Stitchgolf.com

Making a divot in the competitive golfing niche is beyond a challenge. 

But we did just that for this client. 

Keep reading this short case study to see how we skyrocketed this client’s organic traffic by 445%, or from 14,000 to 78,000 new monthly users.

Google Analytics (UA) organic traffic January & February 2021

Google Analytics (GA4) organic traffic January & February 2024

The Client

We started working with this US golf apparel and accessories eCommerce store in 2021. 

When they approached us, we were introduced by an existing client of ours, who had sung our praises. No pressure! 😅

Stitch Golf had no established SEO strategy, and its blog was bare other than a few news updates. It wanted to supplement its ad and influencer marketing strategies with solid SEO support. 

Overall Strategy

Initially, the client’s website had little traffic or rankings of any commercial terms, averaging around 30k sessions monthly. We were tasked with a mission to help them grow their online visibility through search.

To achieve the client’s targets, we had to conduct extensive research and go through multiple brainstorming sessions to ensure we covered everything, as it was not a topic we were familiar with. The result of this process was:

– A detailed keyword list covering every single topic related to our client to build topical authority

– Discover important commercial keywords to optimize existing and create new collection pages if needed

Besides keyword research, our next important goal was to improve and optimize each page with SEO basics (schema markup, etc.). We wanted to ensure all essential pages were optimized and at their best before sending new links to them.

On-Page Highlights

Below are the most critical tasks we carried out during the campaign.

Optimize Key Collection Pages

Key collection pages are critical for the client’s business and directly impact the bottom line. We focused on optimizing these pages thoroughly, including the go-to stuff like meta titles, H1s, meta descriptions, and heading structure.

Additionally, we researched to identify potential link-building prospects to ensure our client’s competitiveness and appearance in as many places as possible.

Build Topical Authority

We began producing engaging and relevant blog articles using our detailed keyword research. We determined which topics were suitable and what to prioritise by working with the client and considering the season—more on that in the content strategy section. 

Add Internal Links

A solid internal linking strategy is essential for building topical authority. We aggressively added internal links to relevant blog articles and pointed them to suitable collection pages, using a mix of exact match and partial match anchor texts.

Internal linking is a strong signal but with fewer restrictions on anchor text, so we utilised it to the fullest.

Monitor and Fix Broken Links

Broken links not only slow down the site and potentially affect crawlability, but they also create a bad user experience. These can come from various sources, such as missing trailing slashes, incorrect URLs, or pages that are no longer accessible.

We regularly crawled the site to identify and fix any broken links. This helped keep the site in check crawlability-wise and allowed us to identify and prevent any potential issues with the site.

Prune Non-Performing Content & Redundant Pages

The truth is that not all content will perform, and we need to do something about it.

We have a detailed process for reviewing and deciding what to do with underperforming content. If an article is deemed unfit for the site, we delete it and merge it with related content, setting up 301 redirects accordingly.

Tip: This is why monitoring broken links is crucial, especially for big websites. Regularly checking the site for broken links can go a long way, so we schedule at least one monthly check.

Content Creation

At the start of any campaign, we always begin with getting the basics in order. For Stitch Golf, that meant:

• Fixing meta titles and meta descriptions
• Updating or creating product descriptions and/or category pages where relevant
• Ensuring landing pages were optimised and rewritten where necessary

The time it takes to organise the above depends heavily on the size of the site and the campaign’s budget. We typically get the above in order within the campaign’s first one to three months.

Competitor Gap Analysis

We always complete a competitor gap analysis at the start of any campaign. The report identifies what our competition is doing well and what the site we’re working with lacks. 

In pinpointing these holes, we begin mapping the ‘gaps’ on our client’s site and curating a plan of attack for getting content with search written and deployed on the site so we can start competing. 

With Stitch Golf, we carried out this strategy multiple times throughout the campaign’s life, since the competition and rankings constantly change over the years. 

Topical Authority

We also set out on a mission to establish Stitch Golf as an authority in the space. We created as much relevant, expert-level content in the niche as possible, even if the topics weren’t directly related to the brand or product offering. Here are some example topics:

What Is Par in Golf?

How To Clean a Driver Head
Top 10 Golf Tournaments Worldwide

What Is the PGA?

Do Staff Bags Fit on Golf Carts?

We cast the net wide to demonstrate to Google that we know what we’re talking about and establish the website as the go-to for anything golf-related. The aim was to send this signal to help build the domain’s authority and rank blogs that allowed us to capture relevant traffic. 

Buyers Guides

We also competed with the hundreds of affiliate sites in the SERPs, so we wrote in-house buyer guides. The goal was to rank for a ‘best X’ keyword and feature Stitch Golf’s products as the best options for that particular keyword. 

Trending Events

We wrote content about trending events in the golf world. For example, the 2023 Masters Tournament Summary or The British Open 2023 Roundup were a couple of articles we wrote to capture some of the buzz around trending topics. 

Link Campaign

Over the years, we built hundreds of relevant links for Stitch Golf, which helped bolster authority within the golf and sporting space. The aim was to ensure a diverse and rich backlink profile that worked cohesively with the rest of the SEO efforts. 

We targeted pages on Stitch Golf’s website that needed the most love, including collection pages, fresh blogs, or even blogs that needed a revamp or required that extra push to bolster it in the eyes of Google.

We also used the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) to feature their Director of eCommerce, Nick Venditti, as an authority in the space. This platform allowed Nick’s comments to be selected and published, with a link back to Stitch Golf’s website in return, organically boosting their overall backlink profile. 

Overall Site Performance

Ahrefs organic traffic overview (last five years)

• 250+ featured snippets won, some even outranking the likes of Wikipedia and other high-authority sources
  

Stitch Golf outranking Wikipedia for a featured snippet

• Organic traffic scaled from 14,000 to 78,000 new users per month
• Page 1 rankings for key collection pages, one of which now generates more than 2000 clicks per month

Final Thoughts

Working with Stitch Golf was challenging and rewarding. Over the years, our team’s skills evolved to match the many updates and goals Stitch Golf had to take their brand and business to the next level. We’re proud of the work we achieved and feel honoured to be part of Stitch Golf’s journey. 

Does Stitch Golf’s story remind you of your business? Wonder if your brand can reach the same heights? Then, reach out. We’ve been helping eCommerce businesses grow beyond their KPIs and achieve more traffic for over ten years. Contact us today so we can talk more about your store and goals. 

Still unsure? Fair enough. Check out how we helped a huge international brand, EcoFlow, achieve a 61X ROI, resulting in $16.3 million in revenue from organic traffic. We promise — you’ll be impressed.