Gardening E-Commerce SEO Case Study

Challenge

This gardening retailer, with both physical and online presences in Toronto, faced challenges in maximizing their organic search potential despite having successful Google Ads campaigns and strong direct traffic. Their e-commerce site lacked unique, optimized content across product and category pages, creating missed opportunities for organic visibility. The website also suffered from insufficient off-page SEO efforts, with limited backlinks to key pages and inadequate internal linking structures.

The absence of informational content targeting top-of-funnel keywords meant they were missing valuable opportunities to capture potential customers earlier in their buying journey and guide them toward revenue-generating pages. The Shopify store was operating with default settings that created significant content duplication issues and an overreliance on canonical tags. Both collection and product pages suffered from thin content, limiting their ability to rank for valuable search terms.

Solution

URL Structure Optimization: We conducted a comprehensive overhaul of product and collection URLs to resolve duplication issues and reduce dependence on canonical tags. This restructuring significantly improved crawling efficiency and resolved the indexing challenges that had been limiting the site’s visibility.

Content Enhancement Sprint: We undertook a comprehensive content improvement initiative, prioritizing high-traffic and revenue-generating pages. Thin collection and product pages were expanded with search intent-based content informed by extensive keyword research. This strategic content addition helped improve rankings for both collection pages and their associated products.

Strategic Blog Development: We established a robust content calendar to produce four long-form blog posts monthly. These articles targeted informational queries (how-to, when-to, where-to) relevant to gardening enthusiasts in Toronto, creating valuable top-of-funnel entry points to capture potential customers earlier in their journey.

Internal Linking Optimization: We implemented a comprehensive internal linking strategy that created clear pathways from informational blog content to high-converting category and product pages, enhancing site architecture and user experience while distributing page authority throughout the site.

Targeted Link Building Campaign: We executed a diversified backlink acquisition strategy focusing on the homepage, category pages, and top revenue-generating product pages. Special emphasis was placed on securing placements on reputable media sites, enhancing brand credibility and enabling the powerful “As seen on…” messaging in marketing materials.

Performance Optimization: Based on extensive testing across multiple Shopify stores, we recommended and implemented specific applications designed to enhance site speed, user experience, and conversion optimization.

Enhanced Schema Markup: We implemented comprehensive structured data across the site, with special focus on product, collection, and local business schema. This enhanced markup allowed search engines to better understand the site’s content and enabled rich snippets in search results, significantly improving click-through rates and helping to overcome the standardized limitations of Shopify’s default schema implementation.