OpenCart SEO For Cosmetics Company – Case Study: Peak District SEO
In 2019 Peak District SEO was engaged by a Derbyshire-based design agency to try to raise the visibility of their Cosmetics brand client. The client was not overly tech-savvy but had a brilliant and fast-growing, B2B e-commerce business turning over a 5-figure sum every month. The client had design and branding support from the referring agency and had in-house support for Social Media and blogs, which meant that we could focus on the SEO.
An initial SEO report Investigation told us that despite the technical support this site still had a lot of room for improvement and given that it was already doing gangbusters in sales, all we had to do was make the obvious improvements.
The most difficult aspect of this project has been the constantly changing inventory, which is normal in eCommerce, but the positive aspect is the client has a very loyal customer base and products naturally get a lot of traffic without the need for constant optimisations. Instead, we can focus on putting the time into the most profitable lines, and earning the client even more money than they were already making.
“Excellent experience with Phil, he has helped my business grow tremendously. Always full of useful tips and tricks as well. Fully recommended!”
The site was built on OpenCart and was already live. However, the business owner needed help to measure the effectiveness of the website.
How Did Peak District SEO Help?
Firstly we carried out a full audit of the website. We ascertained that the site was a basic Opencart build, heavily customised with CSS to improve the layout and design, but it needed closer reviewing due to constant homepage changes. the site also had issues with its SSL certificate.
Once audit fixes work were completed we’d significantly improved the site health scores but this has proved a constant and ongoing piece of work due to the regular changes made by the design agency. We are not complaining though, keeping the site fresh is what drives user interest, and it keeps us working.
The site had minimal plugins or extension modules. We work closely with their existing web developer to ensure that if modules need adding to extend the site’s functionality that is handled by them with recommendations on performance coming from us.
After doing an initial website audit, we made a raft of recommendations which included:
OpenCart Modules added
We advised the developers to install a number of Opencart modules to add additional functionality. This added a way to track ecommerce functionality in a quick, easy manner. It’s amazing how many websites we see, even ecommerce websites that do not have Google Analytics or eCommerce tracking set up, and of course, it’s a vital tool in beginning to assess website performance.
Canonical URL created
As with many eCommerce sites, there were often products that had a wide range of small variations. To ensure against google indexing the wrong variation, we set up canonical tags which point Google to the correct or “main Product” as opposed to the differing and fluctuating variations.
SSL Certificate installed
We made sure that the website had an SSL certificate. In it’s simplest terms, this means having a web address that reads https, this is also an often overlooked feature that we see all too often in websites. If you are selling online, you need to have a secure website. People need to feel sure that when they enter their personal, private information online that it is securely encrypted.
An eCommerce site without an SSL certificate can soon become a lame duck. Especially as Google Chrome now marks sites without one as ‘Not secure’.
Layout changes
We recommended a few layout changes such as making the phone number and email address more prominent. In addition, ensuring that the product page was better laid out ensuring that the add to cart button was kept above the fold. It’s important to review the layout of your website and monitor the changing ways in which customers interact with your website. Small changes can lead to a big swing in conversions and revenue.
Technical SEO
We identified a wide range of technical SEO issues such as multiple versions of the site, lack of canonicals, no SSL certificate, non-mobile friendly elements and load speed issues. Some issues could be fixed by ourselves and others were passed to the web developer to fix.
On page SEO
On-page SEO is our bread and butter. We fixed numerous issues such as thin content, lack of proper headings, image naming and labelling, internal and external linking and quality of the copy. We continue to deploy these methods as the inventory is constantly changing and evolving.
Cosmetics SEO – Overall Outcome
The project was mostly successful. Like many eCommerce sites, it is hampered by factors beyond our control, issues such as manpower and a constantly changing inventory.
However, the site is still in a strong position in its niche, and with continual applied best practices, it has a very healthy 56 figure revenue stream each month.
Do you sell online? Want to increase your website’s performance?
If you sell online. Why not speak to Peak District SEO? You can expect a Free website review, which includes a PDF summary of your site as well as a user-testing video that looks at what works well and what’s not working so well. Get in touch today!
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I’m Phil Gregory, the MD and founder of Peak District SEO.
I’m an SEO & Google Ads Consultant with 27+ years of experience in I.T and helping UK Businesses improve website performance.
I built my first website in 1998, then I discovered the joys of website optimisation and never looked back.
If you want a no-nonsense, no-hard-sell approach and to actually get your website fixed with a solid, affordable, long-term approach, hit the contact button today.
Peak District SEO is a UK-based Digital Marketing Company.
We help businesses make more money, using traditional Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) , Ai Search / GEO and paid advertising (PPC).
Why Peak District SEO?
27+ years of experience.
80+ 5* reviews on Google
Our customers have hundreds of page one and position 1 rankings, and we can prove it.
We’ve helped hundreds of SMEs in the UK
We have numerous articles published across the web discussing SEO.
We regularly publish case studies about the work we’ve done
Customers trust our service – See our reviews on Google, Trustpilot and Facebook
Our customers have hundreds of page one and position 1 rankings and we can prove it.
