Client Overview

A high-AOV ecommerce retailer specializing in window boxes and outdoor planting systems relied heavily on seasonal demand peaks in summer, with steep declines in winter. To stabilize revenue, the business pivoted toward high-value custom planter and window box solutions for architects, interior decorators, and property managers.

However, a critical mismatch in product availability between Google Merchant Center feed data, product page content, and schema markup led to large-scale disapprovals. This meant the majority of the store’s products were absent from free listings and Shopping Ads across Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Qwant — severely limiting visibility.

Situation

Despite a strong product offering, the site could not appear on Shopping surfaces for its custom planters because of conflicting availability statuses:

• Feed level: “In stock”
• Product page: “Made to order”
• Schema: “In stock”

This inconsistency triggered disapprovals in the Merchant Center for most products. Compounding the problem, the site’s keyword portfolio leaned heavily on weather-dependent terms, leaving it vulnerable to seasonal demand drops.

Task:

I was tasked with:

1. Resolving the product availability mismatch to restore Merchant Center eligibility for custom products.
2. Expanding keyword coverage to include stable, year-round search terms.
3. Leveraging technical and Generative engine optimization to capture more visibility across general search, map packs, and geo-intent queries — compensating for seasonal Shopping tab volatility.

Action

I executed a comprehensive technical and local SEO strategy, including:

1. Keyword & Page Type Expansion:
   • Created Industry and Use Case pages targeting stable B2B queries (e.g., “planters for commercial buildings”).
   • Applied keyword-rich naming conventions to existing collection pages.
2. On-Page SEO Enhancements:
   • Encased all product names in heading tags, especially for collection page listings.
   • Bolded key commercial and informational keywords sitewide to strengthen relevance signals.
3. Technical SEO & Crawl Optimization:
   • Reduced raw vs. rendered HTML discrepancies to improve render ratio and crawl efficacy.
   • Created llms.txt to enable generative engines to reference site content during inference without full-page rendering.
   • Modified robots.txt to improve accessibility for LLM crawlers and inclusion in training datasets.
   • Reduced site “diameter” — the maximum click depth between indexable pages — to strengthen internal link equity.
4. Off-Site Barnacle SEO:
   • Established branded product listings and backlinks via Pinterest, Reddit, Listium, and Quora to gain additional SERP real estate.
5. Merchant Center & Schema Fix:
   • Updated structured data to reflect “preorder” status for custom products, aligning with product page messaging and feed data.
   • Eliminated the availability mismatch, restoring Merchant Center eligibility.

Result

Within four months (Jan–Apr 2025 vs. Aug–Dec 2024):

• Organic Clicks: Increased from 3.3K to 7.48K (+126%).
• Organic Impressions: Increased from 610K to 1.19M (+95%).
• Merchant Center Recovery: The Majority of custom products reinstated for free listings and Shopping Ads, driving a measurable spike in Shopping impressions and clicks.
• Keyword Stability: New B2B and local-intent keyword rankings reduced reliance on seasonal search trends.

Revenue Impact

• Items Viewed Grew By +74.72% (28,009 vs. 16,031)
• Items Added to Cart Rose By +73.71% (3,985 vs. 2,294)
• Items Purchased Inclined By +142.32% (1,105 vs. 456)
• Item Revenue Improved By +137.16% ($126,396.58 vs. $53,296.33)

Situation

LBL, a premium swimwear brand with over 35 years in the market, faced declining organic performance despite strong brand equity. In spite of the business age, long-term customer base, and brand recognition, they were losing organic traffic and revenue. Here’s the breakdown of the problems we found:

Seasonal Traffic Drops

• The site was heavily reliant on seasonal search terms like “swimsuits.”
• Data showed an expected 80% drop in search demand by Q4 of every year 2025. The worst months begin in October, and the situation persists every year into the Christmas season

Over-Reliance on the Homepage

• 71% of non-branded clicks came from the homepage alone. This was indicative of widespread failure in traffic acquisition and diversification, such that if the homepage rankings dropped, the whole site would lose traffic overnight.

Technical Crawling & Indexing Issues

• 89 collection pages were marked as “indexable” but had zero products (wasting Google’s crawl budget). These transmitted negative quality signals at the level of algorithmic appraisal, thus impacting the site’s ability to aggregate topical authority via its collection pages
• 286 pages were marked as “noindex” but still in the sitemap, confusing search engines and reducing their visibility in shopping result surfaces and merchant listings
• Product grids are loaded via JavaScript, creating very large discrepancies between the raw and rendered HTML. This situation elevated the render budget demand required by search engines before they can access the site’s content. Hence, after the first wave of crawling and Indexing, even Google was unable to access all of the on-page copy, thus expanding the time lag between content updates and when such updates could impact keyword relevance and rankings.

Slow Site Speed & Poor Mobile Experience

• Mobile pages scored 4/100 on Google’s speed tests.
• Pages took 18.8 seconds to load content (vs 2.5 seconds recommended).
• Layouts shifted while loading (CLS score: 0.662), thus frustrating users.

Weak Content & UX Problems

• Product descriptions were short, duplicate, and AI-generated, hurting rankings.
• Size guides were hidden, and star ratings didn’t work.
• No “quick view” option, users had to click in and out of pages, increasing bounce rates.

Traffic & Revenue Risks

• 26% of all traffic came from two keywords (“bathing suits”, “women swimsuits”). This made the site susceptible to competitor PPC campaigns (especially those that targeted these two keywords on which their entire organic acquisition engine was dependent)

In short, the site was technically broken, too reliant on a few traffic sources, and missing easy wins to improve user experience and revenue. We had to fix these issues before the seasonal drop hit in Q3 2025.

Tasks and Goals

We were facing an 80% seasonal traffic decline and technical debt, so our mission was to turn La Blanca’s organic into a year-round growth engine. The challenge wasn’t just to defend against Q3 search volume drops but to fundamentally restructure the site to achieve three survival objectives:

First we needed to break the homepage’s monopoly on traffic (71% of non-branded clicks) by redistributing visibility across collection pages and blogs. This meant surgically optimizing commercial pages like “Tankini Tops” while developing evergreen spa and resort wear content to offset swimsuit seasonality.

Second the site’s technical debt needed emergency attention. With mobile pages scoring 4/100 on Core Web Vitals and JavaScript blocked product grids starving Google of crawlable content we prioritized fixing render-blocking resources, removing 286 phantom noindex pages and getting LCP under 2.5s.

Third, we had to convert fleeting traffic into reliable revenue before the seasonal crash. This meant rebuilding the UX foundation—implementing quick-view modals, moving hidden size guides above the fold, and injecting scarcity triggers (“3 left at this price”) to combat the site’s 2% collection page CTR.

Underpinning all of this was a schema markup blitz (Product, Organization, Article) to claim SERP real estate through rich snippets and knowledge panels. Every tactic served one purpose: to make the site’s traffic and revenue immune to the coming Q3 search demand collapse.

Actions & Strategic Interventions

To fix La Blanca’s problems, we implemented a full-funnel SEO strategy across technical, content, and conversion optimization.

Phase 1: Technical Foundation
We tackled the infrastructure gaps. The XML sitemap was audited and cleaned up, removing 286 noindex pages and resubmitting to Google Search Console. Broken links and redirect chains that wasted crawl budget and diluted link equity were fixed so bots and users could navigate seamlessly. Core Web Vitals were prioritized: image compression, JavaScript deferment, and browser caching got mobile performance scores from 4/100 to 65/100, LCP from 18.8s to 2.1s. Server-side rendering was implemented for product grids to remove JavaScript indexing barriers.

Phase 2: Content & Authority
With the technical issues fixed, we rewrote the content to diversify traffic sources. Over 50 collection pages (e.g. “Tankini Tops”) were rewritten with keyword-rich, benefit-driven copy. Thin AI-generated product descriptions were replaced with 300+ word narratives highlighting luxury differentiators (e.g., “tummy control technology”). As for blog pages, our strategy targeted long-tail queries like “flattering swimsuits for seniors” to capture demand beyond seasonal peaks.

Phase 3: Conversion & Trust
In this phase, the user experience was refined to match the premium brand. Size guides were added to product hover states (inspired by Sealevel Australia), and quick view was added to reduce bounce rates. Interactive fit graphs (modeled after Andie Swim) and urgency triggers (“Only 2 left!”) were added to increase engagement. Structured data was deployed sitewide, including Product, Carousel, Webpage, and FAQ schemas, which increased impressions for key pages by 369K. A PR driven backlink campaign secured 50+ links from fashion and lifestyle publishers.

This holistic approach meant technical fixes amplified content gains, and CRO maximised revenue from new traffic.

Results and Impact

Through targeted technical interventions and content optimization, La Blanca achieved 191% growth in position 1-3 keywords (698 to 2,033 YoY), reducing reliance on two volatile keywords that previously drove 26% of traffic. The diversification strategy succeeded dramatically: non-branded clicks to collection pages surged 1,709%, with pages like “Tankini Tops” climbing from position 18 to #1 for a 12K-search-volume keyword.

Technical fixes unlocked sustainable growth: 80% fewer crawl errors and 60% more indexable pages strengthened Google’s ability to discover and rank content. Mobile Core Web Vitals, once catastrophic at 4/100, improved to 65/100—cutting load times from 18.8 seconds to 2.1 seconds and stabilizing layout shifts (CLS: 0.05). These changes fortified the site against algorithm updates while improving user engagement.

Revenue metrics defied seasonal trends: organic revenue grew 15.8% YoY despite forecasted Q3 search volume drops. By implementing loyalty prompts and AOV-boosting tactics (e.g., free-ship thresholds), revenue per visitor rose 12%, proving that strategic SEO can decouple revenue from traffic volatility.

The campaign transformed La Blanca from a homepage-dependent, seasonally vulnerable site into a technically resilient brand with diversified traffic streams and predictable revenue growth.