Technical SEO Case Study: 130% Surge in Organic Revenue for This eCommerce Platform
No matter how engaging or optimized your website content might be, if your eCommerce site lacks technical integrity, your organic performance will stagnate. Technical SEO is the backbone of your digital presence, ensuring that your website’s foundation is solid and visible to search engines.
In today’s case study, we’ll discuss how a comprehensive technical SEO audit for an eCommerce brand resulted in a 130% increase in organic revenue. We’ll walk through the major issues we identified, the solutions we implemented, and how these changes led to substantial improvements in their search rankings and online revenue. If you’re experiencing similar issues with your website, our SEO specialists are ready to step in and help you resolve the technical problems holding your site back.
Client Background
Custom Gadget Emporium is an eCommerce company specializing in personalized tech gadgets, offering a wide range of customizable accessories and products for digital devices. The company initially came to us following a sharp decline in traffic after a site migration. Over the first quarter after the migration, they witnessed a troubling 37% drop in site sessions and a 45% decline in users, severely affecting sales.
Because the site migration was handled internally without involving SEO migration experts, several technical oversights occurred. After a detailed initial analysis, we recommended a full-scale technical SEO audit to identify and resolve the issues hindering their organic traffic and performance.
Why a Technical SEO Audit?
For Custom Gadget Emporium, we conducted a thorough audit, focusing on areas such as:
- Site crawlability and indexation
- URL structure and site architecture
- On-page SEO elements
- User experience
- Google Search Console and Google Analytics configurations
Without resolving these technical issues, their content and marketing strategies would struggle to deliver measurable results.
The Solution
Our audit uncovered several technical SEO problems stemming from the recent migration. To maximize organic performance quickly, we prioritized the following fixes:
Robots.txt and Sitemap Configuration
Upon reviewing the robots.txt file, we discovered it was misconfigured, blocking several key pages from being crawled. Worse, their sitemap was still referencing old URLs from their previous website structure, creating additional confusion for search engine crawlers.
We rectified this by:
- Updating the robots.txt file to correctly allow or disallow the right pages
- Revising the sitemap to include only live, indexable URLs
Why It Matters: Ensuring your robots.txt and sitemap are properly configured is essential for search engines to crawl and index the right content. Misconfigurations here can block important pages from being visible in search results, severely limiting organic traffic potential.
Canonical Tags Implementation
Custom Gadget Emporium had several user login and registration pages indexed in Google, which were wasting valuable crawl budget. These pages are not intended for organic ranking but were cluttering the site’s index.
Our solution included:
- Applying a “noindex” tag to all login, registration, and account-related pages
- Setting future account-related pages to automatically be noindexed
Why It Matters: Keeping irrelevant pages from being indexed ensures search engines focus their efforts on important content, such as product and category pages, helping those pages perform better in the SERPs.
Broken Links and Duplicate Content Cleanup
In the course of our audit, we also found numerous broken links and several outdated, duplicate versions of key pages. Many of these issues were a direct result of the migration, where old URLs were still being referenced internally.
We tackled this by:
- Removing all broken and outdated URLs from the sitemap
- Creating 301 redirects for key broken links to ensure users and search engines are directed to the correct pages
Why It Matters: Broken links and duplicate content can significantly damage user experience and search engine rankings. Cleaning them up ensures a smoother, more crawlable site that’s optimized for search engine visibility. For professional help with broken link audits and redirection strategies, explore our eCommerce SEO services.
The Results
Once the technical SEO fixes were in place, we began to see an almost immediate improvement in site performance. Custom Gadget Emporium experienced a dramatic uptick in organic traffic and revenue, proving the impact of addressing technical issues early on.
Why a Technical SEO Audit?
For Custom Gadget Emporium, we conducted a thorough audit, focusing on areas such as:
- Site crawlability and indexation
- URL structure and site architecture
- On-page SEO elements
- User experience
- Google Search Console and Google Analytics configurations
Without resolving these technical issues, their content and marketing strategies would struggle to deliver measurable results.
Conclusion
Our technical SEO audit was pivotal in restoring the organic performance of Custom Gadget Emporium. By addressing critical issues in crawlability, indexation, canonicalization, and sitemap structure, we not only helped the company recover from the negative impact of its site migration but also set the foundation for further SEO growth. As a result, they were able to capitalize on their content and keyword strategies more effectively, ultimately driving a significant increase in both traffic and revenue.
If your website is experiencing a similar drop in performance, it’s likely due to technical issues under the hood. Our SEO experts can conduct a comprehensive audit and provide a clear roadmap to resolve these issues. Request a free technical SEO consultation today to begin optimizing your eCommerce website.
Faq
Freequently Ask
Questions
A technical SEO audit is an in-depth analysis of a website’s infrastructure to identify any issues that could prevent search engines from properly crawling, indexing, or ranking the site’s content.
While some improvements may be visible within weeks, it typically takes 2-3 months for the full impact of technical SEO fixes to show in organic traffic and revenue.
A sitemap acts as a guide for search engine crawlers, directing them to the most important pages on your website. A well-optimized sitemap ensures better crawl efficiency and improved visibility in search results.
Canonical tags tell search engines which version of a page is the preferred one, preventing duplicate content issues and helping ensure the right page ranks in search results.
Yes, broken links can negatively affect user experience and waste valuable crawl budget, leading to lower rankings in search engine results.
By applying a noindex tag to irrelevant or low-priority pages, you help search engines focus on the pages that matter most, improving your chances of ranking higher in search results.
