Stitch & Story: Building a brand through search: 639% increase in revenue
THE RESULTS
661% | increase in transactions |
639% | increase in revenue |
584% | increase in traffic |
Building an SEO Foundation
Stitch & Story is all about ‘crafting made simple’. They bring the joy of creating to everyone - not just traditional crafters. Founded in 2012, they’re the modern solution for the amateur crafter, providing a range of knitting kits through their online store.
Stitch and Story were growing rapidly in the UK and US. But, as bigger retailers started to enter the growing market it became harder to stand out with paid advertising like Google Shopping and Facebook Ads. With increases in costs per click (CPC), they needed to create a sustainable platform for growth to compete against competitors with larger budgets.
That was why we were brought on board. To create a new customer acquisition stream, through organic search, that complimented Stitch & Story’s activity in PPC and Paid Social.
We took a multilayered approach. First, we built Stitch & Story’s SEO foundations. Then we used digital PR to drive brand awareness. We also increased on-site action by optimising conversion rates. These actions didn’t only complement each other, they also supported the existing marketing efforts, leading to significant growth.
Sending Google the right signals
The first thing to address with Stitch & Story was the poor targeting of the site. There were issues with technical optimisation that restricted their international targeting, basic page set-up that failed to target commercial keywords and thin content across product listing pages (PLPs). All of this resulted in a site that Google didn’t know how to rank.
Hreflang implementation
Stitch & Story had two sites, both on Shopify, targeting the UK and the US. They were essentially the same site, with identical products, content and structure.
This isn’t a problem as long as you tell Google that the two sites exist to target users in separate geographical areas (in this case the UK and the US). If you don't do this you confuse it, leading to poor performance.
This was our first priority. We implemented hreflang functionality, which notifies search engines that duplicate versions of the same website are targeting different areas of the world. This stopped Google’s confusion when choosing which website to rank in each country.
Removing duplicate content
Once we had the targeting for each site working correctly, we focused on the site structure. A common issue we find in Shopify sites is duplicate collection pages.
Sure enough there were multiple duplicate collection pages across the site. These are usually created by mistake when new product ranges are added, tags are applied incorrectly or CMS users just aren’t aware that a collection already exists.
This caused problems because when Google and other search engines find duplicate content, they don’t know which to rank. Usually, they end up not ranking either page.
We crawled the site to find all the duplicate content., Then, we put redirects in place for the redundant pages and combined content where needed. This has an immediate impact on search rankings.
Commercialising the structure
The site wasn’t set up to target the many search terms people were using. Instead, it utilised a filtering system that let users navigate to popular subcategories, like colour variant, yarn size or difficulty level.
This worked fine for user experience (UX) but as the filters used query strings, none of the variations were indexable.
We used keyword research to identify the sub-categories with the greatest search volume, then cross-referenced these against PPC data to understand the commercial value. This gave us a priority list to work from.
We then created a specific page for each sub-category, Every one had unique content and metadata which allowed Google to index them all whilst keeping the UX functionality essentially the same.
Optimising on-page content
Because the structure wasn’t originally built to target specific keywords, the site’s also left a lot to be desired.
Metadata is crucial to telling Google what the page is about and what content it contains. It makes it easy for them to understand how relevant a page is to the user's search terms. A page title with the keywords “Chunky Wool Knitting Yarm” is much more specific than one that just includes “Chunky Yarn”
We did this after restructuring the category pages for two reasons. Firstly we didn't want to re-do work after identifying new pages from the keyword research. Secondly, we didn't know which pages needed to target which until the restructuring was done.
Once the site structure was confirmed we set about getting the on-page content in order. On every page we updated the title, organised the page structure and implemented metadata that was optimised for the keywords that page was targeting.
Our SEO work resulted in substantial gains for Stitch & Story in the UK and the US. After the first 12 months, we saw a massive 584% increase in traffic, a 661% increase in transactions and a 639% increase in revenue through organic search alone.
Building authority with Digital PR
Once the technical and on-page elements were sorted we turned our focus to Stitch & Story’s link profile. We knew we needed to grow this to increase their authority.
Once we’d identified and removed any spam through a disavow file we set our sights on getting national coverage with stories about Stitch & Story products.
We pulled together several ideas and, with the client's limited budget, we settled on using tried and tested gift guides. We knew it might not be the biggest brand-building piece, but we knew it would get good coverage and drive interest in their product.
First, we compiled a list of target news outlets by reviewing the link profile of Stitch & Story’s competitors. This let us be systematic in our outreach, and justified our approach when we saw how many competitors were getting traffic from similar pieces. Then, we researched gift guides of similar products to see what was most likely to be featured.
We pushed the outreach to national and regional journalists, and got coverage in major publications like the Metro, Not on the High Street and the BBC. In total, we generated over 20 pieces of coverage.
The coverage on the BBC alone drove an incredible amount of traffic and revenue overnight, giving Stitch & Story their best single revenue day ever up to that point.
After getting coverage on local, regional and national online publications such as the BBC, Metro and Not on the High Street we saw an immediate uplift in online performance. Rankings and traffic increased and, more importantly, so did revenue.
- Revenue increase of 643%
- 558% increase in traffic
- Reached 431,500 people across social media
Using CRO to maximise the extra traffic from organic search
Black Friday is a key trading day for every type of business. In the lead-up to Black Friday, Stitch & Story expected significant traffic increases, especially with their increased SERP visibility, Our task was to make sure revenue followed the same trend.
In the run up to Black Friday we implemented a robust A/B testing plan, designed to identify the best ways to position Stitch & Story’s sale for the main event, when traffic levels would be highest.
We ran variations of different formats, layouts, and messaging to identify which elements increased conversion rates, and figure out which combinations worked best.
Building Stitch & Story’s Black Friday sale around the results of these tests resulted in huge performance improvements:
- 21% increase in conversion rate
- 24% increase in order value
- 82% increase in revenue
Using CRO to maximise the extra traffic from organic search
Black Friday is a key trading day for every type of business. In the lead-up to Black Friday, Stitch & Story expected significant traffic increases, especially with their increased SERP visibility, Our task was to make sure revenue followed the same trend.
In the run up to Black Friday we implemented a robust A/B testing plan, designed to identify the best ways to position Stitch & Story’s sale for the main event, when traffic levels would be highest.
We ran variations of different formats, layouts, and messaging to identify which elements increased conversion rates, and figure out which combinations worked best.
Building Stitch & Story’s Black Friday sale around the results of these tests resulted in huge performance improvements:
- 21% increase in conversion rate
- 24% increase in order value
- 82% increase in revenue
Results: 639% increase in revenue from SEO
The results we got for Stitch & Story, both in the UK and internationally, were phenomenal. Their openness to our suggestions, and swift implementation of changes meant we could do our best work and knock their revenue out of the park.
- 584% increase in traffic
- 661% increase in transactions
- 639% increase in revenue
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Our Work
We’ve worked with a variety of companies to produce outstanding results. From internationally recognised brands to small family-owned businesses, we’ve gotten to know our clients inside out to produce perfect projects and create captivating campaigns that truly express their message and values.
