When Peter Rota, an experienced SEO consultant, first started working with an e-commerce client in April 2024, they were in desperate need of a structured SEO strategy.
Their website ranked for only 157 keywords, had no blog content, and virtually no organic traffic.
Fast forward nine months:
- Keyword rankings skyrocketed to nearly 5,500—a 3,403% increase.
- Organic traffic surged from 30 to over 200 clicks per day.
- They celebrated their best sales year ever.
Peter attributes a large part of this success to Surfer.
The Challenge: No Content, No Rankings, No SEO Strategy
Peter Rota has been a Surfer user since 2019, using the tool across various verticals, from e-commerce to local SEO and even affiliate projects.
When he took on this e-commerce client, he immediately saw a massive opportunity to build their SEO from the ground up.
“They hadn’t really been creating blog content before or doing much SEO,” Peter explained during our call. “When I started working with them, they were ranked for around 157 keywords. Now, we’re on the cusp of almost 5,500.”
The company needed a strategy to increase visibility, drive traffic, and boost sales.
The Strategy: A Content-Driven SEO Makeover
Peter implemented a structured SEO approach using Surfer. Let’s break it down.
1. Start With an SEO Content Audit
First, Peter conducted a comprehensive SEO audit to identify existing gaps and opportunities in his client’s e-commerce site.
Surfer’s Content Audit makes it easy to spot such opportunities.
By connecting your Google Search Console account you can see at a glance how your pages are performing, and which would benefit from a boost.
Look for pages with declining metrics. If their content score is also low, then there is room for improvement. These are the pages that can benefit the most from a content refresh.
You can easily spot these pages inside Surfer by that fiery sign.
🔥These pages are most likely to get you the best traffic increase in the least amount of time.
For instance, “vintage matches” is already ranking in position 5.4, getting decent impressions and traffic - albeit declining. It also has a content score of only 24, which means there is room for improvement.
In the 🔥Recommendations tab you can find a list of these high potential keywords.
The next step is to optimize these pages.
2. Optimize Existing Content
Your existing content has already been out there for a while, gathering views and clicks and hopefully a few backlinks. A little boost can go a long way. You’re not starting from scratch.
It is a lot of better optimizing the title tags, H1s, and internal links.
- Peter Rota, SEO Consultant
These are three key on-page SEO elements to focus on when optimizing your content and establish a strong on-page foundation.
Surfer’s Content Editor guidelines make it easy to optimize product pages.
Look at this category page on “dry cat food” with a content score of 39. It lacks important terms like “best dry cat foods” and doesn’t touch upon topics like “artificial preservatives”.
Here's what to do:
- Include your main keyword in the H1 and title tag.
- Include the main keyword and its variations in H2, H3, and H4s.
- Include relevant keywords throughout your content.
You can incorporate these keywords manually or use the Auto-optimize feature. Auto-optimize will scan your content and add these terms where it makes sense.
In this case, Auto-optimize boosted the content score from 39 to 65 by optimizing seven sections and adding 76 entities.
You can compare the before and after versions and make any necessary edits.
Additionally, Peter worked on improving internal linking, ensuring that pages connected logically and search engines could easily index important content.
I’m a big proponent of internal linking, so I try to get at least 4-5 internal links per post.
- Peter Rota, SEO Consultant
As your e-commerce site grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up with which pages to link to. That’s why internal linking is often overlooked, which is a big mistake as it’s one of the best ways to see quick SEO gains.
With Surfer you don’t have to worry about that, no matter how big your site gets.
The Insert internal links feature scans your site and adds relevant links to your content, using properly-optimized anchor text.
Simple as that. Now you never have to skip internal linking.
3. Build a Content Strategy
With initial optimizations complete, Peter focused on building a structured, content-driven SEO strategy tailored to his e-commerce client’s audience.
Peter created and published 5-6 blog posts monthly, targeting informational and product-related queries.
His approach emphasized answering questions and providing value to readers, aligning closely with customer intent.
“I tend to focus more on what’s going to educate the consumer and other things they may be interested in”, Peter explained.
To find relevant topics, use Surfer’s Topical Map.
For instance, Topical Map has identified 81 topics related to “pet supplies”. Highlighted, you can see lucrative keywords like “best deal pet supplies”.
These keywords in red have low keyword difficulty and decent search volume. This way you can build a winning content plan.
“I also use the SERP Analyzer a lot to better understand competitors,” Peter explained. “One of my main clients doesn’t have significantly better content, but they rank higher because they have more domain authority.”
Surfer helped me figure out how much more content, keywords, and entities we need to rank.
- Peter Rota, SEO Consultant
4. Create Top-performing Content
Peter uses Surfer’s Content Editor to optimize content for keyword and entity relevance.
I don't obsess over getting 100, but I try to make sure I'm better than the average.
- Peter Rota, SEO Consultant
And that’s a point we stress over and over.
Let’s say you’re writing about “B3 supplements”. These are recommended keywords to include in your content because they touch upon the most important aspects of the topic.
You can also head to the Topics tab inside the Content Editor to see these keywords in the form of facts to include.
We analyzed our own blog and found that articles which cover more facts rank for more keywords.
That’s because comprehensive content ranks better.
Peter also ensures each post includes 4-5 internal links to enhance topic authority. For that you can rely on Insert internal links.
Top-performing content is not only meant to attract traffic. It’s intended to convert.
I try to make it easier for people to convert and get what they need.
- Peter Rota, SEO Consultant
One technique he uses to drive content conversions is integrating CTAs and banners that move readers toward relevant product categories.
The Results: 3,403% Increase in Rankings & Best Sales Year Ever
With a structured SEO strategy in place and consistent publishing, the e-commerce site saw massive growth in keyword rankings and organic traffic.
✅ Keyword rankings grew from 157 to nearly 5,500
✅ Organic traffic grew from around 30 to over 200 clicks per day
This growth translated to tangible business results.
They experienced the best sales year ever.
The SEO impact has been significant for their bottom line. Much of this success comes from using Surfer to create high-performing content.
- Peter Rota, SEO Consultant
Final Thoughts
Peter’s experience shows that the right tools and a solid content strategy can transform a struggling website into a high-ranking, revenue-generating machine—even in competitive e-commerce verticals.
If you want to learn more about optimizing your e-commerce site, watch our full tutorial 👇
Want to achieve similar results? Try Surfer today.
