336% increase in traffic for an online roofing materials store

Client

Ukrainian plant specializing in the production and sale of roofing materials, which product lines include bitumen felt, roofing felt, asphalt shingles, geotextiles, studded membrane and accessories.

Our goal

Growth of positions and targeted search traffic on priority directions:

• Eurorubeoroid
• Asphalt shingles
• Spiked membrane

Source data, project details

Region: across Ukraine, prioritizing the promotion for the cities where the plant has its own representative offices.

List of cities:

1. Kyiv
2. Kharkiv
3. Lviv
4. Dnipro
5. Odessa
6. Zaporizhzhia
7. Mykolaiv
8. Cherkasy
9. Sumy

Search engine: Google

Website platform: OpenCart

Language: Ukrainian, Russian

Start of work: May 2023

It should be noted that the first time we took over the project was back in December 2021, however, the full-scale war in Ukraine changed the client’s plans, so we had to take a long break. In a short time (between the start and suspension of the project), Aweb team managed to collect semantics, purchase a small number of links and start working on a map of redirects.

The very first and foremost task, which came up to us after the break as early as May 2023, was to transfer all language versions of the site (Ukrainian, Russian, English) to one CMS.

Niche analysis

In a given topic, the top ranked topics are as follows:

• large online stores and aggregators (“Epicenter K”, Prom, Rozetka);
• competitors producing similar products;
• online stores specializing exclusively in building materials;
• bulletin boards, e.g. OLX;
• occasionally – information websites.

Competitor analysis

During the commissioning phase of the project, our specialists carried out a comparative analysis of basic metrics of the promoted site and direct competitors (all data is taken from Ahrefs.com service):

The promoted site has a good DR compared to its competitors, although it has a low traffic and a small number of keywords in the top. As the website has moved to the main CMS, this elaboration of semantics and clustering was done practically from the scratch.

Working process

Redirects map

We started the main work by merging online store and business card site, adding the English version of the site as a subdomain and rolling out the updated site on OpenCart (prior to that, the business card site and online store were on different platforms – Zend framework and CMS OpenCart respectively).

During the initial phase of our work, our specialists built up a redirect map, that helped us to move the site accurately without losing the current traffic. We implemented redirects on all three versions of the site:

business card site (Russian/Ukrainian version);

online store (Russian/Ukrainian version);

English version of the business card site.

We engaged Aweb’s software engineers and content managers to migrate and implement all necessary changes.

Internal optimization

Meanwhile, the company’s specialists carried out a detailed technical audit of the site to detect critical issues in internal optimization, reviewing it for 41 items. Revisions to the site were required for 16 items, 12 of which were of high priority.

Checklist of all recommendations:

Checking the site for compliance with the requirements of the Instructions for Assessors

When ranking pages, Google pays special attention to E-A-T factors (expertise, authority and credibility). These edits are also aimed at improving behavioral factors, as they help to expand helpful information and enhance the navigation on the site in general.

A rough list of improvements we have implemented on the site:

1. Provided recommendations on the design of the homepage, including the correct display of contacts, certificates and individual units, the presence of which will further improve the internal linking.
2. We removed unnecessary pages in the footer and added a few new pages.
3. We created more informative pages about shipping and payment.
4. Introduced an interactive map at the bottom of the key pages of the site.
5. Added FAQ section to the pages of the categories that are important for the client.
6. We also worked out product cards, and added useful units, such as “Related Products”.

Building up an external link mass

External optimization is as important in website promotion as internal optimization. Initially, we carried out a comprehensive audit of existing link mass, having analyzed all donors according to Ahrefs and Search Console, and rejected low-quality sites with the help of Google Disavow Tool.

The website promoted had the following metrics at the beginning of work:

• donor domains — 113;
• total number of links — 855;
• DR — 26;
• We rejected 44 domains with low-quality and spammy links.

Having worked for a bit more than half a year, we received 198 quality links placed on 68 unique domains. We also purchased links on credible traffic information sites on construction and repair, which is perfect for a manufacturer and online store of roofing materials.

Project optimizers prepared the strategy for working with links, the one they adhered to during implementation:

1. Periodic posting of 10-15 natural, non-anchored links on forums.
2. Monthly purchase of 5-10 “eternal” links on exchangers for the pages being promoted. Type of anchors: links, non-anchored links, SP-links, links with diluted anchor texts. Sites: Ukrainian news and thematic resources.
3. Periodic placement of 1-2 links on trusted thematic sites.
4. Monthly review and adjustment of the work strategy with the links based on the analysis results of the achieved positions of the target queries;
5. Monitoring the emergence of spam donors on the project – when we detected low-quality sites in the list of donors, we rejected them with the help of Google Disavow service.

Key requirements for copywriters:

• the article should be in line with the topic of the advertiser’s site (an optimizer used to select the topic in advance and specify its H1, Title);
• the content of the article shall correspond to the anchor sheet;
• the title of the article should contain anchors;
• the link in the text shall be placed as naturally as possible in a readable form – it is not allowed to place it in the first and last sentence, headings, as well as at the beginning or end of a sentence;
• the first link shall be placed as close as possible to the beginning of the article, the second link shall be placed inside the article, and the links shall not be placed close to each other.

Screenshot of the growth chart of the number of donor domains by ahrefs.com:

All donors, where we place the links, are carefully checked by our specialists according to our internal scoring model of quality assessment, which takes into account a whole range of indicators and factors.

Semantic core

Compared to competitors, the key problem was a low number of key queries the site was ranking for. Whereas before the start of promotion the monthly traffic was 1176 and the key queries in the search were 639, in a little over half a year, these figures have multiplied:

At the same time, the number of keys that reached the top 10 of Google has significantly increased:

Content

The main requirement for the content is validity and correctness of the information. In fact, the client is very well versed in roofing materials and components, so we decided that each article would be checked by him before publication.

We collected and clustered semantics for Ukrainian- and Russian versions, set a clear technical task including structure, FAQ sections and tables.

Key requirements for copywriters:

• the text should be technically sound;
• the content should follow the prepared structure and contain the key queries, including those in the title and subheadings;
• the text should be unique and detailed;
• if the page already contains text and tables with technical specifications, one should adhere to their meaning (we retained some existing and well-written sections, supplementing them with our texts);
• rely on the characteristics and information provided by the client.

Our copywriter was selected and assigned to the project after some of our contractors had written the test tasks. The client had almost no remarks regarding his texts, and his technical knowledge and stylistics were appropriate for the project.

Each article was checked by an editor, optimizer and client. Should a question about the advisability of a particular sentence or phrase arise at any stage, the copywriter reviewed and improved the texts.

It should be noted that the texts for the manufacturer’s website had some added image value, since they could tell us a lot about the awareness and experience of the company’s representatives. We also entered all keys, including diluted forms and in multiple cases.

We also added tables with detailed features, images with prescribed alt and copyrighted videos of the company to the pages.

We worked out pages for all three priority categories in such format in two language versions (Eurorubeoroid, asphalt shingles, studded membrane), as well as the filters by cities and product characteristics.

Examples of top 1 snippets in priority queries:

Internal re-linking

An important part of ensuring a fast indexing of pages is a quality internal linking. At the start of the work it was poor, which is why some pages did not get into the search engine index for weeks or even months.

We have taken a set of measures to improve internal re-linking, including:

1. worked out the sitemap.xml file, which was not configured for multilingualism;
2. added a second-level page to the site which includes the URLs of all other pages;
3. added the links to a particular filter to the tables with product characteristics

An example of such table with the links to the relevant filters highlighted in it:

Immediately after these updates, the site pages started to index faster: those that had not been in the search results previously appeared there; and the ones that were waiting to be re-indexed after adding texts and other updates for improvement were indexed in just a few days. So far, there are no issues with indexing of the site.

Summary

Having worked on the project for 7 months, our specialists managed to increase the percentage of queries output for priority categories:

• in top 10 – from 8% to 88%;
• in top 5 – from 5% to 75%;
• in top 3 – from 5% to 58%

Examples of growth in positions:

Over the past six months, the number of ranked queries has increased by 976 and traffic has increased by 2.7K (according to Ahrefs).

The number and quality of backlinks has also increased.

Generally, starting from May 2023, free search traffic has increased by 215% and remains at a high level during active seasons. However, if we take into account that the first time we took this project was back in December 2021, with a small amount of work done followed by a long break due to the full-scale war in Ukraine, the traffic increase figure is as high as 336%.

What’s next

1. We continue to work on improving the usability of the site according to the client’s ToRs.
2. Our specialists increase the mass of links, expand semantics and add new filter pages. We also work out micropartitioning, page optimization and other factors that affected the positions following multiple updates from Google.
3. The project team is still looking for points of growth.

Summary

Despite the pause in promotion and difficult situation in the country, our team managed to take the expected positions and achieve our traffic growth goals.

Key Factors for Success:

• integrated approach when working on the promotion: technical, internal and external optimization;
• working on E-A-T factors;
• improvement of internal re-linking;
• writing high-quality, structured content by a tech-savvy copywriter;
• working on the expansion of semantics and creation of new landing pages;
• selecting quality donors and purchasing links.

Client Review:

“We are satisfied and happy with everything. We can already see the first results, although it is far from the maximum we would like to see, although we can see some positive dynamics. Communication is also good”

Project participants

Project Manager: Oleksandra Nesina

Optimizer: Alina Utkina

Linker: Yevhenii Fedchenko