Z klocków - seo case study

+1117% increase
in organic traffic

in 12 months

eCommerce LEGO Bricks SEO

Client Goals

1.

Increase visibility in search engine

Our client’s website – an online catalog and price comparison site – wasn’t ranked high, and therefore it didn’t show up at the top of search results. Low ranks also precluded the possibilities for reaching prospects. To fix that, we had to work on technical SEO and adjust the SEO strategy to the custom CMS the website was built in.

2.

Drive more organic traffic

The volume of organic traffic wasn’t satisfactory either. We had to come up with the solutions that would attract more converting customers to the client’s website. The main challenge, however, was the seasonal demand for the items that the website provided the comparisons for. With that in mind, we developed a strategy that would bring more profit to our client during the festive season.

SEO Team

The results are more than satisfying, especially when considering the high competitiveness of the keywords used for optimizing the website for. The cooperation between the client and SEO specialists is truly a model.

Milena Fietko
Milena Fietko SEO Strategy Manager

On-Site Strategy

Modyfing Product Names

Even being a LEGO bricks passionate, you probably wouldn’t know the exact series number of each LEGO set, right? First problem we needed to solve was to make product names at zklocków as user and crawler friendly as possible!

Why we did it

Product name shouldn’t confuse searchers. Most shoppers already know what they want to buy, and therefore they expect to find the results that match their search intent perfectly. For that reason, product names must be 100% clear and accurate.

The names of LEGO sets that were displayed in SERP appeared to be rather confusing for the searchers. Each item’s name began with a serial number that was followed by the product name.

This is how the full name of the product used to be displayed to the searchers:

75954 LEGO Harry Potter

The string of digits carried little meaning for the searchers, and therefore they kept scrolling to find a product with the proper name, which is the name they expected to see.

change in product names seo case study

After rearranging the elements, we also had to modify titles, H1 headers and URLs, so that they correspond with the corrected product names.

Even though we introduced URLs redirections, Google didn’t reindex the pages properly. Unfortunately, this led to duplicate content.

Removing Indexed Website from Google Search

Wait a minute, we did what? Seems like we should want our client’s website indexed, right? Correct! But in order to help the website perform better, we decided on a rather bold move.

Why we did it

Taking this bold move helps to completely get rid of the duplicate content that confuses Google bots. Since there are at least two pages filled with identical content, Google doesn’t know which one it should call out. As a result, it displays neither page, and chooses another website that matches the searcher’s intent.

What used to be a 15,000-page website, suddenly turned into over 30,000 pages which led to a drastic visibility drop.

number of incorrect indexed pages

We deleted the index to remove the duplicate content and optimize the crawl budget. That way we allowed Googlebots to index every single page once again, giving the website a fresh start.

On May 1st, the entire website was removed and indexed back again.

removing website from index case study seo

website put out of index seo case study

After removing the website from the index, its visibility and keyword positions dropped rather significantly. Later, when we reindexed zklocków.pl, the keyword reached positions 40-45 to eventually retrieve their original high ranks.

Here’s an example of a keyword and its position changes:

changes in keyword ranks

Below, the clear decrease in visibility of the webpage after being removed from the index:

drop in visibility after website was put out of index

To speed up the site indexing, we created three sitemaps:

  • sitemap_category.xml
  • sitemap_images.xml
  • sitemap.xml

We also created a HTML version of the sitemap: https://zklockow.pl/mapa-strony

Eventually, there were 6,710 pages indexed.

index status after reindexing page

Fixing and Expanding Internal Linking

Internal linking is an important element that supports both – SEO effectiveness and conversions on the site. Especially in the case of online stores we can implement various solutions for better site performance and sales.

Why we did it

Internal linking shows Googlebots the page hierarchy. It also helps the crawlers understand the website better, and therefore rank it higher. Also, this process has a positive effect on UX as it helps the users navigate through the website easily.

The audit revealed that the lack of one crucial word, which is LEGO, in the anchors was an issue that had a negative impact on the website ranking.

seo case study menu adjustment

seo case study menu adjustment

seo case study menu adjustment

We implemented five general improvements to make the internal linking more effective, and help the website perform better in SERP. Here is what happened.

1. We added LEGO keyword to the anchors:

new categories in the menu

2. Our client’s developer team added a left sidebar to expose the category pages:

side menu implemented on the website seo case study

3. We inserted more keywords to the breadcrumb navigation structure.

4. Tags (subcategories) were enriched with keywords.

5. We added an extra module to display popular products for increased cross-selling, hence higher conversion.

link building supporting cross selling

Optimizing Product Pages

Product pages are crucial area for every online store. Correct optymization improves conversion rate and products visibility in search results.

Why we did it

Working on product pages requires taking a bit of a different approach. Content published on those pages is mostly generic (provided by the producers) and rather short. That’s why it has to be optimized properly to fit into the SEO strategy properly.

Since zklockow.pl is a comparison site and price checker, it didn’t have original product descriptions. Typically, such websites take the product descriptions from the producers. Since there are several websites using identical – or almost identical – pieces of content, it leads to duplication which harms SEO.

Naturally, it had to be dealt with. Our Content Team wrote unique product descriptions that had never been published on other websites.

Another noteworthy change that we made was adding keywords to H2 headers. We also defined some global settings for the headers.

Here is how the headers used to look like:

headers before optimization of product pages

and here are the corrected headers:

headers optimization example

Adding Structured Data

The next step to improve our client’s website visibility and apparence in search results was implementing structured data.

Why we did it

Structured data helps search engines understand the content of the website. This form of microdata facilitates crawling, making the process quicker and more efficient, thus improving ranking. It simply groups and organizes the information about a website so that Google reads it quicker. Moreover, structured data is required for getting parts of the website content transformed into Featured Snippets. For example, online shops may use structured data to mark rating, price or availability of an item, and display such information in the search result.

Schema markups instruct Google on how you want particular pieces of web content to be displayed on the screens. For example, it makes the search results look more appealing and easier to read for the internet users. Take the below screenshot as an example:

strctural data implementation seo case study

We took one step further and added schema markups to get the prices displayed on SERP. In other words, we transformed regular results into rich results. Since the rich results are favored by Google, they are placed above regular results.

strctured data implemented example

Fixing Incorrect Category Page Optimization

Category pages are one of the pillars of e-commerce SEO. They need to be properly optimized for business-relevant keywords for conversion and visiblity support.

Why we did it

Category pages have a relatively high click through rate, as they specify their content and use structured data. When optimized properly (e.g. internal linking, quality copies), they work like a customer-magnet, taking the users from the SERP to the store.

Another major issue that required fixing were the category pages. They weren’t optimized, hence the low visibility for general keywords.

Working on internal linking helped the category pages show up in the search results:

optimizing category pages seo e-commerce case study

In October 2019, we started publishing descriptions on the category pages which clearly helped them rank higher in SERP:

category page optimization seo ecommerce case study

LEGO launches new sets and building block collections every year, and for that reason the index contained plenty of redundant pages offering last-year products that almost nobody was looking for. To minimize the keyword cannibalization and optimize crawl budget, we added canonical links for the older categories.

adding canonical link

In 2020 LEGO launched a set for adults which is why our client suggested creating a new product category for this item. We did that and the result was pretty impressive. The lego for adults keyphrase appeared to be the second best phrase in terms of click-throughs:

lego for adults category keyword rank

Creating a Company Blog

Blog is a multi-purpose tool in the hands of all online business owners. Not only does it provide space to publish more keyword-rich content but it also helps with creating brand image and sharing valuable knowledge with potential clients.

Why we did it

Running a company blog has numerous benefits, some of which include: driving more organic traffic to the website, building trust and reliability as well as encouraging engagement and conversions. Additionally, blog posts make a perfect place to expand the number of keywords a website is optimized for, so that it reaches to more users.

In October 2020, we gave practical advice to our client, suggesting running a company blog. They eagerly acted on that advice, and created the blog swiftly, minding the guidelines provided by Delante Content Team.

Our SEO team took care of the following aspects, adding:

  • schema article
  • internal linking to the products related to blog posts – via client script

implementing schema on the company blog

cross-selling on the company blog example

  • linking to the previous and next articles
  • linking to the most recent articles

By analyzing keywords and prevailing trends, we were able to come up with the relevant blog post topics that the targeted audience took close interest in.

We also had a go at adding emoji to meta descriptions and titles for improved CTR.

emojis in meta description and title

changing title and meta description ecommerce seo case study

Here is an example of a blog post devoted to Black Friday published on the zklocków.pl blog. With just one piece of writing we managed to drive more organic traffic to the website:

increase in traffic via content publication

Below exemplary keyphrases matching our clients’ blog posts:

blog content keywords list

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Off-Site Strategy

As in most cases, we kept improving the domain strength through increasing the referral traffic, placing backlinks on trusted websites.

Here are the domain parameters before we started cooperating with zklocków.pl:

zklockow domain parameters before

The domain parameters after a few months of running the off-site strategy:

zklockow domain parameters after

Below, the link and referring domain chart showing the results from before we launched our off-site strategy:

z klockow case study link profile before

The same chart showing the results after launching the off-site strategy:

case study seo linking domains after

Results

Here is what we delivered:

RESULT 1 255% increase in website visibility: the number of phrases that made it to TOP 50 increased from 4,700 to 16,700

visibility change seo case study

RESULT 2 1117% increase in organic traffic: over 150,000 users visited the site

traffic increase

RESULT 3 We made the client’s website more visible during the high season. In that period, the monthly organic traffic increased by 70%.

high season traffic difference before and after

Below a graph, generated by Senuto tool, illustrating the seasonal demand for LEGO toys:

seasonality results seo case study

I want to achieve gret results too!

Our Awards

Global Search Awards 2020 Award - IPMA Award - US Search Awards 2021 Award - Deloitte 2021 Award - European eCommerce Awards 2022 Award - Global Agency Awards 2022 Award - European Search Awards 2022

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3.

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4.

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