (keywords are hidden for privacy reasons)

PPC

The Client had PPC Campaigns set up, but they needed updating and total optimisation. Since it's an e-commerce business with a lot of everyday purchases, we decided to move from a manual cost per click model to Google's "smart/machine learning" model for conversions & smart shopping ads.

There was a lot of work put in the PPC with a high daily budget. Especially since the Google algorithm decreased rankings and organic traffic. A good ROI has to be made and PPC as a substitute for less organic traffic. Google AdWords wasn't correctly linked to analytics so there was no solid visibility for the previous ROI.

We did a lot of data/keyword analysis coming from PPC and decided which are the best keywords to bid on. We don't just look at direct sales coming from PPC, but whether those people clicked on the chat, call, email, social media buttons too. A 5.7 Return on ads (570% ROAS) was made, meaning that on average for every euro spend on an Ad, it resulted in a purchase of 5.7 euro. Brand PPC ads are included in this. The average product price is 60 euro.

The business is experiencing great revenue growth compared to last year. With the new normal being online, e-commerce is here to stay and digital marketing is its blood.

The site finally recovered from the December algorithm penalty. The organic rankings have improved a lot compared to the start, as you saw on the screenshot.

The moral of the story is to avoid penalties by having an SEO person audit the site in detail. Don't try easy ranking manipulations.

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