Case Study: The Sandbag Store

Overview

The Sandbag Store, an industry leader in manufacturing and distributing high-quality sandbags, partnered with WebStoreSEO early on to enhance their online presence, improve SEO rankings, and boost website traffic. Essentially, their goal was to dominate their industry. This case study explores how WebStoreSEO’s expertise in eCommerce SEO and PPC management contributed to The Sandbag Store’s remarkable success.

Client Background

Website: sandbagstore.com
Industry: Manufacturing and Distribution of Sandbags
Objective: Improve SEO rankings, increase website traffic, and manage effective PPC campaigns.

Challenges

1. Competitive Industry: The sandbag manufacturing industry is highly competitive, with numerous players vying for top positions in search engine results. Competing sites include big brands like Uline, Lowe's, and Home Depot.
2. SEO Visibility: The Sandbag Store needed to enhance its visibility on search engines to attract more organic traffic.
3. PPC Campaigns: Existing PPC campaigns were not yielding the desired return on investment (ROI).

Strategy and Implementation

1. Comprehensive SEO Audit & Research

WebStoreSEO began with a thorough audit of The Sandbag Store’s website to identify technical SEO issues, content gaps, and opportunities for improvement. This audit included: 

• Complete Technical Audit: Evaluated site structure, checking for broken links, optimizing page load speed, analyzing mobile-friendliness, ensuring proper use of meta tags, reviewing content quality, identifying duplicate content, and assessing overall user experience.
• Keyword Research: Identifying high-volume keywords relevant to sandbags and related products. Identified additional phrases we could target that were less competitive and easier to rank but would still bring in traffic.
• Back-link Profile: analyzed the quality, relevance, and diversity of back-links pointing to sandbagstore.com to ensure they contribute positively to SEO performance. This includes checking for authoritative links, identifying potential spam links, and assessing the overall link profile.

2. Content Strategy

WebStoreSEO developed a robust content strategy focusing on:

• Informative Articles: Creating posts and articles that addressed common questions and topics related to sandbags, such as their uses in flood control, construction, and military applications.
• Product Descriptions: Enhancing product descriptions with rich, keyword-focused content that improved relevance and searchability.
• Customer Testimonials and Case Studies: Leveraging customer testimonials and case studies to build trust and authority.
• Product Videos: Utilized videos strategically in a variety of locations for back-links and shares.

3. Technical SEO Enhancements

Addressing technical SEO issues was crucial for improving site performance and search rankings:

• Mobile Optimization: Ensuring the website was fully responsive and mobile-friendly.
• Page Speed Optimization: Implementing strategies to reduce load times, including image compression and caching techniques.
• Schema Markup: Adding structured data to enhance search engine understanding of the website’s content.

4. Link Building

WebStoreSEO executed a targeted link-building campaign to improve domain authority:

• Quality Back-links: Acquiring high-quality back-links from reputable websites in related industries.
• Posting: Publishing articles on authoritative websites to drive traffic and improve search engine rankings.
• Social Media: Shared  content on social media platforms to increase visibility and attract search engine crawlers.

5. Search Engine Optimization

Making changes and evaluating their impact is always an involved process. It requires a delicate balance to ensure changes are organic rather than manipulative.

• We focus on what is best for the end-user. Focusing on what is best for the end-user when doing SEO ensures that your content meets user intent, leading to higher engagement and better rankings. Search engines prioritize valuable, relevant content, so aligning with user needs builds trust and credibility, resulting in sustainable SEO success.
• Attention to title tags, meta descriptions, header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.), URL structure, internal linking, keyword optimization, image alt text, content quality and relevance, page load speed, mobile-friendliness, schema markup, canonical tags, user experience (UX) improvements, outbound links, social sharing integration, and structured data (rich snippets)

6. PPC Management

To complement organic SEO efforts, WebStoreSEO restructured The Sandbag Store’s PPC campaigns:

• Keyword Optimization: Refining keyword targeting to focus on high-intent search terms.
• Ad Copy Improvement: Crafting compelling ad copy that highlighted The Sandbag Store’s unique selling points.
• Optimized Product Feeds and submitted to Google & Bing Shopping.
• Bid Management: Utilizing automated bidding strategies to maximize ROI and reduce cost-per-click (CPC).