Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Published by
Bradley Salt
ON
From a struggling decline to an all-time high in revenue, this SEO case study describes the strategy implemented for Vape UK to increase their online presence.
Starting out, the team at Vape UK weren’t quite sure how SEO could help them. Their business had recently seen a large increase in staff and sales due to the rise of disposable vapes, however, as they grew, they were struggling to maintain their online presence. The market for vapes grew highly competitive. As a result, they started to see their online traffic declining, as customers were instead purchasing their vaping products from other businesses.
This is where I came in. I pitched to them what an SEO strategy would look like, how long it might take, and how it could regain them the business they once had. It would involve a long-term strategy of 3 parts:
But first, I had to get a comprehensive understanding of the market trends, the customers, and the competitors.
I wanted to understand why there was a dramatic drop in traffic.I used tools such as:
Vape UK were an early adopter of disposable vapes. This means, that when the hit disposable vape, the Elf Bar 600, started to get popular, Vape UK coasted into a rank 1 google search position for a suddenly incredibly popular device.
However, other competitors caught on, and started to invest heavily into SEO to increase their positions. This caused them to overtake Vape UK, and they lost their top search position, losing them a large portion of their traffic.
Something to keep in mind is that, due to Google’s policies, you cannot run ads on search results for e-cigarettes. This meant that search engine results pages (SERPs) were heavily influenced by SEO. In this case, you can’t outbid for an ad space.
If you wanted rank #1, you needed a damn good reason to be there.
So, what was the way forward to regain the lost ranks, and grow Vape UK’s online presence?
Let’s start with the User Experience.
Using a custom dashboard, I found all the ways customers were filtering their options.This created opportunities for new categories, which customers were frequently looking for.
Navigating to the most popular categories and products was simplified, with improvements to the header, homepage, and between categories, products, and guides. The labelling of the categories was also improved, making it clearer to customers, who could find what they were truly searching for more easily.The journey from first landing on the site, to finding the product you required, and to purchasing it was made seamless.
Improvements to put mobile-friendliness at the forefront were crucial, as over 85% of Vape UK’s web traffic was from mobile users.
The account section was meticulously remade, and the create account & sign-in flow became an absolute breeze.We equipped customers with a dashboard to view & search their orders, reorder their favourites, manage their account, and find the information they needed.Customers could also check the tracking history and the delivery status of their order, all without leaving the website, thanks to the magic of APIs.
Content is king. But not just any content — it needs to be pragmatically thought, written, and implemented to ensure the user’s needs are being met and that it’s accessible in the expected location.
The content needs to:
and that’s whether they need:
or prefer explicit detail so they can make a highly-informed choice.
After all, different customers browse the web in a multitude of ways, so understanding how to provide content which caters for a variety of users is crucial for an effective SEO strategy.Websites must be digitally accessible, not just for SEO, but because designing for inclusion makes things better for everyone.So that’s the what, here’s the how.
To understand what the customers are looking for, we can use tools like SemRush, Ahrefs & Google Trends to do keyword research, determining the exact questions people are searching in order to answer them effectively.I talk more about this in my blog about tailoring your pages for a users search intention, with helpful examples so you can do the same.
So I created a map of the customer’s search intention and focused efforts on several key pages.
The homepage received a major overhaul for the user journey.Navigating to people’s favourite categories was streamlined. A modular promotions banner was created to increase revenue and massively simplify the process.Customers could now find everything they needed just where they needed it.
Improvements were made across the board to give users the key information they needed to make a purchase decision.
If they required more answers, the relevant guides were linked appropriately, so they didn’t need to leave to go to another website.
Finding compatible products helped reduce frustration, and increase sales.
New and existing category pages received an overhaul of content. It’s important to consider two types of categories:
Doing this helps to satisfy the entirety of the customer base, as there is content relevant to everyone.Google wants websites to have a comprehensive understanding of the products on offer, so by giving attention across the board, you signal to Google that you are an expert in your field and a reliable source of information.Ultimately, you can gain traffic indirectly — improving content in one category can increase your ranking in a completely different one.
Content was placed appropriately for the user journey, and helpful graphics were also added for easily-digestible visual information. This built upon the Vape UK brand, increasing their recognisability and motif.
Pages such as About Vape UK, Contact Us, and Delivery Information were all overhauled. Customers could get an understanding of what Vape UK is, where they originated, and what the benefits of shopping with them are. Vape UK’s shipping policy was one of the best in the industry, and so it was of great benefit to highlight that fact. Explaining exactly how the delivery worked also helped to reassure customers about their packages.
Blogs are a great way to cover industry news, market trends, and research subjects.
And so, with coverage from vaping conventions, and staying in touch with suppliers, we were able to keep customers informed about what they could expect in the coming months, whether it be new innovations or regulation coming into effect.
If there is one thing Google loves, it is guides. Guides are an excellent way to showcase your expert knowledge in the industry.Guides were created to solve a plethora of common problems and concerns vaping customers had, and also dig deep into niche topics to satisfy enthusiasts.All guides were accompanied by useful graphics to help users on both desktop and mobile get a strong visual understanding.Links to appropriate guides were placed thoughtfully in the website content, ensuring anyone needing them was only a click away.It’s important that guides remain easy and clear, as being able to convey complex information in a simple way shows true knowledge of a topic.
Even though Vape UK did a massive proportion of their sales online, they still had a steady stream of local customers who visited the shopfront to purchase their vaping products.
However, Vape UK weren’t at all visible on the SERPs for anyone looking for vape stores in their area: if you didn’t know about them, you probably wouldn’t have stumbled upon them.Through an improvement in Local SEO, they were able to increase sales through the shopfront as they gained rankings in SERPs.
I’d be lying if I said I did this all myself.
That’s where the Marketing team came into play, and so from the help and hard work of some brilliant, insanely talented people we managed to turn the entire operation around over the course of a year.
Impressions almost tripled. Clicks over doubled. Revenue reached an all-time high, and it kept growing. The business now employs more people than ever before to keep up with the demand.Rank 1 positions for massive keywords across the board. Even rank one for “Vape”, which gets 80,000 searches a month.
A once worried client now understood what a good SEO strategy meant.
Get in touch for a free consultation if a project like this would benefit your business. We offer bespoke packages for small businesses looking for SEO agencies, larger ecommerce businesses, and everything in between.
Let’s uncover the perfect recipe for your website project.Book in for a chat or call on: 07518 746785
