Google SearchPostclick Furniture retail

How Hudson Furniture beat a Google penalty and grew organic revenue 140%

An offshore link builder earned Hudson Furniture a Penguin penalty and their traffic halved twice. A platform migration, clean-up and reconsideration request didn't just recover it: visibility rose 220% and organic revenue 140%.

I Want Results Like This Still improving each month
A designer sketching a furniture design at Hudson Furniture
220%Google visibility
140%Organic revenueImproving each month
84%Organic traffic
400+Keywords top of page 1
01

The problem

Hudson Furniture came to us in early 2016 with a problem another agency had created. An offshore outfit had been hired for SEO link building and the result was a Penguin penalty. Organic traffic had halved by the end of 2015 and halved again by mid 2016. Things were looking grim.

Making it harder, their custom CMS was archaic. There was almost no flexibility for optimisation or customisation, so implementing SEO recommendations was near impossible. The brief went beyond removing the penalty and recovering the lost traffic: Hudson wanted to beat the numbers they'd had before it hit.

What we were up againstA Penguin penalty from offshore link buildingOrganic traffic halved, then halved againAn archaic custom CMS that blocked SEO changes
Sessions from August 2015 to February 2016: the slide that followed the Google penalty.
Sessions from August 2015 to February 2016: the slide that followed the Google penalty.
02

What we did

Reversing the damage was no small task. We rolled out an end-to-end SEO strategy: rebuild and migrate the site to a new ecommerce platform, then onsite optimisation with fresh copy, a backlink audit and clean-up, and ongoing link building to replace what had been disavowed.

1Migrated to ShopifyThe archaic platform had to go. We recommended Shopify for its flexibility and SEO friendliness, and project managed the move from design through to migration.
2Keyword research and mappingWe identified the terms worth targeting, then mapped them so every page had the right keyword to own.
3New copy for every key categoryCategory and sub-category pages were rewritten using the insights from the keyword research.
4Link audit, disavow and reconsiderationDozens of questionable backlinks were disavowed and replaced with links from authoritative sites and publications. A reconsideration request went to Google.
The Hudson Furniture homepage, with custom-made timber furniture and the category range front and centre.
The Hudson Furniture homepage, with custom-made timber furniture and the category range front and centre.
03

The results

We didn't just get Hudson Furniture's traffic and rankings back, we went well past the old numbers. Overall Google visibility increased 220%, organic traffic rose 84% and organic revenue climbed 140%, a figure that is still improving month on month.

Keyword movement
Search termBeforeNow
sleigh beds—1
four poster beds—1
Keywords in positions 1 to 3 are up 60%, with the main money terms in the top spot and over 400 keywords now settled at the top of page one.
Organic traffic, early 2016 to February 2019: a steady climb out of the penalty to about 2,500 monthly visits.
Organic traffic, early 2016 to February 2019: a steady climb out of the penalty to about 2,500 monthly visits.

The campaign keeps improving every month. With the penalty behind them and a platform we can actually work with, the focus now is compounding those rankings across the rest of the range.

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