HOTH X Case Study: International Furniture Company Backlinks Grow 1,500%
Think you’ve got a lot of ground to cover with your SEO?
In this case study, we’re going to discuss how we helped an international furniture company to increase their backlinks by 1,500% and web traffic by 480%.
Their website was brand new when they contacted us but with determination, consistency, and HOTH X we were able to deliver incredible results for the client.
And it wasn’t easy because this company exports furniture all over the world so it has a ton of competition.
Ready to learn more about how we did it? Keep scrolling!
Background
A huge international furniture company based in China—with four production facilities— reached out to us a year ago needing help with their SEO.
Since forming in 2009, this company manufactures indoor and outdoor furniture for clients in Europe, North America, South America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. They employ over 1,000 people and generate over $50 million in sales per year.
The company exports quality furniture for dining rooms, living rooms, bedrooms, patios, pools, backyards, and more at internationally competitive prices.
This new HOTH client also has strong working relationships with eCommerce giants like Amazon, Wayfair, and Overstock. Their production processes are under strict control and the company has a reliable and powerful supply chain.
We also found that the company’s website effectively lists their products and services, offers videos for interested customers, and a blog covering current furniture trends.
The SEO Audit
Our first step when working with any new client is to conduct a comprehensive SEO audit to understand exactly what their site needed to grow.
Even though they had been exporting furniture for more than a decade they first launched a company website in April 2021.
With a brand new website, we knew we had our work cut out for us.
Last summer, when the furniture company first contacted us, they were only getting around 20 visitors per month.
At the same time, their new website was only ranking for 5 organic keywords, and unfortunately, none of those keywords were ranking lower than 11. The client would need more to start ranking better in searches.
Our SEO team also checked to see this client’s number of backlinks. These are links from external sites to one of the client’s pages and a top ranking factor in Google.
Earning new backlinks is one of the most powerful ways for a new site to increase their traffic and ranking in SERP (the search engine results page).
The furniture company had less than 5 backlinks when they first called us.
“Easy Win” Keywords Analysis
Conducting the SEO audit shows any new client’s exact strengths and weaknesses. As a new website, they needed more traffic, more keywords, and more links.
We could help the furniture company to boost their traffic in the short term by identifying “easy win” keywords and adding them to pages and content.
“Easy win” keywords are those a client is already ranked for in positions 4-30.
In the beginning, they only ranked for a few keywords:
- “furniture wholesale suppliers”
- “wholesale beds”
- “office furniture wholesale distributors”
- “furniture at wholesale prices”
As the site started gaining more traction, we were able to add more “easy wins” keywords like “kitchen table trends 2022” or “bar stool buying guide.”
How did we use these keywords for the client? Some were added to individual web pages and others were used in SEO-optimized blogs.
The Competitive Gap Analysis
As marketers, we always want to understand what the competition is doing, especially when it comes to optimizing SEO.
If a competitor is ranking higher than our client, we want to know why! That’s why we did an analysis where we identified 42 competitive domains.
Not that these domains were in direct competition with our client, they only ranked for some of the same keywords. Most of these businesses were very different from our client; they just shared certain keywords.
Several competitors ranked for over 5,000 keywords that our client didn’t. This means there was a lot of room for growth by seeing if any of these keywords could be added to their company site.
Examples of unique keywords included in the competitive gap analysis were:
- “bar stool height”
- “wooden dining bench”
- “orange side table”
- “coffee table size guide”
Of course, these competitors had other keywords related to wall paint, lighting, or home decor that we avoided because they weren’t relevant to our client.
Analyzing all of the client’s competitors made it easy for us to pick and choose which keywords would work best for their site.
The SEO Strategy
The next step is always our favorite: the drafting of a brand new SEO strategy to help our client’s website grow to new heights.
As we stated earlier in this case study, the client’s website was brand new so we were basically starting from scratch.
We needed to increase their number of ranking keywords, which we had already started to do thanks to our “easy wins” analysis, and then we had to help the client develop SEO-optimized content. Finally, we would help them to obtain more backlinks.
The easiest way to get all of this done was by having the client enroll in our fully managed SEO program. HOTH X would give them complete access to all of our best-selling products and a dedicated campaign manager to get things moving.
Here’s what we started them off with, in the first month:
- HOTH Blogger: 1,000-word blogs (3)
- HOTH Link Outreach: DA20+ (2 pack)
- HOTH Foundations: Large
- Web Copy & HOTH Optimization: 500 words (2 pack)
HOTH Blogger is our most popular product. Clients can choose SEO-optimized blogs for their site between 500-2,000 words. They are created by our professional team of writers and incorporate high-performing keywords.
HOTH Link Outreach is our link-building program where clients can select posts from 500-2,000 words and have them published on an external site with a link back to them. They can choose between domain authority (DA) or publisher traffic.
Another link-building product we offer is HOTH Foundations. Clients who use this product get in-content, contextual links to help boost their link profile.
The last product we used in month one was HOTH Web Copy to refresh some of their web pages with writing that is both optimized for SEO and conversions.
Over the next 11 months we used other effective HOTH products to get the job done:
- DA 30+ Link Outreach (500 words)
- 1,500 and 2,000-word blogs
- HOTH Foundations Medium
- HOTH Syndication
- Link Outreach Pro 1K
Without being in HOTH X, the client would have to purchase and track these services on their own.
Keep reading to find out what results they earned after one year!
The Results
The furniture company’s website experienced strong SEO gains after working with us for 12 months.
Thanks to all of the HOTH Link Outreach and HOTH Foundations orders, their number of referring domains jumped from 5 to over 80.
Backlinks are a top ranking factor on Google. The algorithm sees a backlink like a “vote of confidence” and they are more likely to reward traffic to sites with more backlinks than their competitors.
Check it out below!
Our client’s organic traffic also increased as a result of new backlinks (which also serve as referral traffic) but also because of an increase in ranking keywords.
Their monthly visitors increased from 20 to 117, and that number has only continued to increase.
And finally, our SEO team achieved impressive growth with this client’s ranking keywords. They increased from less than 10 to 748.
Part of that growth came from our “easy win” keywords (anything from position 4 or higher) but it also resulted from an increase in keywords ranking in positions 1-3 (shown in dark brown at the bottom).
Things really turned around for this client’s brand new site and now that their SEO gained traction we expect them to continue growing exponentially.
Takeaway
The biggest takeaway for this case study is not to be discouraged if you have a new website and it’s not generating as much traffic as you expected.
Every site no matter how big or small has to start somewhere. This furniture company did the right thing by investing in their SEO and staying consistent for a full year
The secret to this client’s success was enrolling in HOTH X, our fully managed SEO program. One of our dedicated campaign managers worked with them to decide which of our products would work best to achieve their goals.
Are you interested in learning how HOTH X can help improve your site’s traffic? More traffic typically results in more sales, and our SEO experts can help you get both.
Simply book a call with us to get started.
