zmysly - case study

+4,000 monthly organic traffic
in 12 months

eCommerce Erotic SEO

Client Goal

1.

Changing the main traffic channel from paid to organic

At the time when the owner of zmysly.pl contacted us, the paid search was the main source of the online store traffic. Since that was eating up too much of the client’s budget, he asked us to help him shift the main traffic channel from paid to organic. Knowing that pages offering adult content are tougher to optimize, we had to seek untypical but feasible ways to build website authority and receive relevant backlinks.

SEO Team

Working with an erotic shop is a real challenge! It is not about the SEO process itself (because here I trust my knowledge and experience), but about the approach to this taboo subject. Together with the team with whom I work on the website zmysly.pl, we had to break some of our barriers. We even had to learn to talk to each other about such intimate matters. And frankly speaking… I’m in love with such tasks! We have developed a strategy for this industry, and it turned out that we have great insights and we know what works best in SEO for this sector.

Milena Fietko
Milena Fietko SEO Strategy Manager

On-Site Strategy

Modifying Category Names

The optimization process started with improving category names. We made sure all of them featured main keywords, as this method has a positive impact on SEO.

Why we did it

The perfect category names have two qualities: are descriptive and contain keywords. This is crucial for the crawlers and visitors, as they are given clear indicators of the topic a page covers.

The very first thing that we had to do to improve SEO for the client was inserting the keywords into the category names. Since page title and H1 tags were generated automatically through importing the category name, those two crucial website elements were incorrect as well.

We optimized the category names for the main keywords, at the same time fixing H1 tags and title tags.

Here is the category name section before introducing the chances:

Category names before optimization

and after introducing the changes:

Zmysly - category names after the change

Optimizing the Homepage

Later we tackled a number of issues that the homepage clearly had. To help the website rank higher, we decided to publish more web content, add headings as well as rewrite title and meta description.

Why we did it

Well-optimized homepage for search engines is able to help the other pages within the domain rank higher. The text published on this page should be rich in keywords. The formatting and meta tags used on the homepage set the tone for the lower-level pages, creating cohesion and uniformity.

Our audit revealed a few major issues with the homepage that hindered the website performance in search engines. The most obvious one concerned the complete lack of text. Our copywriting team created a few short pieces of writing for the homepage, saturating them with the main keywords. This allowed us to add headings, which is absolutely crucial for improved SEO.

When we started working with zmysly.pl, the website had no heading structure. The H2 heading was empty:

headers - main page before optimization

Here’s the heading structure after optimizing:

headers - main page after optimization

Other things that required our immediate attention were the title and meta description. Both of the elements make it easier for the search engines and users to understand the content of the homepage. They also comprise the result whenever the website is called out on search result pages by the matching query.

The title tag and meta description didn’t provide enough information for search engines and users:

Meta data before optimization

After adding more text and keywords to these two elements, the client’s website was displayed in SERP as shown below:

ZMysły - meta data after optimization

Adding Text to Category Pages

When the homepage was optimized, we could work on category pages. Clearly, we had to create and publish there more text.

Why we did it

Category pages play a key role in driving more traffic to a website. The content published on those pages relates to a chosen topic, and therefore can be optimized for target keywords and provide a user with relevant information. Covering a specific topic, category pages make online shopping easier and intuitive for the users.

Homepage wasn’t the only page without text. Category pages lacked this essential element, too. As a result, these pages weren’t optimized for the right keywords, meaning they weren’t displayed in SERP when a user was looking for the products offered on zmysly.pl. Again, our copywriting team handled this task, creating short keyword-rich articles for each of the category pages.

Here is a piece of copy published on a category page optimized for “sexy lingerie sets”

Category page content piece

Modifying URLs

URL is yet another element that either improves or impairs website ranking. Naturally, we strived for the former, and therefore introduced a couple of changes to make the web addresses as SEO-friendly as only possible.

Why we did it

The structure of URLs should be made readable for the users and bots. This can be done by using keywords and removing insignificant numbers or characters from the string.

Initially the CMS that zmysly.pl was built on, which was Sky-Shop, didn’t allow us to modify URLs in any other way but through changing the category names. Fortunately, the moment Sky-Shop offered the possibility to make the URLs more SEO-friendly, we deleted ID numbers, added keywords and replaced uppercase with lowercase.

This is an exemplary URL before the modification: https://zmysly.pl/Piorka-c252

and the same URL after the modification: https://zmysly.pl/piorka-do-laskotania

Correcting Title Tags and Meta Description
in Category and Product Pages

The last thing we did to increase CTR and attract more visitors to the client’s online store was rewriting meta descriptions.

Why we did it

The language used in title tags and meta descriptions must correspond with the page content. When written correctly, these two elements have the potential to increase organic traffic and attract more customers to the website. This, in turn, decreases bounce rate which has a positive effect on the website ranking.

The first element in most title tags was the brand name, which hindered SEO. We changed that so each title tag begins with a keyword.

Unoptimized category titles

The majority of meta descriptions for separate pages were identical. On top of that, they were generated automatically through importing the product descriptions, which resulted in higher duplicate content.

To fix that, we rewrote the meta descriptions one by one. However, before doing so, we changed the default title configuration. We removed the ‘sensual’ prefix and replaced it with the ‘sensual store Zmysły.pl’ suffix.

When it comes to the product pages, we created the following pattern: “product name + prefix”.

 

Let’s work on increasing your organic traffic!
Off-Site Strategy

Our audit showed us that many links pointing back to zmysly.pl were placed on websites whose trustworthiness was highly doubtful. This was the main cause of the high spam score and low domain rating of our client’s online store.

Creating a sucessfull link building strategy for an erotic business is pretty challenging, as there aren’t many quality websites to get the refferal links from. We had to adopt an unconventional approach to help the client’s website get a higher domain rating.

Here is a quick summary of our off-site strategy results generated in Ahrefs:

Link building in erotic industry

This is the link profile after 12 months of performing a link building process for zmysly.pl:

linkbuilding - erotic industry

Results

RESULT 1 Increased visibility in search engines

zmysly.pl visibility before the optimization process started:

Keywords visibility before cooperation

and after 6 months:

Keywords visibility after cooperation

RESULT 2 Increase in organic traffic

In February 2019 there were less than 100 internet users visiting zmysly.pl per month. A year later, the number of monthly visitors went beyond 4,000.

organic traffic growth - seo case study

RESULT 3 Stronger keyword positions

keywords - zmysly

Developing effective SEO strategies for adult websites is challenging, yet not impossible. Even though the technical SEO didn’t cause us much trouble, the link building process happened to be a tough nut to crack. Having the right tools at our disposal and heads full of ideas, we managed to improve the domain rank and drive more organic traffic to the website.

Cooperation with Delante is going really well. Milena is always willing to dispel any of our doubts and also cooperates with us in choosing the right keywords. Monthly reports allow us to constantly monitor all the changes that are being implemented and their impact on store position in search engines. Thanks to Delante the number of clients that visit our website from Google significantly increased that’s reflected also in our financial results.

Mariusz Sosnowski

Owner

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Our Awards

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

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