Client Case Study

This case study reviews the project goals and results for one of our previous clients. The purpose is to give you a clear understanding of what goes into our work process and the type of results you can expect for your business when you choose Tunl Agency. To learn more, feel free to contact us at any time by phone or message.

About The Client

The company sells at-home fitness equipment, including jump ropes, acupuncture mats, yoga equipment, and more. They primarily sell as an eCommerce store via their website.

Being in the fitness industry, their target audience was primarily adults between 18 and 45, especially those who relied upon at-home workouts (before and/or during the pandemic).

The client was having trouble generating traffic to their website and had not yet established a social media presence. They had not established a sales funnel and were not utilizing PPC ad campaigns, which they had a desire to do. In addition, they felt as if they may have issues with technical aspects of the website and had received reports of slow load times.

Goal #1. Substantially Increase The Amount of Organic Traffic

After extensive research, it was clear the biggest opportunity to increase the client’s website traffic and sales was through organic traffic. There were opportunities to rank highly for keywords that generated high levels of search volume each month, such as “best jump rope mats” and “the best jump rope for double unders.” As always, there was a strong emphasis on commercial intent for every keyword we targeted as well.

There was also an ample amount of guest posting opportunities, which would broaden the client’s content outreach as well as create natural backlinks to improve the website’s domain authority.

To increase the amount of organic traffic by targeting keywords that we knew the client could rank highly for, we decided to create informative blog posts, individual workout plans, and how-to guides for the client’s audience. In total, we wanted to create 40,000 to 50,000 words of content within the six month campaign.

The other aspect of building organic traffic that continually funnels into the traffic long after the digital marketing campaign is complete is link acquisition. The primary objective was to gain thinks backlinks in a natural, white-hat manner. The best way for us to do this was through guest posting opportunities on the industries top and most respected websites. This would also give us an extra marketing opportunity and reach a different audience as well.

Result: We Generated More Than 100,000 Views From Organic Search Results

Perhaps the aspect of this campaign that we are most proud about was the results the client was able to achieve with organic search results. The first step we took to execute our plan was to create an extensive list of keywords, which we seperated into primary keywords, secondary keywords, and tertiary keywords.

After we established the keyword spreadsheets, we determined which keywords we should target in what order and formulated topics that the client’s audience would find useful and interesting. From there, we created a content schedule so the client would know exactly when they could expect each article to be posted on their website’s blog. The schedule also identified tentative publish dates for guest post opportunities as well (more on this below).

With any organic traffic campaign, the ability to generate backlinks is essential. This raises the domain authority within Google for your website (as well as for individual pages). Our primary focus for our link building strategy was through guest posting opportunities. We reached out to the highest authority websites within the industry via email, and we made a follow-up call if we did not hear back. We also had the specific title and guest post already written, which we found increased the odds of obtaining the guest post and subsequent backlink.

Namely, we were able to guest post on Muscle and Strength, Fringe Sport, and T he Strive, among many others. In total, we were able to generate 126 backlinks, while removing backlinks that were not helpful to our domain authority.

We also submitted to reputable directories that not only helped the client with their domain authority but also helped them with online visibility in general. Other methods in which we sought to increase organic traffic and link builiding included remaining active on forums, social shares, cleaning up all technical SEO issues, and improving site speed.

The ultimate result was a significant increase in traffic around month three of the six month campain. The traffic continued to increase throughout the campaign, rising to more than 100,000 views solely from organic search results.

Goal #2. Cleanup Technical SEO Issues and Improve Site Speed

As a part of our SEO processes here at Tunl Agency, we conducted a deep dive into technical SEO, utilizing SEMRush, Screaming Frog, and individual examinations of each webpage. Specifically, we checked for:

The optimization of XML sitemaps
Ensuring all pages had a quality meta description
Headers were properly used (H1, H2, H3, etc.)
The word count for all web pages were optimized
The optimization of canonical tags
Ensuring there were no errors with site accessibility issues
Check for duplicate content that causes SEO issues

For the sake of brevity, we will stop the list of technical SEO checks here; we plan to publish a more in-depth look at each technical aspect that can affect your website’s SEO soon. Briefly, other technical SEO aspects that we checked with this client include URI status codes, no index directives, 404 errors, internal link optimization, breadcrumbs, mixed content, uncached CSS, text to HTML, missing H1s, multiple H1s, permanent redirects, and blocked from crawling pages.

We also checked the load times for each page for mobile, tablet, and desktop versions. We discovered that there were some issues with site speed, particularly for mobile view (which attracted far more traffic than desktop and tablet view).

Result: All Technical Errors Were Resolved and The Site Speed Outperformed Competitors

Addressing technical SEO errors was one of the more extensive processes we went through with this campaign. After our team put together the spreadsheet that included all of the corrections that needed to be made, we got to work. Specifically, some of the tasks we completed to improve Technical SEO include:

Remove all links that lead to a 404 error page (10 pages)
Remove all internal links that were broken (122 links)
Replace all HTTP links with the new HTTPS versions (66 pages)
Fix all fix uncached JavaScript & CSS file (65 pages)
Address any concerns with text to HTML ratio (49 pages)
Add H1s to all pages that did not have one (44 pages)
Add a meta description for all pages that did not have one (11 pages)
Index pages that were blocked from crawling (11 pages)
Remove H1s where there were multiple H1s on a page (4 pages)
Correct permanent redirects that were unnecessary (16 pages)

Much like cleaning a house, there is nothing more satisfying than cleaning your website of all errors and unnecessary SEO components. Another focus we had was on improving site speed. According to PageSpeed Insights, Rope City had a site speed rating of 49. Once we were finished with the process, the site speed had risen to 92.

Much of the improvement in site speed came from the technical SEO efforts. However, a lot of the improvements came from additional efforts, such as optimizing image sizes, reducing unused Javascript and CSS, and eliminating render-blocking resources.

The client was missing a great opportunity with their social media presence. They had accounts on Twitter. Facebook, and Instagram, but the posts were made sporadically and there was little to no interaction with followers and commenters.

We knew we could improve the number of relevant followers that were within their target audience and create more interactions with them, leading them to the website from social media sites. We also wanted to utilize a strong social media presence to create a more reputable and effective PPC strategy for Instagram and Facebook as well.

Additionally, we learned that many of the followers were highly active in the jump rope community and posted their fitness journey on social media. We wanted to reach out to as many as possible about becoming an affiliate, offering them a percentage of each sale they helped us make. As a part of this strategy, we created a web page titled “ Become an Affiliate” that explained the client’s affiliate program clearly.

Goal #4. Improve The Design and Functionality of The Website

We have several goals for web design and development at Tunl Agency, which include (1) create a professional appearance, (2) guide visitors through the buyer’s journey, (3) make the call-to-action process simple and easy, (4) optimize the website for high rank within search engines, and (5) establish trust with the prospective buyer.

The client needed assistance with all five to some degree. Particularly, since the client sold their products through their website, we wanted to focus on conversion rates. To do so, we wanted to improve the way buyers were guided through the website to the checkout page and allow for a simple and easy checkout process to avoid abandoned carts, which had been an issue in the past for the client. Of course, fast load times and other SEO factors were important to us as well.

Result: Our Web Design Team Created a Professionally Designed Website with a Built-In Sales Funnel

In simplest terms, our web design team created an easy user experience and user interface, along with the assistance of our SEO professionals and copywriters. However, we want to take you behind the scenes to give you a more detailed explanation of our web design and sales funnel process.

An understanding of the three phases of the buyer’s journey. There are numerous ways to break down the buyer’s journey, and you may have seen graphs and other infographic resources that break it down well. The one we enjoy the most is the AIDA model, which stands for attention, interest, desire, action (we also use a similar three-phase model of “curiosity, enlightenment, and commitment” for service-based clients whose target audience may not understand their industry quite as well).
A breakdown of the buyer’s journey for the client. The majority of the traffic the client received was from organic search (via our content marketing efforts). This means the initial landing page in most cases was a blog post, and, as always, we focused on ensuring the majority of content had commercial intent. This means that the attention was already there when they entered the client’s website, and we used multiple efforts to get their interest (i.e. 10% and free shipping banner displays, call to action with each post, highlighting the client’s products within blog posts, etc.). The desire to purchase came once they reached the product page, ensuring all of the images and videos were high-quality and truly spoke to the client. Lastly, we made the checkout process easy for the customer, allowing them to finish the journey in an actionable way.
Mobile and Tablet Optimization. It is important to understand what device your clients are using to find you online. For this client in particular, the majority of the traffic came from mobile devices, so ensuring the ease of use for mobile and tablet users was just as convenient as desktop was imperative.
Quality product images and videos. Lastly, we wanted to ensure the client had high-quality, professional images and videos of their products. This is helpful in multiple ways. First, it creates a desire to purchase that is crucial for the buyer’s journey. Secondly, it establishes trust with the prospective customer and gives them more confidence in their purchasing decision.
Technical SEO and site speed. To rank high within Google we knew the client needed to have sound technical SEO and site speed (more on this in the “technical SEO section.”)

Our team worked hard to ensure all of our goals for the client’s website were reached, which we have no doubt contributed to increased traffic as well as improved conversion rates.

Goal #5. Successfully Retarget Website Visitors with PPC Advertising Integration

A professionally designed website is a great way to improve conversion rates, but the fact is it can still take multiple interactions with your brand before the prospect purchases from you. You may have heard about the “rule of seven.” This rule simply states that the buyer (on average) interacts with your brand seven times before they buy from you; this number may change based upon the cost and time commitment of your product or service.

So, for this client in particular, we needed to have multiple ways for customers to see and interact with the brand outside of the website. We determined the best way to accomplish this was through PPC advertising, specifically for the purpose of retargeting prospects who have previously visited the website from organic search on Google or social media. We also determined that the best way to do this was via Instagram and Facebook PPC advertising, which is where the clients ideal customer persona most highly frequented online.

It was also important for the client to have a successful email campaign as well, which is a great way for prospects to frequently see and interact with your brand. To accomplish this, we used opt-in popups on the website that allowed the website visitors to easily enter their email address, offering them a small discount on their next order for doing so. Our team regularly sent emails updating the email base on special offers, discounts, new workouts the client created, and newly published blog posts.

Tunl Agency Offers Innovative Digital Marketing Services

Tunl Agency takes pride in assisting businesses with their digital marketing needs. We specialize in the hospitality and tourism industries, in addition to offering eCommerce digital marketing services. To learn more and to get started, call us today or schedule a consultation at a convenient time for you.