BACKGROUND

Founded in 1932 Rocky Brands, Inc. designs, develops, manufactures, and markets premium-quality Outdoor, Work, Western, Duty, and Military footwear as well as Outdoor and Work apparel and accessories. The wholesale side of the Rocky Brands family of brands includes, Rocky Boots, Georgia Boot, and Durango Boots. Prior to a year ago, there had not been a dedicated focus on creating SEO-friendly content and optimizing for organic search across these three sites. Now, with a dedicated in-house SEO specialist, Rocky Brands has seen organic growth across the three ecommerce sites.

THE SOLUTION

The Data Cube has been an essential research resource for the foundation of any SEO-friendly content Rocky Brands has put on their sites. They use the keyword and domain research to make informed decisions about what keywords should be the target for each page as well as to conduct competitor research. The Data Cube also proved essential in making sure that the sites are tracking the proper keywords for reporting purposes and highlighting growth to the top-level domain for Rocky, Georgia, and Durango.

Using BrightEdge Recommendations, they optimized the page title and meta tags and enhanced existing content to improve SEO performance. Where content didn’t exist, they developed SEO-friendly content explaining the features of each boot or boot category using the language their consumers use when searching with both direct and semantically-related target keywords. Lastly, they added internal links with appropriate anchor text.

From the beginning of every project to the end, they use StoryBuilder dashboards to track the performance of their content and share successes with the broader team and executives. Having the ability to customize each report to fit the needs and KPIs of each brand has proven instrumental, and the visuals in each chart supplement the data. The Keyword and Page Reporting capabilities have also provided quick on-the-fly metrics when in meetings or when they have needed data for a specific page or group of pages and keywords. On top of this, these reporting features show insight to granular data when a keyword fluctuates in Blended Rank and aids in problem solving and explaining the trends in the keywords that are happening. This has allowed Rocky Brands to edit content to reflect the appropriate target keywords.

THE RESULTS>

Across the primary brands they saw an increase of 1,479 organic keywords on page 1 in Google US in 2018. Organic search revenue is up 30% since January 2018. During the critical holiday shopping month of November, all 3 brands saw an average lift of 13.3% in new users and an average growth of 73.6% in revenue vs. the prior year.

BrightEdge has allowed us to collect research and then implement informed SEO techniques and content on our sites with detailed reporting capabilities that highlight growth in a way that is easy to follow.

Request a demo of the BrightEdge platform today!

BACKGROUND

Since 1979, Sweetwater has been committed to giving music makers the ultimate shopping experience. As a pioneer of ecommerce in the early '90s, Sweetwater has methodically leveraged the Internet to expand the business. As a result, Sweetwater.com now serves as the #1 online retail destination for music gear in the United States. Whether it's Sweetwater's human approach to building personal relationships with their customers, the numerous free value-adds, or their unparalleled "too-good-to-be-true" customer service, Sweetwater.com continues to be the preferred shopping destination for music makers — beginner and rock star alike.

THE SOLUTION

With over 30,000 products and more than 125,000 pages on Sweetwater's website, page taxonomy, navigation, and site search help connect Sweetwater customers to products that meet their needs. Sam Dickinson, Sweetwater's Data Strategy and Analytics Manager, leverages the BrightEdge SEO platform to organize Sweetwater content for both customers and search crawlers. Organic search is one of Sweetwater's largest sources of traffic, so gains in SEO have a profound impact on the business as a whole.

Three Technical Solutions

Taxonomy – Sam and the Sweetwater Content Team (led by Jon Schafer) identified high-potential concepts using BrightEdge Data Cube and BrightEdge Ignite Analysis, reorganizing Sweetwater.com content to better align with search behavior. BrightEdge served as an objective reporting source while Sam and the Sweetwater Web Team (led by Josh Gustin) rolled the resulting SEO-optimized internal linking strategy out across Sweetwater.com.

Pagination – Sam noticed individual component pages of multi-page categories competing for SERP placements in his BrightEdge reporting and worked alongside the Sweetwater Web Team to establish rel="next" and rel="prev" relationships for all multi-page Sweetwater.com results, eliminating competition between individual parts of a single concept.

Prioritization – BrightEdge continues to provide the SERP context necessary to prioritize Sweetwater.com organic search concepts via Data Cube and tracked keywords as well as the long-term SERP and site structure reporting with which Sam gauges the success of his modifications via ContentIQ and StoryBuilder.

RESULTS

Comparing Project Start to End:

• +63% Sweetwater.com Page 1 Ranked Organic Keywords
• +39% Sweetwater.com Overall Ranked Organic Keywords
• +38% Sweetwater.com Organic Search Assisted Transactions
• +20% Sweetwater.com New Organic Sessions

THE OPPORTUNITY

Digital publisher STACK Media delivers authoritative content on stack.com to help athletes meet their training goals. The editorial team, which leads content development for the site, faced a challenge familiar to digital marketers: how to prioritize their content and SEO efforts to maximize impact. In their quest to acquire new and engaged visitors, and to improve related KPIs (including ranking #1 on SERP), the team turned to the latest BrightEdge innovations to identify keywords that would deliver the best results in the quickest time possible.

THE SOLUTION

The STACK team followed a simple process to find the keywords with the highest potential. Within one month, they launched new, high-performing content by leveraging rich data about opportunities and threats – data they lacked prior to using the BrightEdge SEO platform.

1. Initial target keywords. First, the team used BrightEdge Data Cube to identify 120 keywords that had high search volume and were relevant to the fitness category.

2. SERP visibility. Then, they turned to BrightEdge Intent Signal to analyze the SERP visibility of these keywords. Intent Signal is the first and only solution that tells you whether a keyword has any organic result above the fold on SERP, and whether your content ranks above the fold for that keyword. Within minutes, Intent Signal revealed a subset of keywords with the most promise: keywords with organic listings above the fold where STACK’s content was also within striking distance of ranking above the fold. These keywords were assigned to the “Optimize” category in the Intent Signal dashboard.

3. Competitive research. They then used BrightEdge Share of Voice to analyze the competitive landscape of these keywords, inspecting the content themes and content structure of the page URLs that ranked high on SERPs.

4. Implementation. Next, the team embarked on a clear and manageable action plan. They redesigned the page template to include a new content structure, based on the competitive research. In this new structure, every fitness page would provide readers with comprehensive information on the topic, including performance tips, common mistakes, how-to instructions, and training videos. Then, they launched new web pages with fresh content for their “Optimize” keywords and redirected old pages to the new ones to preserve historical SEO equity.

THE RESULTS

In just one month, the results proved the success of their approach. The keywords in this optimization project increased site visits by 61%, with average bounce-rate-by-page reduced by 73%. Some keywords jumped in ranking significantly. For example, stack.com didn’t rank for the keyword “hip thrust” in March; by May, the company had gained the #1 organic web listing on the SERP for that term.

BrightEdge Intent Signal is a huge time saver for us. Within minutes, you can identify the organic ranking opportunities you're missing and take prioritized actions to win in the moments that matter the most.

Request a demo of the BrightEdge platform today!

BACKGROUND

Noble Studios began its engagement with the Yosemite/Maripossa County Tourism Bureau in 2016 as the Destination Marketing Organization was merging its two sites: Yosemiteexperience.com and Yosemite.com. The goal was to consolidate traffic under a single domain while driving more traffic to the region -- including Yosemite National Park -- in a traditionally slower season.

THE PROBLEM

With a strong desire to increase visits to its business stakeholders, particularly during slower seasons, Yosemite Mariposa County brought Noble Studios on to help establish KPIs and a strategy for improving organic traffic performance.

The primary goal was to increase traffic to its partners -- both digitally and in person. The DMO's secondary goals included increasing organic traffic, newsletter signups, and enticing potential visitors to download a Yosemite Mariposa County vacation planner.

By tapping into BrightEdge's SEO platform and Data Cube, Noble quickly identified keywords competitors were ranking for that Yosemite.com was not. Noble also began grouping these keywords into four distinct categories for better targeting: dining, lodging, things to do, and general partner referrals.

THE RESULTS

Noble's plan involved a combination of new content creation to capture net-new demand along with the optimization of existing content that was already ranked on the second or third page of Google and was of high quality. BrightEdge's in-depth keyword tracking tool ensured Noble's plan went off without a hitch. At the start of 2017, many of Yosemite's high-priority keywords weren't even ranked in Google. Today, 91% of those keywords rank on either page 1 or 2 of Google's SERPs with 73% of them on page 1.

In June 2017 Yosemite.com saw a 25% spike in organic traffic, then a 54% jump in July. For new users there was a 41% increase in July. By the end of summer, Yosemite.com reached 235% of its annual partner referral goal, 127% of its annual organic traffic goal, and roughly 400% of its annual email signup and vacation planner download goals.

Our partnership with Noble Studios and BrightEdge has allowed us to quickly uncover opportunities to dramatically increase organic traffic to Yosemite.com!

- Terry Selk, CEO/Executive Director, Yosemite/Mariposa County Tourism Bureau

As Noble began to see substantial ranking improvements and traffic gains with its content optimization, it turned to BrightEdge’s StoryBuilder tool to visualize results for the client. By providing this executive-level snapshot, Noble was able to quickly show the client a direct correlation between the SEO strategy being implemented, the boost in traffic, and increased visits to the DMO’s stakeholders.