Case Study: Best Barns

Step 1: Competitor Analysis

Before Best Barns became our client, we asked them to provide us with a list of their top competitors. With this information we performed detailed competitive analysis to understand what they would be up against if they decided to move forward with a website and digital marketing strategy. This analysis told us that the competition was fierce, and the digital landscape was dominated by a few major players.

These competitors had large sites with a lot of content, high domain authority, and a robust backlink profile. They also engaged in PPC advertising. We reported back to Best Barns with our findings, which made it all the more apparent that they were behind in the game having not participated in any digital marketing strategy prior to this.

We formulated a plan that would involve data-based keyword content implementation, online PR and networking, and a website that clearly highlighted what the company’s value proposition is.

Step 2: Web Design & Development

Best Barns wanted to create a website that not only looked visually appealing, but was also very information-rich. We began by assisting them in their rebrand with a new style guide that uses distinguishing colors and a recognizable logo.

Many weeks of planning went into the design of the website, and a fully collaborative approach was employed as we stayed in constant communication with their marketing department to ensure we were capturing the brand voice in the website messaging.

Besides wanting an attractive website that informed their potential customers, they wanted to place a major focus on driving traffic to their retail partners where customers could purchase their products. While Best Barns does not sell direct, it was important to deliver a website that still behaved like an e-commerce site, detailing all the product functions and features.

We produced what we would call a hybrid e-commerce site, where the user interface and journey feels like a purchase flow, but instead of adding to a cart, users are directed to the product pages of the Best Barns retailers where they can purchase online.

Additionally, Best Barns wanted to move their database of product documentation from an external web portal and incorporate it into the new site. We structured easy to find documents pages with search functionality to help users quickly find what they are looking for.

Step 3: Organic SEO Management

As with all websites we create, technical and on-page SEO metrics were optimized out of the gate. Since the Best Barns site was very informative and included features such as reviews, FAQs, product pages, etc, it was paramount to add detailed schema markup to each necessary page. This critical step would come in handy in the early weeks after site launch because it helped solve the first problem Best Barns faced with the site.

Speaking of the first problem, Best Barns struggled to gain traction in search results initially because they were competing with their retail partners for their own brand name. When someone searched Best Barns, their retail partners came up ahead of them. This was not a major problem, as we wanted to drive traffic to those sites for high-buying-intent visitors anyway. Where it was problematic was that the retail partners did not provide the information depth of the new Best Barns site. For brand awareness, we needed Best Barns to rank for its own brand name so the website could educate potential customers on the products.

Schema markup played a major role in fixing this problem, as it first started to help the site gain traction for search terms like “Best Barns Reviews”. Following the traffic uptick from that particular term, the site began to outrank their retail partners for product-related searches. After that, it was off to the races.

We introduced initial content campaigns focused on keywords that Best Barns’ main competitors were successfully using to drive traffic to their sites. Within the first 6 months, Best Barns was seeing excellent keyword position improvements, jumping onto page 1 for many of these targeted terms.

We simultaneously went to work on helping them begin to accumulate a backlink profile, securing backlinks from retail partners and material suppliers, each with well established domain authorities in the same niche as Best Barns. These types of niche-specific backlinks not only are a signal to Google to boost the Best Barns site in search, but they also directly improve traffic through referral sources.

The Results: Over 3,000 Clicks to Buy-Pages in First 3 Months

All of the ranking and positioning data is nice, but what really matters is revenue and monetary results. We tracked outbound clicks from the site to buy pages on retail partner websites. These results were phenomenal. This, combined with other data such as dwell time on page really provided indication that the strategy was working:

• People were finding the site due to increasing search result rankings
• People were staying on the site longer than the average engagement time
• People were clicking the “Where to Buy” links at a high rate

These results were attributed to a well-thought-out plan for the website design and SEO strategy. The company’s sales decline has started to turn around as more people are becoming aware of the brand and its unique value proposition. User engagement time indicates that the design of the site is appealing and the content is not only informative, but does a good job of answering their questions. The high rate of outbound clicks to the retail partner buy pages indicates the Best Barns site is doing a good job of selling the product.

The Supporting Data

The most important data to the client was the number of outbound clicks from the site to their retailer partners buy pages. These clicks indicate high purchase intent, and signal that the website is driving traffic to the retailers. This was confirmed by retailer feedback that they have seen increased interest in the Best Barns products since the time period coinciding with the launch of the site, and also further supported by Best Barns’ rising sales numbers.

Outbound Clicks from Best Barns Site to Retailer Buy Pages

Over these 3 months which was shortly after site launch, the numbers were as follows, and this data represents a nearly 50% increase in high purchase intent clicks over the 3 month period:

Google Search Console Data, First 4 Months

This data clearly displays the early struggles of a new website, as it struggled to get clicks in the first 2 months from mid March to mid May. This was the first 2 months of the site being active, before much of the SEO work had a chance to bear fruit. These early struggles are important to note, because these results could very well have continued without proper SEO work.

However, the early lack of results did not continue. In the following equal time span from mid May to mid July, clicks skyrocketed by a massive 1233% while average position of search results dropped. These results tie into the above outbound click to retailer buy pages.

AI Search Results: From No Website to Ranking in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews

We implemented tactics to increase the likelihood of AI algorithms displaying the Best Barns site in their results. The results speak for themselves. The above screenshots show a ChatGPT search for “Who are the best shed manufacturers”. The algorithm listed 4, and features Best Barns as one of them. See the actual result for yourself here: https://chatgpt.com/share/690250e9-61ac-8000-801e-6782944d7736

Google’s AI algorithm also liked what we did, shown here in this example of the same search we put into ChatGPT for “Who are the best shed manufacturers”. Best Barns is not only featured, but the results direct the user where to buy the products at Best Barns’ retailers.

Rich Results Shown for Best Barns

The schema markup we implemented on Best Barns’ site made rich results like this more likely to appear. These kinds of search results show the user a sneak peak into what the website is about before clicking, and also make the search result more enticing to click. Rich results like these most likely contribute to the 5.5% click-through-rate they are experiencing.

Strong User Engagement Times on Product Pages

The universal average for user engagement time per site visit is 54 seconds. Best Barns’ site is averaging 90 seconds on organic visits. Organic visits mean visits that come from organic search, not from PPC ads or clicks from other sites such as social media or their retailer sites. When engagement time is good on organic sessions, it means the content of the site is addressing the user’s search intent.

We spent a lot of time researching user search intent for Best Barns and carefully created pages specifically designed to match the search intent of users. That effort is paying off in data shown in this report, and Best Barns has benefited from the strong engagement time, which is a signal to search engines to increase the rank of the site.