Expanding Fashion Inspiration from In-Store to Online

Founded in 2009, Altar'd State is a women's fashion and lifestyle brand that offers a distinctive shopping experience centered on community, faith, and giving back. With over 125 boutiques across the United States, Altar'd State provides a sanctuary where guests can find beautifully designed apparel, accessories, and home décor in a warm, welcoming environment. Altar'd State is more than just a retail store; it's a place of respite and inspiration. Their clothing reflects personal style and is here for every day and every milestone, allowing guests to feel beautiful and confident.
 

The Business Challenge

While Altar'd State's in-store experiences were second to none, their online visibility told a different story. The brand faced significant competitive gaps in key revenue-driving categories: milestone events (graduations, weddings, holidays) and style-specific searches (trends, colors, sleeve types). To close these gaps, Altar'd State and agency partner Tombras turned to BrightEdge to diagnose opportunities and build a data-driven content strategy.
 

The Solution: BrightEdge-Powered Competitive Intelligence and Content Expansion

Data Cube X: Uncovering Competitive White Space

BrightEdge Data Cube X became Tombras’ foundation for Altar'd State's content expansion. Using the Compare Domains capability, the platform revealed exactly where competitors were ranking for high-value terms that Altar'd State hadn't yet addressed.

Tombras leveraged Data Cube X to surface critical insights across three opportunity areas:

• Evergreen content gaps: Competitors dominated dress-related searches segmented by style and color—categories where Altar'd State had no dedicated landing pages

• Seasonal opportunities: High-volume terms around Easter, Graduation, Spring, Summer, and Wedding content represented untapped revenue potential

• Emerging trends: Editorial content analysis identified fashion trends aligned with the Altar'd State brand that were gaining search momentum 

Armed with this competitive intelligence, the Tombras team could efficiently prioritize pages based on competitor value and seasonal timing—turning platform data into an actionable content roadmap. 

Instant: Validating Trends and Translating Insights into Action

Tombras took the analysis further with BrightEdge Instant to validate which trends were happening in real time and worth acting on.

Instant’s Conversational Keyword Ideas capability makes it easy to expand a single keyword into an entire topic.  Tombras relied on it to turn trends into fully developed topic clusters—moving from "this looks interesting" to "here's the content strategy." The historical volumes then confirmed which opportunities had enough search demand to justify dedicated resources.

One example is how interest in “Butter Yellow” topics emerged. Data Cube X initially flagged it as an emerging fashion trend gaining traction among competitors. Instant validated that search volume was not only strong but growing—signaling a window of opportunity. From there, Conversational Keyword Ideas helped build out the full topic cluster: product landing pages, styling guides, and supporting blog content. The result was an entirely new category that Altar'd State could pursue with confidence, knowing the demand was real and the timing was right.

Building Topical Authority Through Content Clusters

Tombras understood that single pages rarely win in competitive categories. For each topic, they built out a content cluster strategy for Altar'd State to establish topical authority:

• Blog articles providing styling inspiration and trend context

• Product landing pages optimized for category searches

• Product description page optimizations reinforcing keyword relevance

This layered approach ensured that Altar'd State could compete for both informational and transactional intent within each topic area. BrightEdge monitored crawl activity and indexing visibility across each cluster, validating that the strategy was working and identifying where fine-tuning was needed along the way.

AutoPilot: Accelerating Discovery Through Intelligent Internal Linking

With this cluster approach, Altar'd State is constantly launching new pages across seasonal, trend, and evergreen categories.  Fast visibility for these new pages in organic search is critical. But manually building and maintaining the internal link structures required for this would be a significant resource drain.

To achieve rapid visibility, Tombras leveraged BrightEdge AutoPilot to take this on in the background. AutoPilot’s AI analyzes search trends and page content to build and maintain internal link clusters automatically. This ensures new content is connected to relevant pages across the site so neither team has to manage it manually. As a result, Tombras and Altar'd State stay focused on content creation while AutoPilot helps ensure that seasonal and trend pages receive immediate exposure to both users and search crawlers.

The Results

Overall Dress Category Performance (May YoY)

Data Cube X identified the dress category as Altar'd State's largest competitive gap. After creating 87 new dress pages spanning occasion, trend, seasonal, and evergreen content:

• 24.57% increase in organic search revenue for dress pages

• 45.9% increase in organic search sessions for dress pages

• 394% increase in Page 1 nonbranded "dress" keywords

Evergreen Pages: Color-Specific Landing Pages

Competitive intelligence revealed that style-specific searches represented consistent year-round opportunity:

• 1,193 total clicks YTD from dedicated dress color landing pages

• 263,413 total impressions YTD

Occasion Pages: Easter Content (March–May)

Data Cube X's seasonal analysis drove targeted occasion content that captured holiday shopping demand:

• 52% increase in Easter landing page revenue YoY

• 102% increase in Easter landing page sessions YoY

• +549 nonbranded "easter" Page 1 ranking keywords YoY

Seasonal Pages: Spring & Summer Content (March–May)

Spring Performance:

• 79.2% increase in "spring" clicks YoY

• 94% increase in "spring" impressions YoY

• +181 nonbranded Page 1 ranking keywords YoY

Summer Performance:

• 88.8% increase in "summer" clicks YoY

• 92% increase in "summer" impressions YoY

• +441 nonbranded Page 1 ranking keywords YoY

Trend Pages: Capturing Emerging Fashion Searches

The White Shop (Established Trend):

• 48% increase in White landing page revenue YoY

• 33% increase in White landing page sessions YoY

• +1,439 nonbranded Page 1 ranking keywords YoY

Butter Yellow Shop (New Trend Identified via BrightEdge):

• Thousands in incremental new organic revenue from net-new content

• 2,920 total clicks YTD

• 263K impressions YTD

• +225% month-over-month growth in Page 1 nonbranded "Butter Yellow" keywords (April to May)

• +4,105 impressions and +22 clicks to "How to Style Butter Yellow" blog YTD

Conclusion

By combining BrightEdge's competitive intelligence, trend validation, and internal linking capabilities, Altar'd State transformed their online presence to match the inspiration of their in-store experience. Working with agency partner Tombras, the brand closed critical competitive gaps and established topical authority across their highest-value categories—proving that data-driven content strategy delivers measurable revenue impact.