Organic Digital Marketing and Overcoming the Challenges of a Niche Market
Protech Composites, Inc. specializes in carbon fiber products – a market also crowded with numerous other manufacturers and distributors. However, their approach to the business is unique, and they needed an organic digital marketing strategy to match that distinction.
For Protech, carbon fiber and its applications are more than just products; they’re a passion. They offer exceptionally high-quality, low-tolerance carbon fiber items, crafted with UV-resistant resin, suitable for a variety of engineering and manufacturing applications.
A quick visit to their “About Us” and “Resources” pages makes it clear how seriously they take their craft. One might think that with such a specialized business, they’d face so little competition that investing in organic digital marketing strategies, like eCommerce SEO, wouldn’t be necessary – after all, “marketing would take care of itself.”
But that’s only partly true. While niche markets typically face lower competition than broader consumer markets, the competition that does exist can be much more intense. Additionally, businesses in these specialized markets often serve well-informed, loyal fanbases who are harder to persuade.
So, while the competitive landscape may differ, the challenge remains. There may be fewer steps to the top, but each one is more difficult to climb.
This is where an organic digital marketing strategy, particularly search engine optimization, can make a significant impact. Since much of the success of an eCommerce SEO campaign is tied to content creation, the best results often go to the most diligent researchers and content creators.
This is where we knew we could make a difference for Protech Composites. Here’s how we did it.
Keyword Research: Less Can Be More
Our experienced SEO project managers understood from the outset that they were working in a specialized industry. While we sometimes recommend highly aggressive campaigns for clients positioned for rapid growth, that approach isn’t always the best fit.
Sometimes, less is more. Specifically, optimizing a campaign for a small set of highly targeted keywords can be more effective than pursuing as many broad keywords as possible. The former is strategic; the latter relies on sheer volume.
We took the strategic approach, collaborating with Protech Composites to create a refined list of 25 target keywords that would form the backbone of our keyword strategy and guide all of our optimizations.
Though the keywords are proprietary to the strategy, our project managers were meticulous in ensuring they struck a perfect balance across search volume, competitive density, difficulty, and alignment with search intent. There are many keywords that may be relevant to the carbon fiber industry, but not all of them directly align with Protech Composites or its target customers.
First Steps
Once we had finalized a set of target keywords, there were a few key tasks our technical team needed to complete before the content production team’s efforts could truly take off.
First, our technical team conducted an in-depth SEO audit of ProtechComposites.com. The initial audit uncovered several promising indicators that would contribute positively to our SEO campaign. Notably, there were no crawler errors detected, and the audit confirmed that Protech’s website had no broken links or toxic backlinks.
Additionally, several features were already optimized for SEO. For instance, Protech’s URLs and images were well-optimized, and key metadata had been appropriately configured.
Google Analytics (GA) and Google Search Console (GSC) were already set up, so our technical team created a custom dashboard for the client, optimized 20 target pages, and began conducting ongoing scans to stay ahead of any potential technical or crawler issues.
With the groundwork laid, our content and technical teams worked in tandem to refine content and implement the early stages of our link-building strategy, aimed at boosting domain authority and improving organic rankings.
The Role of Content in eCommerce SEO
Content plays a critical role in optimizing eCommerce websites, driving both SEO and other organic marketing efforts such as content marketing and social media marketing. The beauty of optimized content is its versatility—it can take many forms, address multiple ranking factors, and serve a variety of purposes.
To be precise, our content team set Protech Composites on a content schedule that included a mix of blog posts, offsite guest posts, and optimized category and product descriptions.
By consistently delivering optimized on-page content (like blog posts and product/service descriptions), we achieved several objectives. For one, we demonstrated to Google that Protech Composites was actively publishing keyword-optimized content regularly, in both long-form and short-form formats. This signaled to Google that Protech Composites was an industry authority, warranting higher organic rankings for the keywords and search terms present in our content—terms potential customers were actively searching for.
Our on-page content also allowed our technical team to enhance the internal linking structure of Protech Composites’ website. This not only improved user experience by making navigation smoother but also strengthened the technical SEO foundation of the site.
Additionally, our content production team began distributing content via offsite guest posts to third-party websites, aimed at generating valuable backlinks to ProtechComposites.com.
Digital Marketing By the Numbers: Keyword Movements and Organic Traffic Increases
What’s particularly unique about the SEO campaign for Protech Composites’ eCommerce site is that it started showing positive shifts in organic keyword rankings within just a few months. Normally, we advise clients not to expect significant results within the first six months, as eCommerce SEO is a long-term strategy, and its effects compound over time.
In this case, however, our project managers began noticing positive movements just a few months after launching the campaign. On the right, you can see some of the recent keyword shifts from January 2022. While positive shifts began earlier, these current standings reflect the progress we’ve made so far.
The target keywords we selected have a healthy range of search volumes, from under 100 to over 1,000 searches per month. Protech Composites ranks on page one or two for many of these keywords, and we continue to see upward movement in rankings, with each keyword rising a few positions.
This is a very promising sign for the eCommerce SEO campaign. While it corresponds to higher impressions, it doesn’t always guarantee more traffic or conversions. Fortunately, Protech has also seen positive trends in both areas, even though the campaign is still in its early stages.
KEYWORD MOVEMENTS
The image below showcases several organic metrics from October 2021 to January 2022, compared to the previous period. One key takeaway is the noticeable increase in organic pageviews, along with a significant rise in session duration. While the growth in sessions is modest, the substantial improvement in average time on page is a clear sign that our targeting strategies are paying off.
ORGANIC TRAFFIC: SIGNIFICANT PAGEVIEW INCREASE
The data on the next page paints an even more compelling picture. It highlights organic metrics for all pages during the same period, and this time, the improvement is even more evident. Three key metrics—conversion rate, transactions, and revenue—all saw substantial growth. Conversion rate and transactions each increased by over 10%, while revenue more than doubled.
ORGANIC TRAFFIC: MULTIPLE CONSIDERABLE INCREASE
We can’t take all the credit for the significant revenue increase, but the clear growth in conversions and transactions highlights that we were successfully attracting the right audience. Even with a moderate boost in organic traffic, our efforts were effective in bringing in visitors who had the highest intent to purchase—this is further validated by Protech’s improving conversion rate.
To further demonstrate the success of our combined efforts, let’s turn to some organic metrics for Protech Composites’ content pages. The following figures focus on organic users during the same period but specifically target their content pages. As you can see, page views and time on page saw modest growth, and while the bounce rate increased slightly, this is expected when traffic spikes. The most telling sign is the remarkable 74%+ increase in page value, almost doubling from the previous period.
ORGANIC TRAFFIC: DOUBLED PAGE VALUE INCREASE
Once again, this is a clear indication that our targeting is paying off. Despite only a modest increase in traffic, users were engaging more with content pages and converting at a higher rate than before. In other words, ProtechComposites.com is attracting more qualified traffic, and the results speak for themselves. Conversions and transactions are on the rise.
Ramp Up Your Organic Digital Marketing Efforts
If you’re running a business in a competitive, niche market, these results are within your reach too. Reach out to our eCommerce SEO experts to discover how we can help you optimize your site, build backlinks, and drive more qualified organic traffic to your store. We’ll design a custom SEO strategy tailored to your business, focused on attracting new customers.
Additionally, we’ll help you leverage other supporting organic and paid marketing efforts like content marketing, social media, email marketing, and PPC management, using a multi-channel approach to grow your customer base.
Consult our collection of eCommerce case studies to learn more, or contact us today at +91 7044444433 or at info@obiyaninfotech.com to get started.