MR Cricket Hockeyis an e-commerce website that sells cricket and hockey equipment. They have a physical store but they also wanted to capitalise on the increasing demand for sports equipment online, and so creating an e-commerce website was vital.
SEO is an increasingly important channel for them, especially as more and more sales move online – and away from physical retail – in these shifting times. In this case study, we speak to Merrick Fuller (who leads MR Cricket Hockey’s sales development) about his previous experience with SEO for the site, why they chose the Hike platform and the Support services, and their results since signing up.
I cannot recommend Hike highly enough. The platform is great, it’s in a language that anyone can understand, and there is a clear path to what you want to achieve. Also, their support services have allowed us to focus on running the business whilst knowing our SEO is still being worked on.
Since using Hike and our Support services, MR Cricket Hockey has seen fantastic improvements across their target keywords. The number of target keywords on the first page of Google has increased from 0 to 56!
Top tip: Unsure what keywords are or why they’re important? Then check out ourKeyword Help Centrethat teaches you everything you need to know!
The keywords that are now ranking on page 1 are high-volume, competitive and very important keywords for the MR Cricket Hockey brand. Below are some examples:
This huge increase in performing keywords on page 1 has translated into a huge 135% increase in SEO traffic year-on-year:
We had used various SEO specialists which we would pay a monthly fee and they would report on a monthly basis or – more likely – when we would chase them. Before Hike, SEO seemed to be a black hole where you would give someone money and not really know what they would be doing for it!
When MR Cricket Hockey joined Hike they had used SEO agencies & freelancers previously, but as they were unhappy with the results that were achieved. MR Cricket Hockey wanted to gain a better understanding of SEO and so came to Hike.
The Hike platform audited their website and saw many areas for improvements that – since implementing – have pushed them to the top of Google. Below details the process and changes made that have contributed to MR Cricket Hockey’s SEO success so far…
The MR Cricket Hockey team utilised Hike’s SEO strategy creation service to help them build the right SEO strategy within Hike. The Hike team worked with MR Cricket Hockey to find the best keywords they should target in Google, the website structure they needed to employ, what content they needed to create and who their top competitors were.
With this information now in Hike, the platform itself got to work! Before we knew it Hike was providing MR Cricket Hockey with top SEO actions to implement that would kickstart their SEO. Next; creating new landing pages and updating ‘thin’ content.
One of the key areas that Hike identified as important for their success was having the right category page structures and content on those pages. Hike gave specific recommendations on new pages to create, based on the keywords they wanted to rank for. It also alerted the MR Cricket Hockey team on pages across the site where the content was not at the high level required for successful SEO performance.
This was one of the first areas that the team tackled to improve the SEO of the website. Next; updating metadata.
The Hike platform immediately identified improvements that the MR Cricket Hockey website needed to make to the website’s metadata across its main category and product pages. These were based specifically on the keywords added into the Hike, so these suggestions are tailored to the customers MR Cricket Hockey wants to be in front of.
The platform also identified keyword cannibalisation – instances where the current SEO on the website was confusing Google and resulting in lower SEO rankings. Resolving these – which is key for e-commerce stores with categories and products – was hugely instrumental to their current success. Next; page speed.
Following completing the more content and keyword optimisation actions that Hike recommended for the MR Cricket Hockey website, they then moved onto the next important task that Hike found that would improve the SEO: improving page speed.
Top tip: Want to know your own page speed score? Then check out ourFree SEO Reportthat will tell you that and more!
Page speed is not only super important for the user experience (and ultimately, onsite conversions and sales), but it’s also a ranking factor. this means that ensuring the page speed meets certain criteria will give the website improved SEO visibility.
Hike discovered quick win page speed improvements across their image sizes and file formats, ensuring that the product images were optimised according to Google’s page speed recommendations. Next; backlinks.
Backlinks are vital to successful SEO. From building new and high-quality backlinks to reviewing existing backlinks for any harmful examples and dealing effectively with them, Hike enables the MR Cricket Hockey team to constantly improve their offsite SEO.
Using Hike’s backlink features the team have increased their domain authority significantly, with their Trust Flow rising to almost 30:
There’s even more the Hike platform has and is suggesting to improve for the MR Cricket Hockey website, so the team are excited to see even further progress up the Google rankings!
We speak to Merrick Fuller, who leads MR Cricket Hockey’s sales development, about their use of the Hike platform and the Support services.
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