The Client
FootActive saw a 72.44% drop in organic search visibility because of the 2018 Medic update, which highlighted a lack of EAT. Our objective was to recover the site from the algorithm update by improving its search visibility, resulting in an increase in organic traffic and revenue. Our SEO objectives were as follows:

The Objectives




The Strategy
Redesigned and migrated the website from Magento 1 to Magento 2 to improve the look and feel of the site with user experience at the forefront.
Recreated the content on the top driving pages to make this more targeted towards the main industry terms.
Assisted with the addition of a ‘foot problems’ section on the site, to showcase the expertise of the brand by providing in-depth and insightful information for users.
Continued to expand this foot problem section over time based on the enquiries received by customers and related search queries.
Created an authoritative offsite strategy focusing on health and medical sites to improve the site’s authority.
Improved the customer journey from the landing page through to checkout completion by analysing heatmapping intelligence, reviewing customer behaviour and making design and functionality adjustments.
The Campaign
- FootActive were significantly impacted by the 2018 Medic Update and lost over 50% of their visibility and monthly traffic/revenue to go with that. They were struggling with this hit and needed an SEO campaign which offered a way to recover and exceed their previous market positioning. After capitalising on the quieter period to improve the site’s overall look, feel and user experience with a brand-new redesign and launch, we turned to the content and authority the site was attracting.
- This particular industry is competitive, with more closely aligned competitors such as Dr Scholl taking up a large proportion of the market, but also the likes of Amazon and eBay ranking prominently for some of the main target terms such as ‘foot insoles’, ‘orthotic insoles’, and ‘orthopaedic insoles’.
- The first step towards recovery was to review the site from an E-A-T perspective, in line with the 2018 algorithm update we needed to ensure that the site’s content was showcasing the brand’s expertise and authority in the industry. We targeted the home page and arch support insoles pages primarily as these were the two top traffic driving pages and the ones that targeted transactional intent more so. We completely restructured, rewrote, and re-audited the content on these pages in order to ensure that not only were they well optimised, but they were showcasing the site’s authority in the field. We saw a significant uplift from this exercise alone, but we knew it wasn’t enough to keep the momentum going.
- We then we turned our attention to the foot problem pages to further enhance the site’s relevance and showcase their expertise. We built this section out with new foot problem pages relevant to the products sold on the site. This allowed us to better target informational search intent and allow us to better nurture customers over time from the point of interest to conversion. We also worked closely alongside the paid media team to highlight any new content opportunities based on sales performance of particular keywords or pages which we weren’t necessarily focusing on as part of the SEO campaign.
- The content remained an ongoing focus, however there was also the authority building which we needed to look at closely. The authority of the site was good, but the brand needed more visibility to better compete with the likes of Amazon and eBay. Therefore, we crafted some well-thought-out digital PR campaigns which became a core component of the integrated strategy.
Results.
Our campaign allowed FootActive to recover their visibility and improve upon it by a further 186.56%.
This led to the business capturing more traffic (212.62% increase in new users) and sales (386.41% increase in transactions) during the Covid-19 period.
FootActive’s easy-to-use eCommerce site assisted individuals in purchasing products (348.17% increase in revenue) they may not have been able to obtain during lockdown.
This was no mean feat (no pun intended!) as we were competing with Amazon, Scholl and eBay and are now successfully ranking in Position 1 across all main search terms for the business.
Do you want to build an award-winning SEO campaign?

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