I was hired with a specific goal, to develop and implement an SEO strategy to reduce dependence on paid traffic with Google Ads at a custom product and apparel eCommerce company.
At the time I joined, around 80% of the website’s traffic came from paid campaigns or referral, with very little organic visibility.
Despite having no access to external tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Screaming Frog, I had only free Google tools: Search Console and Google Analytics to optimize the site on-page, grow visibility, and restructure technical and content elements of the site. Lighthouse to audit the site.
Challenges:
1. Technical SEO:
2. Content optimization:
3. Keyword targeting:
4. Internal linking:
5. User behavior improvements:
Within one year, working on these SEO tasks, I got the company’s goal, allowed the company to reduce its Google Ads investment by increasing organic traffic, which grew to represent from around 3% to 12%.
Of course, the company also generated traffic through other channels, including social media, which can also have a very positive impact on SEO performance. There was still a lot of work ahead to further improve the site’s SEO, but achieving this change in traffic distribution from mostly paid to a much stronger organic traffic in just 12 months was both a significant challenge and a rewarding accomplishment, especially considering that I was still gaining experience as an SEO at that time.
The organic traffic increased ~211% relative growth after 12 months and there was ~99% reduction in paid traffic.
The company had strongest weeks or days due to different celebration, Christmas, Mothers Day… I try to shows real comparassion using the same dates on months in 2022 and 2023.
You can check the traffic obtain through different channels on March 2022 and 2023. In next pictures you can see the paid traffic in just 4 days on March 2022 it was almost 27% against 0,33% during 18 days on March 2023. It clearly represent a drastic reduction of paid traffic thanks to the organic traffic increase.
SEO is possible with no premium tools, with strong fundamentals, analytical skills, and discipline can drive long-term results.
Free tools like Search Console and Analytics, sometimes, are enough to create real growth.
Sustainable SEO can significantly reduce paid media dependence, improving ROI.
*I can not use more data or pictures due to company privacity. I’m just allowed to use the previous data.
*The percentages used are relatives in base the data I can only use and show.
