Using eCommerce SEO to increase the organic visibility of the UK’s #1 kitchen knife shop by 626% & achieve an ROI of 1100%…

KitchenKnives.co.uk is the UK’s leading eCommerce retailer of quality kitchen knives, tools and cookware, and the company dates back to 1899 when it was first established by Peter Maturi. Today, the store trades exclusively online to the UK market, supplying products from established brands including Global Knives, Robert Welch, Sabatier, Wusthof and more.

In early 2017, the former Peter Maturi brand underwent a transformation to become Kitchen Knives, initially relying on paid marketing channels to drive revenue and sales.

However, amidst increasing click costs and a hunger for growth, there became a necessity to roll out an aggressive SEO strategy throughout 2019 to position the eCommerce retailer at the top of the SERPs for key search terms and Digitaloft were appointed as the agency put in place to take the brand to the next level.

In early 2019, Kitchen Knives lacked the organic presence which many of their established competitors were enjoying and the agency was challenged with delivering a Year on Year increase in organic traffic, and associated revenue, of at least 50%. 

We knew that to drive success in any competitive eCommerce sector; there needs to be a core focus across the three key pillars of SEO; solid technical foundations, great content & great links.

Kicking off the campaign, we began to develop a 12-month strategy roadmap based around data and insights collected through an extensive competitor analysis project; benchmarking against Lakeland, Harts of Stur and Milly’s Cookshop – 3 key brands competing in the space from an organic perspective.

Our growth strategy saw us map out an approach which would see us take three key paths to drive success:

• Improving the site’s technical and on-page SEO, initially based around a prioritised audit to determine areas for improvement and a roadmap to work on alongside their developer. We knew opportunities existed to extensively improve the visibility of category pages across brand-specific (e.g ‘Global Knives’) search terms as well as generic product category terms (e.g. ‘paring knives’). This was to include working with the brand’s in-house design team, and developer, to improve top-level brand pages from a UX perspective.
• Work with the client’s in-house chef director to launch and build up a resource hub; producing expert-led guides to build up authority content and attract top of the funnel visibility, alongside helping to create multiple pieces of supporting content to power the rankings of category and subcategory pages.
• Utilise digital PR to earn great links to build authority and contribute to increased organic visibility.

Our initial audit project saw us prioritise technical and on-page SEO work in the early months, placing a focus across:

• Full title tag rewrites across categories and subcategories were rolled out to better target variant search terms, identified through Search Console to drive quick wins.
• Working to restructure a number of brand level subcategories to resolve keyword cannibalization issues, using a combination of removal and redirection and canonicalization to sort these.
• An improved internal linking structure was rolled out to create an optimal contextual association between product, category and subcategory pages.
• Brand pages were fully redesigned and developed by the brand’s in-house team to offer an improved user experience and content and a structure that better aligned with searcher intent.

We worked to plan, write and work with their chef for expert tips to launch the new ‘knife guides hub’ – a dedicated resource centre for educational content. Throughout 2019, we launched a series of 26 guides, including:

• A simple guide to caring for your kitchen knives
• How to sharpen kitchen knives at home
• When is it time to replace kitchen knives?

In a bid to earn top-tier links from the press, we launched a digital PR campaign – The Cheapest Fine Dining Spots in the UK – which utilised restaurant pricing alongside the latest list of Michelin Restaurants in the UK to reveal which offer the most affordable fine dining options.

The campaign earned a total of 12 great links from publications including Standard, The Handbook, Culture Whisperer & Great British Food Awards.

Our goal increase Year on Year organic traffic, and revenue, by at least 50%. 

Across 2019, organic visibility saw growth of 626%

A solid eCommerce SEO strategy has seen the brand’s organic visibility increase by 626% between April 2019 and April 2020:

As of April 2020, the site ranks in the top 3 positions on Google for 157 keywords, up from 67 in April 2019; an increase of 137%.

Actual organic search traffic increases over the 12 month period increased by 108%, and associated revenue through the channel saw a growth of 102%.

Based on the investment made, the campaign has delivered an ROI of 1100% across the year; with these returns continuing to increase as the site’s performance goes from strength to strength.

The site now holds top ranking positions on Google for a whole host of competitive, commercially-focused search terms, including:

#1 – Kitchen Knife Sets (8,100 monthly searches)
#1 – Meat Cleavers (4,400 monthly searches)
#1 – Paring Knives (2,900 monthly searches)
#1 – Wusthof Knives (1,900 monthly searches)
#1 – Sabatier Knife Set (1,600 monthly searches)
#2 – Chefs Knives (9,900 monthly searches)
#2 – Global Knives (9,900 monthly searches)