In December 2023, an online flower shop, which had been operating for four years, faced stagnation in its online traffic and sales growth. Despite an extensive product catalog, competitive prices, and reliable delivery services, the business experienced a plateau in customer acquisition and conversion rates. The digital presence of the shop was underwhelming, with website visits averaging around 27,000 monthly. The store's conversion rate was a meager 1.1%, and the average order value hovered at $45. Even worse, the shop's visibility in search engine results was poor, with most organic traffic coming from branded queries rather than organic searches for relevant flower-related keywords.

Lack of Organic Search Visibility: The flower shop ranked on the first page of Google only for branded keywords, while high-intent, non-branded search terms (e.g., “buy flowers online,” “flower delivery near me,” “birthday flowers,” etc.) were dominated by larger competitors. Out of 500 key flower-related search terms, the shop ranked in the top 10 for only 5 keywords, accounting for just 1.2% of the total search volume.

Low Conversion Rate: Though the shop had a healthy volume of returning customers, it struggled to convert new visitors. The conversion rate from new traffic was an abysmal 0.6%, nearly half the industry benchmark of 1.2% for e-commerce flower shops.

Poor Mobile Optimization: Over 65% of users accessed the site via mobile devices, but the website’s mobile experience was subpar. It had a loading time of 6.2 seconds on mobile (the industry standard being 2.5 seconds) and had a bounce rate of 72% on mobile devices.

Weak Content Strategy: The online flower shop lacked a robust content strategy. Blog posts and content pages were minimal and unoptimized, with less than 15% of content containing primary or secondary keywords, leading to weak search engine rankings.

Limited Backlink Profile: The shop’s backlink profile was severely underdeveloped with only 240 referring domains. Most were low-authority sites, and there was a dearth of high-quality backlinks from industry-relevant sources, leading to low domain authority (DA 27).

The first phase focused on comprehensive keyword research and competitor analysis. Over 1,500 keywords were analyzed, identifying opportunities with high search volume and low to medium competition. The top 100 keywords were selected based on their relevance to the product offerings, search volume, and competitor rankings.

A competitor analysis revealed that the top 5 competitors dominated non-branded search terms through strong content strategies, high-quality backlinks, and optimized product pages. Our agency performed a detailed gap analysis to determine which keywords the competitors were ranking for but the flower shop wasn’t.

The flower shop’s existing ranking for high-volume keywords increased from 5 to 29 within the first two months, representing an immediate improvement in organic visibility.

The number of long-tail keywords on the site grew from 300 to 720 within the first quarter, helping target niche customer segments like "luxury flower delivery" and "same-day flower delivery."

The on-page optimization efforts centered on improving site speed, mobile responsiveness, and optimizing existing content. Key changes included:

Implementing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for product pages, reducing mobile load times to 2.1 seconds.

Compressing image sizes across the site, removing redundant CSS and JavaScript code, and enabling browser caching.

Rewriting and optimizing 120 product descriptions with focus keywords while integrating LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords to naturally enhance relevancy.

A/B testing was conducted to evaluate conversion rate optimizations, focusing on product page layouts, call-to-action placements, and mobile checkout flow enhancements.

A content marketing strategy was devised, focusing on evergreen blog posts, flower care guides, and seasonal articles. Our agency published 45 pieces of content over six months, including articles like “The Ultimate Flower Care Guide,” “Top 10 Flowers for Special Occasions,” and seasonal content tied to Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and other key holidays.

The content was optimized for featured snippets and voice search, with structured data markup implemented across the site to enhance the likelihood of appearing in Google’s Knowledge Graph.

We launched a strategic outreach campaign focused on securing high-quality backlinks from authoritative websites in the floral, lifestyle, and e-commerce niches. This included guest posting, collaborating with industry influencers, and participating in relevant forums and blogs.
The team focused on acquiring backlinks from sites with a domain authority (DA) of 50 or higher. We also engaged in broken link building, providing valuable content replacements to sites with dead links.

The agency conducted a comprehensive technical SEO audit that revealed issues with crawlability and site architecture. The shop's XML sitemap was updated, fixing 175 broken links and improving site navigation for search engine bots. The team also worked to eliminate duplicate content and implemented canonical tags where necessary.

Schema markup was expanded to improve how search engines interpreted the shop's products, leading to enhanced SERP listings.

A multi-pronged CRO strategy was implemented, targeting product pages, checkout processes, and user flow optimizations. Key elements included:
Testing different CTA (Call to Action) buttons (e.g., “Order Now” vs. “Buy Now”), which improved product page engagement.

Streamlining the checkout process, reducing steps from 5 to 3, which helped reduce cart abandonment by focusing on guest checkouts and automatic form fills.
Introducing upsell and cross-sell techniques during checkout, suggesting complementary products such as vases, greeting cards, or chocolates.

Given that a significant portion of the flower shop’s business came from local customers, local SEO was prioritized. Our team optimized the shop’s Google Business Profile (GBP), ensuring consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) across 50+ local directories. We also optimized the shop's website for local keywords, focusing on search terms like “flower delivery in [city]” and “local florist.”

Local search visibility increased by 76%, resulting in an additional 9,100 local visitors per month.
GBP actions (e.g., phone calls, requests for directions, and website visits) rose by 82%, driving more in-store pickups and local orders.
The flower shop's local keyword rankings surged, with 28 local keywords moving into the top 3 positions in Google.

By June 2024, the flower shop had undergone a significant transformation thanks to a comprehensive SEO promotion strategy. The business achieved substantial growth in organic traffic, improved conversion rates, and higher revenue. The shop’s total organic traffic grew by 65.4%, reaching 44,620 monthly visitors from search engines alone, with a consistent upward trend post-implementation.

Revenue increased by a staggering 91%, from $185,000 in December 2023 to $354,350 in June 2024. Mobile optimization efforts not only drove new traffic but also cut the mobile bounce rate nearly in half. The enhanced site speed and user experience led to improved customer satisfaction and retention, as evidenced by a 25% growth in returning customer orders.

Moreover, the flower shop’s content strategy paid off significantly, securing featured snippets and increasing visibility for targeted keywords, resulting in stronger brand recognition and authority in the competitive floral industry. The business is now poised for sustained success, with plans to expand its product lines and continue refining its SEO efforts to capitalize on ongoing market opportunities.

In summary, this case exemplifies how a well-executed SEO strategy, coupled with technical optimizations, content marketing, and CRO tactics, can drive remarkable results for an e-commerce business in a competitive niche. By combining data-driven insights with actionable tactics, the online flower shop transitioned from stagnation to flourishing growth, setting a strong foundation for continued success.