Velvet Cloud: Achieving Early Success in SEO
Dan Kogan - December 4, 2018
So You Think You Know How to SEO?
Three-Part Series: Part 3
When getting started with eCommerce SEO, the most important thing to remember is that results take time and require patience. Take it from the folks with Velvet Cloud, a 1Digital Agency client that is now more than six months into an SEO campaign.
Aria Jalali, owner of Velvet Cloud, knew that it would be a process getting started with eCommerce SEO, especially after making some attempts at it in the past. So far, you have read about an SEO campaign just getting off the ground in the first few months and another that has lasted for over a year with the progress continuing over an extended period. In the third and final installment of our three-part SEO series, we will look at Velvet Cloud’s progress with a campaign that has been operating for under a year, but for more than six months.
The Process
To understand the progress of Velvet Cloud’s campaign, you have to go back to the beginning. Aria had tried SEO ventures in the past and was looking for something new.
“My expectations were not great, honestly,” Aria said. “I have done so many SEO things that turn out to be not that great and then they end up being toxic backlinks that hurt you. I was kind of skeptical, but was obviously very impressed.”
As of November 2017, Velvet Cloud was averaging around 7,000 site visits per month with under 3,500 of them coming from organic results. Simply put, they were not making the impact on search engines they wanted to have.
This is where the process begins for so many SEO clients. They notice that traffic isn’t where they want it to be and they know that making an impact on search engines is important. So often they don’t know where to turn.
For Aria, a search of Shopify+ partners led him to 1Digital Agency, where he took notice and decided to give SEO another try.
“1Digital Agency was at number one on the list and I thought these guys must be pretty smart at SEO, they picked the number one in their name to be at the top alphabetically, which is very clever.”
At 1Digital Agency, this is where many SEO campaigns begin for us. We start the SEO process by evaluating where a client website is in the ranks of search engines and how they perform with keywords relative to the business and their competition. Through a website audit that is thorough, we are able to identify weak areas in optimization and come up with a plan to boost SEO through keyword research and industry analysis.
Once a keyword list has been approved by a client, 1Digital Agency goes to work with on-page website optimization, onsite content writing to improve SEO and offsite content writing to add back-linking that is essential to keyword ranking.
Beginning this process can seem daunting at first. Depending on experience with SEO, every business owner has different expectations about how long and hard they will need to work to end up on page one. Aria had seen so many attempts to improve SEO yield various results that he kept his expectations for this campaign open.
Every eCommerce business wants to be on the first page of Google’s search results, but with only 10 spots available, it is a battle. That’s why we employ proven strategies that have worked for clients like Aria and Velvet Cloud, using content and on-page optimization to boost SEO and achieve the desired results. Within the agency, Aria has been working with the same team from campaign manager to content to SEO, all in an effort to build and increase traffic. Working with the same team is a great convenience, Aria says.
“That is probably my favorite part. 1Digital Agency does everything, as things come up or as I need something as we grow. For example, we had to implement an age check system, and of course, you guys can do it. It’s like having a development team on staff, especially because you work with the same people all the time, so you feel like they are on staff.”
The Results
Over the first few months of the campaign, we used our strategy of building content and backlinks to improve SEO and start to increase organic traffic.
This was one thing Aria was aware of from the beginning and advises to businesses that want to start an SEO campaign to be aware of this as well.
“You have to be super patient obviously,” Aria said. “SEO takes a few months to even start to kick in. But it is really worth it. People don’t want to spend money on something that’s intangible at first especially, but they have to just do it because their competitors are doing it. It does pay off. So I would just stress patience.”
Now several months into the campaign, the results are starting to pour in for Velvet Cloud. In May 2018, Velvet Cloud saw an increase in traffic to 12,700 visits and 5,400 organic visits. Four months later in September 2018, those numbers were up to over 28,000 visits and over 24,000 organic visits, nearly a 500 percent increase in organic traffic.
Aria says the growth in organic traffic is the biggest sign of success but notes that success goes beyond the traffic numbers.
“Definitely a huge increase in traffic and on top of it, it’s not just a numbers thing. The advice we got from 1Digital Agency on our blog, everyone is stoked on that,” Aria said. “We have old customers that already knew us that are seeing the useful articles and information. It’s been all-around great.”
In addition to the traffic increases, you can see how keyword improvement has changed over the last few months. Velvet Cloud’s average site position has increased from 101 in April 2018 to as high as 15 in just over three months time. After starting with 43 keywords not ranked, Velvet Cloud also now has 30 keywords ranking in the Top 20 of results searches and 20 ranking in the Top 10, another significant increase.
Aria said that an understanding of Google’s ranking system has been one of the things he has learned while working with 1Digital Agency.
“I knew some stuff but it had been a while,” Aria said, “so I have seen how a lot of things changed. I’m way more up to date on Google’s rankings system.”
Aria added that he recommends 1Digital Agency and has even referred a couple of clients to 1Digital because of how easy the process is with us.
“They are just really great to have on retainer. They are super useful,” Aria said. “They hold your hand through the process, it’s not overwhelming. It’s just very digestible and you can get through it, so I would tell them definitely do it.
“I’ve just been blown away and the bar has been set higher.”
The eCommerce SEO process is obviously an important one to businesses and as Aria said, it can be hard not to see measurable results for the first few months. But the results that Velvet Cloud is seeing now have certainly proven over time that success can be reached. They have not wavered since sustaining the progress of building an organic presence on search engines and bringing in a new audience and potential customers for Aria and Velvet Cloud.
If you want to start achieving similar results to Aria and Velvet Cloud, contact us today to find out more about how we can get you started with SEO and building your organic traffic.
Dan Kogan
