Case Study :: SEO Longform Content
Why is traffic so low to these SEO pages and how can we improve their SEO relevance?
The Jewelry Education Sitelet was built primarily for SEO content, however new pages have been added over time without concern for content grouping or hierarchy. The pages themselves contained many links to a variety of content, therefore undermining the focused keyword intention. In addition, the SEO terms that were optimized for were not current, and the new site structure that we were tasked with generating would have to reflect the most relevant keywords.
FigJam board showing the original crowded landing page, which lacked hierarchy or grouping.
FigJam Sitemap: We isolated all the linked text to determine the keyword distribution across the sitelet.
Phase 1: Site Map for Current Experience
Landing Page Audit
The team worked with the SEO team to align on the most important content and ensure the revised site structure reflected the way a customer would look for jewelry-related content.
The busy landing page had little hierarchy and there was no grouping of categories and sub-categories to help the user make sense of the content-heavy page.
SEO Keyword analysis
We listed the links present on each page and assessed whether they accurately reflected the recommended SEO content, as well as the customer’s intent.
We found that in addition to highly focused keywords relating to the content, the copy also contained hyperlinks for keywords that were assigned to other pages. Therefore the intended keyword relevance was diminished.
Adobe XD Pattern Library
Phase 2: Developing the pattern library
How to accomodate large amounts of copy?
The existing pattern library for Macy’s Sitelets limited the amount of copy that could featured in a given promotional block. They would not be able to contain larger amounts of copy for SEO optimization.
The other consideration was the range of design solutions these modules would need to allow for such as portrait or landscape images.
Phase 3: Implementation
We eliminated pages that represented keywords that no longer ranked highly. We eliminated the interstitial jewelry styles sub-landing page, and just linked directly from the landing page to necklace, earrings, bracelets and ring styles pages.
For the remainder of the landing page, we created simplified sections for Engagement & Wedding Rings, Types of Metals, Gemstones, Guide to Watches (new), and Jewelry Cleaning and Organization.
We took the opportunity on the Ring Styles page to link to the Engagement and Wedding Rings Page to promote internal linking and SEO relevancy.
Summary
Landing Page — Before
The original landing page was a crowded and lacked hierarchy or content grouping to help the user quickly comprehend the options available to them. In addition, the subordinate pages were crammed with a diverse range of keywords, diluting the relevance of the most important ones.
Landing Page — After
With increased whitespace, engaging photography, a persistent nav with links to each section and intuitive content grouping, the new landing page reflects the overall site structure & reduces the cognitive load on the user.