Maintaining high visibility in the ever-evolving online world is a challenge for any website.

Insightland’s team of experts faced a unique task: wearmedicine.com began to experience a decline in search rankings. The signs were clear-key phrases that once generated valuable traffic were gradually losing ground to competitors. Successive reports highlighted the need for decisive action to improve performance. The preventative work between Insightland and wearmedicine.com laid the groundwork for the results we’re sharing today.

In a world where search engine algorithms evolve faster than market trends, quick yet thoughtful action is essential. Insightland’s team conducted a thorough analysis, understanding that success in such cases depends on accurate diagnosis and an effective strategy. Our aim was not only to halt the decline but to put the website back on a growth path. We started by analyzing search intent in-depth, identifying shifting user needs and seasonal trends influencing consumer behavior. With advanced analytical tools and experience, we crafted a detailed action plan. We focused on content optimization, technical improvements, and aligning SEO strategy with the latest algorithm requirements. The results were almost immediate. Our efforts restored the website’s leadership position, proving that success can be achieved even in the face of declining trends if there is the right response to new challenges.

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Our analysis revealed significant issues related to URL and content duplication, negatively affecting the site’s visibility in search engines.

As part of our cooperation with HEGO’S, a renowned footwear brand operating in the Polish market since 2003, we conducted a detailed audit of the hegos.eu website. This analysis revealed significant issues related to URL and content duplication, negatively affecting the site’s visibility in search engines. In response, we prioritized blocking Googlebot access to non-valuable pages and managing crawl budget. Additionally, we focused on increasing organic traffic and optimizing the site’s usability to maximize its potential and improve accessibility for indexing robots and users.

The first actions we took included a thorough analysis of indexing, which detected errors related to repeating product filters due to the complex structure of the site. Due to the site’s construction and incomplete technical documentation, close cooperation with developers was necessary, supported by solutions based on:

• PHP
• JavaScript
• The application of .htaccess rules and regular expressions (Regular Expressions).

These issues significantly impacted two key areas:

• A problem causing the site to return a 200 server response code for any subdomain (e.g., shop.hegos.eu, ww.hegos.eu, xyz.hegos.eu), resulting in the generation of unlimited duplicates across the entire site structure.

• Errors related to indexed filters in categories where addresses with parameters were presented as regular <a href> links in the site structure.

These challenges led to the generation of 2 million site issue notifications in Google Search Console.

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A full plan to gain visibility

The solutions implemented for optimizing the hegos.eu site included several essential actions to improve management, structure, and functionality. Below are the detailed changes we introduced:

• By improving server configuration, the possibility of creating new subdomains was limited, thereby enhancing control over the website’s URL structure.

• Redirecting known subdomains by introducing appropriate redirects for existing subdomains to the main domain hegos.eu, facilitating clear brand identification and improving address consistency.

• Hiding indexed filters by changing HTML elements from <a href> to <button> and using the JavaScript location.href function in the onclick event, effectively hiding indexed filters and providing better indexing control by search engines.

• Optimizing the sitemap structure by improving the sitemap files’ structure, limiting to canonical addresses, dividing sitemaps into three sections: blog, categories, and products, with each sitemap file containing a maximum of 50,000 URLs. All sitemaps were placed in a sitemap index, according to Google’s guidelines.

• Improving metadata across the site, adapting to current standards, and optimizing for keywords.

• Adding unique content, positively affecting indexing by search engines and increasing site attractiveness.

• Enhancing breadcrumbs menu generation, contributing to better site navigation.

• Removing empty categories from sidebars and the main menu, eliminating unnecessary elements and facilitating user navigation.

Dividing categories into subcategories, reorganizing the category structure to match keyword intent, facilitating user search for information and products.

Innovative strategies

Applying innovative strategies, effective collaboration between technical and content teams, and close coordination with the brand resulted in a significant increase in page indexing. Successfully excluding irrelevant pages from Googlebot indexing positively influenced Google’s site assessment, improving its positioning in search results. Additionally, improved site navigation significantly increased user engagement and satisfaction.

Source: Senuto

• fitzsimmons native – position 2 (2400 searches/mth)
• havaianas klapki – position 2 (1900 searches/mth)
• melissa buty – position 2 (6600 searches/mth)
• ugg mini – position 7 (6600 searches/mth)

All these steps are excellent proof of how focused work can lead to significant growth for a brand. Attention to detail and a holistic approach to the problem can effectively translate into success in the dynamically changing SEO industry.

Wojas SA is a family business, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.

Nowadays, it is one of the largest footwear manufacturers in Poland. It owns a chain of 180 outlets in four countries, but also reinforces the market position of its European online stores.

With as many as 55% consumers buying footwear online at least once a year, the category ranks second in Poland in terms of popularity, just behind clothing [Gemius 2019]. The online channel is becoming the area of fierce competitive struggle for the industry brands.

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How to stand out and be at the forefront of footwear searches in Google?

Insightland Team has been supporting Wojas SA in enhancing its position in e-commerce since April 2019.

01. Increase the number of purchases in the online channel.

02. Increase conversion rates from organic traffic.

03. Website optimisation and visibility increase in search results for the keywords with the highest potential.

3 steps plan

• Increase the number of purchases in the online channel:
  67% (Q2 2019 vs. Q2 2020)
  
• Increase in conversion rates:
  48% (Q2 2019 vs. Q2 2020). Conversion is defined here as the percentage of sessions on the website where the transaction took place.
  
• Increase in visibility in search results for the keywords with the highest potential:
  Following the implementation of optimisation measures and an adequate strategy for building the link profile for the domain, as of 1st September, the website has ranked with 34,327 key phrases, including:
  • TOP 3 – 3,985 (increase by 23%)
  • TOP 10 – 2,885 (increase by 40%)
  • TOP 11 – 100 27,357 (increase by 25%)

As a result of SEO activities and their effectiveness’ in-depth analysis, marketing budgets have gradually started to migrate from paid channels to organic traffic.

Content duplication

Content duplication is a significant issue that greatly impacts the effectiveness and online visibility of a website.Understanding and addressing repeated URLs is essential in a world where high Google search rankings are crucial for success. This was the case for the HEGO’S brand, which struggled with URL and content duplication. Check out our case study that explains how content duplication affects SEO and user experience.

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Duplication

As part of our cooperation with HEGO’S, a renowned footwear brand operating in the Polish market since 2003, we conducted a detailed audit of the hegos.eu website. This analysis revealed significant issues related to URL and content duplication, negatively affecting the site’s visibility in search engines. In response, we prioritized blocking Googlebot access to non-valuable pages and managing crawl budget. Additionally, we focused on increasing organic traffic and optimizing the site’s usability to maximize its potential and improve accessibility for indexing robots and users.

Into consumer’s mind

The first actions we took included a thorough analysis of indexing, which detected errors related to repeating product filters due to the complex structure of the site. Due to the site’s construction and incomplete technical documentation, close cooperation with developers was necessary, supported by solutions based on:

Diagnose

These issues significantly impacted two key areas:

• A problem causing the site to return a 200 server response code for any subdomain (e.g., shop.hegos.eu, ww.hegos.eu, xyz.hegos.eu), resulting in the generation of unlimited duplicates across the entire site structure.
• Errors related to indexed filters in categories where addresses with parameters were presented as regular <a href> links in the site structure.

These challenges led to the generation of 2 million site issue notifications in Google Search Console.

Technical Actions

The solutions implemented for optimizing the hegos.eu site included several essential actions to improve management, structure, and functionality. Below are the detailed changes we introduced:

• Restriction on creating new subdomains
•   Redirection of known subdomains
•   Hiding indexed fikters
•   Optimization of the sitemap structure
•   Metadata improvement
•   Adding unique content
•   Improved breadcrumbs menu generation
•   Removing empty categories
•   Division of categories into subcategories

Into work

• By improving server configuration, the possibility of creating new subdomains was limited, thereby enhancing control over the website’s URL structure.
• Redirecting known subdomains by introducing appropriate redirects for existing subdomains to the main domain hegos.eu, facilitating clear brand identification and improving address consistency.
• Hiding indexed filters by changing HTML elements from <a href> to <button> and using the JavaScript location.href function in the onclick event, effectively hiding indexed filters and providing better indexing control by search engines.
• Optimizing the sitemap structure by improving the sitemap files’ structure, limiting to canonical addresses, dividing sitemaps into three sections: blog, categories, and products, with each sitemap file containing a maximum of 50,000 URLs. All sitemaps were placed in a sitemap index, according to Google’s guidelines.
• Improving metadata across the site, adapting to current standards, and optimizing for keywords.
• Adding unique content, positively affecting indexing by search engines and increasing site attractiveness.
• Enhancing breadcrumbs menu generation, contributing to better site navigation.
• Removing empty categories from sidebars and the main menu, eliminating unnecessary elements and facilitating user navigation.
• Dividing categories into subcategories, reorganizing the category structure to match keyword intent, facilitating user search for information and products.

Results of Insightland Team’s Efforts

Applying innovative strategies, effective collaboration between technical and content teams, and close coordination with the brand resulted in a significant increase in page indexing. Successfully excluding irrelevant pages from Googlebot indexing positively influenced Google’s site assessment, improving its positioning in search results. Additionally, improved site navigation significantly increased user engagement and satisfaction.

• fitzsimmons native – position 2 (2400 searches/mth)
• havaianas klapki – position 2 (1900 searches/mth)
• melissa buty – position 2 (6600 searches/mth)
• ugg mini – position 7 (6600 searches/mth)
  
  
  All these steps are excellent proof of how focused work can lead to significant growth for a brand. Attention to detail and a holistic approach to the problem can effectively translate into success in the dynamically changing SEO industry.

In this case, we first conducted a thorough analysis of the competition, discovering a significant space for improvement, and ideas for developing the bartek.com.pl website began to take shape in our minds.

In the following case study, we will present how the new, carefully customized website structure, along with additional content, contributed to the marketing success of bartek.com.pl.

In this context, a key role was played by the optimization and improvement of the existing content. According to our Insightologists, the content should be expert-level in nature. This is all to not only attract valuable traffic, but above all to meet the specific needs and questions of users. In our view, it is equally important to ensure that parents feel their source of information is reliable and can form the basis for making specific purchasing decisions that could impact the health of their children.

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How does today’s customer differ from the one from three decades ago?

BARTEK has been in the market for almost 35 years. For a children’s shoe manufacturer, this is long enough for both the company and its customers to change significantly. How does today’s customer differ from the one from three decades ago? First, they are much more aware, especially when it comes to their child’s health, the origin of the desired product, and its quality. Consequently, the language they use is much more precise, and the way they navigate the market in search of new products differs significantly from that of 30 years ago. Importantly, the competition is also fully aware of these changes.

Into consumer’s mind

The previous strategy of the website was based on phrases such as “girls’ shoes” or “boys’ shoes.” This approach limited the ability to build the image of an expert in the field, which today’s parent expects. At this stage, we already knew that the phrases consumers use are much more specific, and the competition includes specific terms in their strategies, such as “prophylactic shoes for girls.”

The Content Gap

The Content Gap Analysis revealed a significant shortage of content compared to competitors’ websites and the need to integrate long-tail phrases such as “orthopedic shoes for children.” This allowed us to identify gaps in topics crucial to our client, which are important both from the perspective of the parent and Google’s search engine. We decided to expand the bartek.com.pl website.

Attention needed to be focused on expanding the content, which would not be limited solely to universal segments like “for girls” or “for boys,” but also on content aimed at parents looking for specific, high-quality products for their children, directly addressed by the existing offer of bartek.com.pl.

4 steps

The optimisation of the structure

After conducting a detailed analysis and identifying direct competitors, which include brands like Eobuwie, Bosa Stopka, and Buty dla Malucha, it was time to highlight the differences between the bartek.com.pl website and its rivals.

However, these categories remained inactive in the structure, resulting in a lack of indexing by Google and exclusion from the sitemap.

We then decided to optimize the structure to ensure the indexing of key website categories along with appropriate filters, such as “autumn children’s shoes.”

We optimized internal linking and updated the website’s sitemap.xml file with the aforementioned categories, which increased the visibility of the offer to Google’s algorithms.

The content with carefully selected keywords

The next step was to prepare content with carefully selected keywords, relevant to the website’s structure and new categories. This phase included:

• Expanding and reviving the blog section with high-value content that addresses parents’ common questions and needs, while also promoting the brand’s philosophy.
• We focused on intensive content optimization for children’s, unisex, and parent-targeted phrases;
• Continuing to expand visibility for boys’ and girls’ specific phrases, highlighting key features of BARTEK shoes, such as design and quality;
• Building the brand’s image as an expert in children’s footwear by emphasizing its experience and specialization in creating prophylactic shoes for children;

This element included:

• Using expert opinions in blog posts to provide users with insights in a given thematic area, thereby reinforcing the authority of specialists and designers involved in the BARTEK footwear creation process;
• Applying the concept of thematic silos for blog content;
• Developing content plans based on the concept of thematic silos. We designed a content strategy centered on thematic silos, which allowed for better organization of content and facilitated its indexing by search engines, enhancing the attractiveness of the site from a user perspective.

Strategic SEO and content optimization

Terminology used in a case study

Content Gap Analysis (pl. analysis of content gaps) in the context of SEO and keywords involves identifying gaps in the existing content of a website that prevent it from fully utilizing its potential in search engine rankings. In practice, this means detecting areas where the website could provide more valuable, relevant, or complete information to better respond to user queries and thereby improve its position in search results.

Long-tail phrase (pl. frazy długiego ogona) refers to keyword phrases, or even entire sentences, consisting of several words that are usually less popular than generic (shorter, broader) phrases.

Site map (pl. mapa strony) is a file that provides search engines with information about the structure of a website. It helps them understand how the website is organized and allows for faster and more effective indexing of its content.

Indexing is the process by which search engines analyze the content of websites and create a table of contents, or an index. The index contains information about individual pages, such as keywords, links, headers, or content.

SEO silos refer to the concept of thematically grouping content on a website. A silo can be, for example, a category in an online store that contains a specific group of products along with one or several levels of subcategories that group them in more detail.