- organic search
When iconic ceramics and pottery producer Denby first approached us seeking help with their search visibility in 2020, the brand had two separate sites for the UK and the US: denbypottery.com (UK) and denbyusa.com (US). They wanted to improve organic search performance in both territories, so we recommended that they migrate the latter to the former.
From the outset, the denbypottery.com domain was the more authoritative of the two sites. By migrating denbyusa.com to this domain, we could help Denby compete in the US market, which was — and still is — considerably more competitive than the UK.
To further increase the new domain’s authority and help it compete in the US search results, we worked to improve the site’s US backlink profile, as well as optimising the site for American search terms.
Since the migration, Denby has since seen considerable improvements in organic search performance. Denbypottery.com has overtaken the old US domain in US SERPs, all while retaining the same levels of visibility.
Looking at front-page keywords across the course of the campaign, we can see that the migration has resulted in a 53% (+115) increase in this ranking group.
Drilling down specifically into the top 3 positions, we can see a 32% (+22) increase from pre-migration levels.
By migrating the site to a more authoritative domain, and deploying a US-specific content and outreach strategy, we were able to help Denby compete in an extremely competitive market.
Our strategy for the US market was effectively the same as the UK: we optimised category content, fixed legacy technical issues, and looked to build links to the site. This would help the domain compete in the crowded US market.
The biggest technical SEO fix in our strategy for Denby US was the migration to denbypottery.com as a sub-folder, supported by hreflang tags. This migration took place in August 2021, and we’ve since seen considerable improvements in organic search performance.
To optimise the site for US-specific queries, our SEO copywriters performed keyword research for US territories. We then used this research to ‘translate’ the content we produced for the UK version of the site, ensuring it was optimised for US searchers.
Naturally, there are a number of cultural and language differences between the two territories, so our team made sure to tailor their copy to an American audience. Denby is less well-known in the US than in the UK, so we took care to highlight the brand’s British heritage and handmade products, to help set them apart from their competitors and increase brand awareness among American consumers.
As one of our key goals for this campaign was boosting domain authority, a considerable portion of our strategy was directed towards outreach and link-building. The client asked us to target a similar demographic to our campaign for Denby UK, but using topics that were highly relevant to an American audience.
Our Outreach team pitched content that would appeal to the US market, using the latest trends, seasonal events, and regionally-specific content to gain linking coverage on top sites.
Digital PR example: Which classic Christmas drink is most popular in your state?
This highly successful campaign used original Google Trends research to uncover the most popular festive drinks in each state. We then produced a colourful and Christmassy graphic to display the data, along with an engaging release to provide additional context.
We took care to ensure the content was thoroughly researched with plenty of crowd-pleasing regional references, so the piece would resonate with audiences across all states. Both national and regional publications loved this topic, and the site gained links on high DA sites, including The Takeout (DA 76), South Florida Reporter (DA 57), Mass Live (DA 85), Yahoo (DA 95), and Mashed (DA 72).
“I have been really impressed with the outreach work that Glass have undertaken for us. The team are extremely pro-active and bring a lot of new opportunities to us with high quality editorial pieces, articles, and links. They are always really keen to understand what our business and campaign focuses are, so that they can help improve our visibility in the right areas, and reporting on the results is clear and transparent.
The standard of the work is always high — there’s rarely many updates to make to their pieces. Communication with the team is very easy and where we have provided feedback they’ve been really responsive and taken comments on board. They are a lovely team to work with.”
Get in touch today to find out how our content, outreach and technical SEO specialists could help you improve your Google rankings.
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