Boosting leading beer brand’s ecommerce presence

Black Sheep Brewery is one of the most well-known breweries in both Yorkshire and across the UK. And while they have brand recognition within pubs across the country, they weren’t managing to sell as many products as they would have liked through their ecommerce website.

Key information

Organic revenue up 40% year on year
£££

The Challenge

Black Sheep knew they had a good product. Since 1992, they have succeeded in selling it by the pint load. But there was a disconnect between the flowing ale from pub taps and the click of a mouse on their ecommerce site.

Edge45® was brought in to help boost online sales across their key beer products – from their famous Black Sheep Ale to special editions like Burrow’s Blonde Beer.

The Edge45® Approach

We tackled their website from two angles – technical SEO and on page content. As an ecommerce SEO agency, we knew that have a technically sound website was equally as important as having relevant and optimised copy on key money driving pages.

Our technical audits found:

  • Security risks: Over 100 pages were loading as HTTP as well as HTTPS, posing a security risk and causing some content duplication.
  • Status code errors: We discovered 78 404 errors and 28 internal 301 redirects.
  • Lack of internal linking: Some key sections didn’t have any internal linking, while breadcrumbs weren’t visible.
  • CLS issues: Eight pages were flagged as having poor Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

On a content front, we also found:

  • Lack of home page content: There was little content on the homepage to target key search terms and showcase the brand’s USPs.
  • Collection page content was thin: Content on collection pages didn’t add context or relevancy to the page, while product USPs weren’t being highlighted.
  • Blog content missing: While Black Sheep provided plenty of content around their company, they were lacking guides that could help inform users about different beer types, flavour profiles and the history of their range of beers.

Our tactics

We tackled each issues one-by-one working with the client’s in-house development and marketing teams when and where necessary. This approach meant we could implement fixes fast.

  • Security risks: We worked with the developers to implement a redirect rule for all HTTP URLs were redirected to their HTTPS equivalents.
  • Status code errors: Edge45® provided changes for their developers to implement to remove the 404 errors and update any internal linking to any 303 redirect URLs.
  • Lack of internal linking: We provided the developer with a list of recommendations including adding visible breadcrumbs and updating the navigation.
  • CLS issues: We listed the issues and provided the developer clear actions to remove the CLS problems.

On the content front, we addressed the following issues:

  • Lack of home page content: Adding highly optimised and relevant homepage content that also included the brand’s USPs.
  • Collection page content was thin: Expanded content on collection pages and again, highlighted their USPs.
  • Blog content missing: Provided a list of content titles that were highly relevant to their core offering and targeted high volume search terms.

Our Results

  • Organic revenue up 40% year on year
  • Visibility increased by 76%
  • Number of page 1 rankings increased 91%
  • Ranked 2 for ‘beer gifts’ (SV 5,400) – weren’t previously ranking for this term
  • Ranked 3 for ‘pale ale’ (SV 4,400) – weren’t previously ranking for this term
  • Organic users up 14% year on year
  • Non-brand clicks up 186% year on year
  • Homepage conversions up 218%

If your online store isn’t connecting with your audience, or is languishing on page 3 of Google, we can help you get found again, driving valuable traffic to high converting pages and boosting your revenue. Speak with our ecommerce SEO specialists today.

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