The Challenge
At the start of 2020, iconic British pottery brand Denby asked Glass Digital to oversee their organic search, with the goal of making their marketing budget work harder. They were looking to boost rankings and domain authority, so their brand could compete in the search results against big-name competitors, like Made, John Lewis, and Habitat.
To this end, Denby set us three core goals:
- Increase overall organic traffic and revenue.
- Boost non-brand rankings and traffic.
- Attract younger shoppers to the site through organic search.
One of the key challenges Denby faced was attracting a younger generation of shoppers. Denby wanted to shift the target demographic of their organic channel from the 35+ bracket towards 18–34-year-olds, with the broader aim of increasing revenue and future-proofing their brand. And, they tasked us with harnessing the power of organic search to help them achieve this.
The results
- +61% (+4,841) additional rankings (Jan ’20 vs. Oct ’21)
- +82% (+1,039) additional front-page rankings (Jan ’20 vs. Oct ’21)
- +65% (+4,440) additional non-brand rankings (Jan ’20 vs. Oct ’21)
- +171% (+636) additional non-brand front-page rankings (Jan ’20 vs. Oct ’21)
- +79% increase in organic non-brand traffic
- +56% increase in organic non-brand revenue
By August 2021, Denby had experienced a pronounced demographic shift towards a younger audience, with a steady increase in the proportion of sessions, transactions, and revenue driven by the 18–34-year-old bracket.
This was achieved against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, when consumer spending among younger age groups was reduced. Despite this, we still achieved significant increases in sessions and transactions.
Denby also achieved some great rankings positions for commercially important keywords — a testament to our technical recommendations and onsite optimisation work.
Glass Digital also increased Denby’s non-brand front-page rankings by 171% since the start of their campaign, bringing new shoppers to key commercial pages and increasing organic revenue.
The solution
We designed a three-fold organic strategy, including onsite content, technical improvements, and targeted link-building. This would drive traffic to Denby’s site to help them reach a younger demographic, as well as boosting their domain authority to help the brand take on their top competitors in the search results.
As with every client, we kept in close contact with the Denby team through real-time activity updates via our project management system and honest monthly reports covering all KPIs.
Content
Glass Digital’s Content team created pre-purchase content marketing that allowed us to target high-volume top-of-the-funnel keywords, with a focus on a younger demographic. We created content on topics that were likely to resonate with under-35s, like creating a trendy brunch board, or throwing a tapas dinner party.
To boost non-brand keyword rankings, we created optimised content for category pages to stimulate the relevant keywords within the 11+ ranking range.
Throughout the campaign, our experienced copywriters made sure to showcase Denby’s core brand values and USPs — such as sustainability, durability, and versatility — in all onsite copy. This helped maintain Denby’s strong brand identity, while maximising conversions and revenue from organic.
Tech
Our Technical team took steps to improve the crawling efficiency of Denby’s site, highlighting issues that were causing the size of the site to bloat. We culled unnecessary pages, removed or redirected soft 404 errors, and fixed broken HREF links across the site. This ensured Google’s crawl budget could be used more efficiently on valuable URLs, driving better results across the board.
Resolving these issues also created a cleaner, clearer navigation, which improved user experience across the site.
Outreach
From an outreach perspective, we focussed on authority growth of the domain, so that Denby could better compete in search results alongside major competitors such as Dunelm, Wayfair, and John Lewis.
As a household name with a big following, we leveraged Denby’s recognisable and highly respected brand identity to secure quality, ethical linking opportunities. Our Outreach and Content teams collaborated to create content that their target audience would love, while remaining true to Denby’s branding.
Our outreach team took a targeted approach, building links on authoritative national publications, such as The Express and Wales Live. We also strategically outreached home and lifestyle magazines that were highly relevant to our client, like House Beautiful. This helped create a diverse backlink profile that substantially boosted Denby’s authority.
