Being a world-renowned brand in the manufacturing and sale of active ingredients for the chemical industry and enjoying a good market position does not always go hand-in-hand with dominating search engine results pages (SERPs).
This is more common than we think, especially in industries with business models based on distribution networks, with regulated products (like medicines), and where the digital impact is limited.
Still, it’s possible to lead a success story like that of our client:
A large company that manufactures active ingredients for the chemical industry.
Many established companies with strong brands in the physical world can have major difficulties taking advantage of the internet’s potential to boost their visibility and brand.
However, with the right strategy and clear areas of focus, it’s possible to move forward an SEO roadmap that drives:
- Online brand visibility
- Increased retail sales without bypassing the value chain
- Or boosting both at the same time
Well, in the last 12 months, our agency iSocialWeb has completely transformed the online visibility of a company that manufactures active ingredients.
The metrics speak for themselves:
- Increase from 50,000 daily impressions to 330,000 daily impressions, representing an impressive 560% jump
- Increase from 1,800 daily clicks to 5,300 daily clicks, experiencing an astonishing 194% growth
This success is due to an effective SEO strategy, accompanied by a comprehensive approach to tackling the web development and design challenges faced by this client.
A real challenge for the iSocialWeb team led by Jose Joaquín Rodríguez.
Key take away Lessons from the Success Story
If you don’t have time to read our entire case study but came here because you know you don’t want to miss it, we suggest you bookmark this page.
Or, you can also copy and save in your notes the following key points:
- Essential Technical SEO: Resolving technical and programming issues on a website is critical to avoid errors and unoptimized redirections, thus improving search engine visibility.
- User interface design based on heuristics: web design plays a prominent role in user experience. And search engines increasingly tend to favor user experience. Having a website that follows principles makes SEO work easier.
- Content Cleaning: Simplifying structure and reducing unnecessary URLs help focus on high-quality content, avoiding problems like “thin content” and duplicate content.
- Relevant Content Strategy: Closely collaborating with the client to create content that meets user demand is essential to gain visibility in search engines and social media.
- Controlling crawl budget and link juice distribution: Optimizing a website’s structure and content helps improve crawl budget and link juice, which is essential for optimal search engine performance. Especially on large websites.
All these points, combined and developed, show that an SEO strategy can completely transform any company’s online presence in a short timeframe.
Even for a large corporation.
Achieving 560% increases in impressions and 194% in daily clicks.
Context and Starting Point: Company that Manufactures Active Ingredients for the Chemical Industry
Our client was facing a complicated situation.
They had just undergone a brand change, so their website had recently been revamped, leaving unresolved issues from a botched web migration.
Additionally, their website had lots of content focused on topics related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whose user demand was clearly declining.
Resulting in a significant loss of search engine visibility.
Therefore, a solid strategy was needed to regain visibility and increase the quality of organic traffic to their website to attract their potential target audience.
The Challenge: Legacy, Internal Bureaucracy, and a Misguided Content Strategy
Our first task, after the technical SEO audit, was to reflect on the challenges faced by the client:
- A very large website with thousands of URLs
- Duplicate content confusing search engines
- Presence of “thin content” (irrelevant or low-quality content)
- An unoptimized structure
- Various technical issues from the migration
We knew that not everything could or should be tackled at once without putting the entire project at risk.
On one hand, it was necessary to correct all aspects related to design and programming. And on the other hand, see how the domain responded to the removal of duplicate content, thin content, and new web architecture.
Managing all this at the same time can generate confusing signals for search engines.
And end up causing organic traffic and ranking drops in the project.
So we decided to approach the project in sequential, priority phases.
Solution: How We Approached the Project at iSocialWeb
Our approach to the project was divided into three crucial phases, each with a specific focus and purpose:
- Phase 1: Cleaning Technical Errors Resolving coding and programming issues to eliminate 4XX errors and 3XX redirection loops.
- Phase 2: Content Pruning. Tackling URLs with “thin content” and duplicate content.
- Phase 3: Evergreen Strategy. Planning new content based on a permanently interesting user demand approach.
Between phases, we waited to see how organic traffic on the website responded before deploying all changes and starting a new stage.
Let’s now look at how we deployed the SEO strategy for our client:
1. Fixing Technical Errors
We mentioned that we performed a detailed technical audit to identify all the website’s programming and code issues.
This also included identifying SEO errors.
During this stage, we focused on solving problems related to programming, web design, and code issues on the website inherited from the migration.
Additionally, we fixed errors, optimized redirections, and ensured the technical structure was in its best shape.
It was an essential process to eliminate technical obstacles affecting the website’s search engine visibility.
And it involved great effort and friction, since before deploying the changes we had to confirm Google responded positively.
That’s how we managed to tackle optimizations in web architecture, programming, design, and correct all errors without negative surprises.
2. Content Clean-up
Once the technical changes were settled, it was time to tackle the removal of unhelpful or duplicate content.
So we thoroughly cleaned up the content on the site.
To do this, we analyzed web traffic data, internal links, external links, and user response for a large number of URLs.
This way we could discard false positives and remove them from the pruning process.
This is very important.
Especially when you’re going to act at scale.
It’s very easy in a content pruning process to eliminate URLs that have value because they can be recovered or have potential to rank better or even links and qualified traffic.
Something that can have dire short-term consequences in the rankings of any project.
Thus, we established a rigorous process to only remove what was unnecessary.
At the end of this process, we managed to simplify the web structure and reduce the number of URLs.
Leaving only the highest quality content.
This solved the “thin content” and duplicate content problems.
And avoided potential drops.
3. New and Improved Content Strategy
Finally, we started the stage of creating new evergreen content, in an ongoing process to this day.
In collaboration with the client, we developed a strategy to create new evergreen content that provides a solid visibility base.
The previous strategy prioritized the need for content based on current events, which often compete with other portals related to the active ingredient and formulation manufacturing industry for laboratories.
Here, our team advised the client on the importance of incorporating content that would never expire for users and that would provide a base to attract users continuously.
This reduced dependence on current event topics, which tend to have very high demand peaks but are more volatile and have little potential to generate long-term online visibility.
The Results: 590% Increase in Impressions and 194% Increase in Google Clicks
This three-phase strategy allowed us to tackle the initial technical challenges, clean up and optimize content, and finally focus the content strategy in a direction that ensured lasting and sustainable visibility in the market for substances and active ingredients.
Something you can see in the chart below:
The key to a project like this is managing all changes very well to avoid the risk of drops.
It’s very easy to scale up a project with barely any traffic by taking reckless action.
But when the domain has established traffic, taking a radical change approach can cause strong drops.
That’s why at iSocialWeb, when we talk about SEO, we always adopt the methodology that will provide the client the best outcome.
In this case, we tested the changes and wait to confirm a positive impact with data before deploying any fixes and configurations at scale.
Once we were sure of the results, we proceed to implement the changes.
For us, it’s key to control the effects on crawling and indexing to avoid abrupt rises followed by drops.
That’s why the results occurred in a staggered way and took 5 months to accelerate.
However, starting March 31, 2023, we began to notice the effects of the planned SEO strategy.
And in the following months we managed to achieve:
- 5,300 daily visits from Google.
- And 330,000 impressions per day.
Something our client had never experienced before and put their brand where it deserved given its authority and status.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
SEO can be a great ally for companies and organizations that base much of their revenue on attracting online customers and users.
No one disputes this.
However, it can also be a powerful ally for companies and business models based on traditional distribution networks to increase brand exposure and market recognition.
This case study is a great example of the latter.
Where a business strategy based on the physical distribution of the product can also leverage the power of committing to a strong online presence, promoting the right content and building a heavyweight website.
By betting on optimizing the web, programming and content, and avoiding SEO errors, the result has been a dramatic increase in online visibility over a 12-month period.
Reinforcing the pillars of the brand and its exposure.
In addition to facilitating recognition among distribution network customers.
If you see yourself reflected in this story and have difficulties ranking in Google, it's time to find out what is failing on your website.
Let one of our specialists design an SEO strategy for you to raise your digital presence.
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