Phone Case SEO Case Study

The Approach

1. 01

   Run a full Shopify SEO audit

   Whenever we start working on a new Shopify SEO project, we always start with our full SEO audit, which covers over 285 on-page, off-page, and technical SEO factors and opportunities. In the case of Burga.com, the store had numerous unresolved technical SEO issues, along with on-page issues and keyword cannibalization, due to the way the store structure was setup.

2. 02

   Implement every fix, done for the client

   After identifying all the issues and opportunities, we jumped straight in and started resolving them for the client. We offer a done-for-you solution, so the client didn't need to involve their development team: our team handled everything, saving the client time so they could focus on other tasks on their plate. It took about 16 days to resolve all of the on-page, off-page, and technical SEO issues, as well as keyword cannibalization.

3. 03

   Map every collection and product page to its own keyword

   Another issue Burga.com had was unoptimized pages. Since the brand has a lot of unique products, none of the products were actually optimized for specific keywords, which is understandable when one of the main channels is paid advertising, which focuses mainly on the product visuals and doesn't require on-page keyword optimization the way SEO does. Even without keyword mapping, the store was getting decent organic traffic, but there were a lot of opportunities to lift it further. We exported all of the collection and product page URLs from the Shopify store into an empty Google Sheet and mapped every single one to a specific keyword. It took quite a bit of back and forth and multiple calls with the Burga.com team, but we finalized the list and made all the decisions. Then we optimized every collection and product page by adjusting the page titles and meta titles to include the target keyword at the very start, a one-time process that pays dividends for years.

4. 04

   Research keywords and plan content at scale

   We dedicate an entire step to content planning because it's one of the most important parts of the process, especially when we write anywhere between 30,000 and 100,000 words a month for our clients. For Burga.com we planned a ton of content, all related to phone cases and phone accessories, by exporting over 300,000 keywords, filtering them, clustering them by intent, and organizing them into SILOs and article groups. Interlinking all the relevant articles in the same SILO improves topical relevancy further.

5. 05

   Write, upload, and publish every month

   After the content plan, we move on to writing, following a 5-page SOP that comes down to four steps. First, identify search intent: open the target keyword in an incognito window, work out why someone is searching it, and position the entire article around answering that. Second, outline: click through the top 5 to 10 results on page one and cover all of their topics and subtopics in one article, so it's the most in-depth on the topic. Third, link to at least 5 of the keyword-mapped money pages (collections and product pages), which improves UX and sends referral traffic and link juice to them. Fourth, interlink the article with the others in its SILO, using keyword variations as anchors, so Google understands their context better. For more on writing and optimizing posts, see our guide to blogging on Shopify and optimizing for SEO.

6. 06

   Build links once the first batch of content is live

   Most SEOs would place link building at the top of their list, but we prefer to focus on it after the first batch of articles goes live, not because content matters more than links, but because we get a higher ROI on links after publishing new content. Our go-to strategy is PR and outreach: we get the client featured in relevant media publications through guest posts, write the content ourselves, and optimize each post for specific keywords so it ranks and gets traffic too, because a guest post with traffic is significantly more valuable than one without, no matter the DR of the domain. We use natural anchors and prefer linking to blog posts over money pages like collection and product pages. Note: we were working alongside another SEO partner that the brand hired exclusively for link building, so we can't take 100% of the credit for the project, as we're positive the extra links had quite an impact on the campaign's performance.

The Results

The Foundation