Domain & SEO migration for WED2B drives organic performance & sales of 'off the peg' wedding dresses

WED2B

Project Overview

In 2016, Herd were appointed to help with SEO and digital strategy.

WED2B wanted to achieve greater visibility in organic search to match their offline presence.

As the business expanded its brick-and-mortar store offering, ongoing consultancy was required to provide regular input in developing WED2B’s online proposition for ecommerce and click and collect functionality online.

The initial goal was to mitigate risks around a domain migration, ensuring WED2B outranked major competitors to achieve position 1 in Google for key terms in the bridal sector.

Herd achieved organic position 1 for 'wedding dresses' within 9 months of starting the project, and have successfully maintained this position since 2017, whilst growing the brands organic search footprint in the UK and Europe.

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Results

A selection of key statistics from this project:

+30 positions in SERPS
+327% local search
+6,375% monthly visitors

The Brief

WED2B wanted help to achieve top organic search positions for competitive keywords like wedding dresses.

As the UK’s largest bridal retailer with over 26 stores WED2B wanted to rank in top positions for relevant keywords but were making slow progress. In a crowded sector, WED2B were unable to achieve organic visibility that matched their offline presence.

Whilst they had a fantastic offline proposition, they were not realising their online potential. They were outside of the top 50 results of Google UK for the majority of target keywords.

How we did it

Before engaging WED2B as a client, Herd undertook a detailed review of their performance to date.

Numerous issues that were severely hampering organic visibility were uncovered, such as poor site architecture that made it difficult for search engines to crawl the website. Furthermore, there was duplicate content, competing websites owned by WED2B, an indexed test site and a blatant violation of local search guidelines.

Based upon the findings and opportunities uncovered, Herd was confident that WED2B’s organic profile could be greatly improved. Because of this, we provided a forecast to meet the objectives set within a 12-month period.

Issues to tackle were prioritised from high to low. This ensured tasks that would provide the largest possible improvements to organic visibility were completed first. Unsurprisingly, much of the initial work was geared towards ensuring WED2B had an optimised website from a technical SEO perspective but this has expanded to extensively include content, international SEO and digital PR.

The primary objective, to achieve between position 1-3 for the highly competitive search term “wedding dresses”, was achieved within 9 months.

Quickly grasping the nature of our fast-moving business, Herd identified key areas that needed action to achieve our goals, lifting us to Position One for organic search phrases such as ‘wedding dresses’ within nine months. Placing us above companies such as David's Bridal, which has 300 stores in the UK, US, and Canada, and high street retailers Debenhams.

Mary Brandom, Website & Search Manager, WED2B

Project Highlights

1

Technical SEO

Moving to a resilient hosting environment that future-proofs the website for growth. 22 high-priority technical issues to improve crawl ability, user experience and keyword targeting via optimised filters.

2

Site Migration

Consolidating WED2B’s properties, such as Wedding Dress Factory Outlet, with the main website. A server migration to a resilient environment that would deliver considerably faster load times and cope with increased demand as marketing activity increased.

3

Local Search

We established a strong store presence through Google My Business optimisation building store citations with syndication to local directories. With optimisations to the store directory we helped the site achieve top positions for top terms on local search engines and appear in top positions in the map pack.

4

Content Management

With WED2B operating in 5 territories and 4 languages it is very much about managing content efficiently at scale through methodical audits, optimisations and process. Input extends to ideation, reviews and content strategy recommendations supporting SEO & user experience.

5

International rollout & localisation

A core part of WED2B’s expansion plans has entry into Europe with the launch of local territory websites. Our approach to localisation means that we utilised our skills in SEO paired with our in-house translator and local native language expertise to tailor content to ensure it was culturally relevant and also targeted localised searches.

6

Digital PR

Acquiring brand exposure and high-quality media coverage with digital PR activity supporting WED2B campaigns such as the annual wedding survey and outreach in terms of local link building. We have also gained local coverage in support in launches of new stores and competitions.

7

Paid Search & Display

We have provided strategic support and recommendations for ongoing paid media strategy. In 2020 we implemented a display campaign utilising new functionality within the GDN, primarily within Custom Intent audience lists and targeting users with an existing affinity to our competitors. As a result of the campaign, WED2B NL and BL enjoyed a significant increase in calls and store visits.