We love our dogs. We are a nation of dog lovers. Our pets are treated like members of the family and deserve the absolute best, and this is no exception when it comes to food. New and existing nutritionally minded dog owners are always looking for an alternative to dry feeding, with a particular emphasis on working dog breeds, who lead extraordinary lives in comparison to pet dogs, with extreme demands placed on their body every day.
ProDog Raw see nutrition as the foundation of health and happiness, and have made it their mission to create outstanding, species-specific raw dog food and powerful, natural support supplements, all convenient and affordable - regardless of how big their appetite.
They came to us with a clear goal: Increase their profile, spread the word on their awesome nutritious product range and increase organic search traffic to their website.
But how do you help a superb brand that’s been burned by bad SEOs in the past?
Before this year, ProDog Raw had experienced some less than fruitful SEO advice and had never considered working with an SEO agency that had partner networks in Digital PR.
Like many direct-to-consumer (D2C) start-ups who just don’t have the time and resource to properly underpin a marketing strategy with the all-important D2C SEO plan, their digital marketing focus was primarily spent on paid media spots (Google Ads, Social Media Ads) and their own website digital creative.
Over a six-month timeline, we achieved:
- ProDog’s goal to rank on page one for key search term ‘raw dog food’ for the first time in company history (started project at bottom of page three).
- 100+ links from Digital PR activity.
- Doubled year on year organic traffic (as of Jan-Aug 2021).
- Claimed position one for ‘raw food calculator’ and ‘raw dog food calculator’ search terms.
SEEDED Digital and Radioactive PR successfully provided a seamless integration between PR and SEO which ultimately led to ProDog Raw achieving something it never had – page one of Google for its key search term – alongside exceeded all other set objectives.
This is how we did it
Our approached focused on 3 core areas: content, technical SEO and page design.
Content
Through keyword research, we reassessed the keyword universe ProDog were targeting, performing a comprehensive competitor content analysis on both the ecommerce and article and blog pages on the website. This allowed us to identify opportunities for ProDog to compete on specific keywords and search terms, highlighting the keywords that needed to be built into the sites content.
We then completed a thorough hub and spoke content structure, mapping out how this should incorporate both the article and blog sides of the site. We then deduplicated pages of fragmented content that were poorly targeted, thin and covered elsewhere on the site.
Finally, we expanded rich snippet targeting e.g., influencing FAQs with an FAQ markup.
Technical SEO
Working with the ProDog development team, we reviewed the technical structure of the website to address mobile friendly issues. As part of this, we worked to implement different WordPress plugins to optimise for site speed and Googles core web vitals.
Page Design
Once the technical elements of the site were corrected, we redesigned the commerce category pages and expanded on an initial small set of product range category pages to a much broader protein targeting set of sub-characters (such has different products, product flavours etc.)
We then pulled in the keyword research and content analysis to redesign the core content pillar pages to be more question orientated and more conversational in style, as well as streamlining the content, for site speed and a useability point of view.
Work with our partner Radioactive on Digital PR
On the Digital PR side, we ran an ‘ahrefs' audit on key competitors to see backlink volume and referring sites which helped us identify low-hanging fruit to go after and big-ticket sites needed to leapfrog competitors.
Where possible, all PR output included links to the new product and/or category pages produced from the SEO work, or to rich content e.g. the Raw Dog Food Calculator, to ensure optimum value.
The Digital PR machine then worked on valid stories that linked back to the site and these new content pages. Examples include ‘Canine Critics: Get your dog paid to taste test raw food’, ‘Do dog pictures really calm you down? Get paid to look at photos of puppies in study’ and ‘Dog Instagram Rich List
Interested in finding out more about our award winning work and how working with SEEDED Digital could help you?
Please feel free to get in touch via our contact form at the bottom of this page or email us via info@seeded.digital.
Implementation
SEO and Digital PR worked seamlessly during this initial six-month campaign to deliver on one key objective for the client – page one for ‘raw dog food’.
For SEO, the biggest challenge faced was to remove the roadblocks between the site and that page one spot – with the ‘Knowledge Centre’ a big part of that problem. Fifty+ pages of content that was fragmented and poorly optimised were consolidated and reconstituted onto fewer, richer pillar pages. ProDog produces a lot of great content but without the structural planning behind it has often duplicated and fragmented content unnecessarily. By going through the process mentioned we’re making sure that they can leverage the positive why not getting in their own way when it comes to search.
From a link-building perspective we worked very closely with ProDog and our partner Radioactive to ensure the link building campaigns brought in relevant as well as authoritative links. We also worked hard from an onsite perspective to ensure internal link equity was directed to where it was needed most, to better facilitate ranking for our important key terms, not least, ‘Raw Dog Food’.
An Award-Winning Result
While work on the site is ongoing, ProDog Raw now has trust in what great Search, SEO and Digital PR can achieve, and this campaign is an example of what a true partnership between SEO, PR, and a client willing to learn and listen, can collectively achieve.
Achieving page one for ProDog’s key consideration term ‘raw dog food’ after just four months’ work was a real win. ProDog Raw’s food calculator page is now position one, page one again for ‘raw food calculator’ and ‘raw dog food calculator’ following a site migration and restructure. The difference between page one or not in terms of traffic and revenue is huge, and we’re so very proud of the way we worked to get them where they needed to be.
The collaboration of SEEDED Digital and Radioactive PR was recognised in November 2021 by We Are Search as we won the UK Search Award for Best Integrated Campaign for ProDog Raw.
This was the ‘pawfect’ way to celebrate hitting such an important milestone for ProDog Raw 😊
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About Seeded Digital
We're a small and fiercely independent search marketing agency with our own unique way of doing things. We enjoy working with like minded start-ups, scale-ups and SME’s who prioritise getting things implemented and getting results. We're based in London and service clients UK-wide.