Digital Marketing

Interior Panel Systems, an established ecommerce website supplying wall panels, faced significant challenges in regaining lost revenue, traffic, and rankings due to multiple pages being optimized for the same keywords. Following a series of Google algorithm updates in February 2019, the website's average daily organic sessions plummeted from 250 to 90, resulting in an estimated annual loss of 600,000 sessions. Most keywords dropped from page 2-3 to page 8-9 in Google UK, indicating a severe decline in visibility.

To address these issues, a comprehensive SEO recovery strategy was implemented. The first step involved a thorough analysis to identify the root causes of the ranking losses, particularly the confusion caused by the website's historical content optimized for similar keywords. The solution included a multi-faceted approach:

1. **Meta Data De-Optimization**: The team focused on de-optimizing meta data across the website, which had become problematic due to the abundance of similar products and content. This involved selectively optimizing the meta data for specific categories to monitor results effectively.

2. **URL Rewrites**: Given the nonsensical hierarchy and keyword-stuffed URLs, URL rewrites were necessary to improve clarity and relevance. This step was critical in addressing the structural issues that contributed to the ranking problems.

3. **Page Content Optimization**: The content was reorganized to enhance its logical structure, ensuring that headers were appropriately configured and that target keywords were used effectively without over-optimization. Internal linking was refined, duplicate content issues were resolved, and image alt text was optimized.

The implementation of these strategies was executed with remarkable client cooperation, leading to significant improvements. By January 2020, most keyword rankings had improved to page 4-5, and by March 2020, they advanced to page 2-3. Notably, some high search volume keywords began ranking on page 1 by May 2020. This recovery not only restored traffic but also positively impacted sales, although the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on traffic remained to be seen. Overall, the tailored SEO strategy led to a recovery of average daily organic sessions to 230 after the easing of lockdown measures, demonstrating the effectiveness of the targeted approach.