Organic search engine optimisation
Even organic aromatherapy products need a little help from time to time to help grow their rankings in the search engines
Florame Organic Aromatherapy Search Engine Optimisation
The doctor's notes
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a rapidly growing market that is matched with the increased production/manufacture of organic produce. Florame organic aromatherapy was setup in France with the aim of delivering high-quality purely organic aromatherapy products direct to the consumer.
We were approached by the UK division of Florame to improve their search engine ranking within the UK search results as their presence was often non-existent or so deep into the results that potential customers would never find the website.
On investigating Florame organic aromatherapy's website we identified many issues with the site’s coding that would impact on both the site’s search engine ranking and customer experience. These issues had to be rectified as a matter of urgency before they lose out on both new customers and more importantly sales.
Several examples of pressing issues can be seen in the "Home page – before" screenshot:
- The navigation system often overlapped the site’s content making it difficult to decipher between the content and menu options
- Use of the navigation system was more often than not cumbersome and made it very easy for the user not to select the desired menu
- The shortcuts on the right hand side of the content were misleading. Furthermore, once tracking information had been integrated into the site it was noted that over 80% of the visitors to the homepage were clicking on the “Free” link which took them to a page about free shipping on orders over £30 –they would then more often than not exit the site
Altering the design of the site was outside the remit of our work so the alterations we made were kept as closely to those that would improve the site’s search engine ranking and increase sales. By changing the methods adopted to produce the drop down menu effect we were able to re-create the menu system from one that was inaccessible to search engines to one that was accessible to search engines and users. By applying suitable styling to the menu, the menu options were segmented from the site’s content making it easier to navigate.
The e-commerce system is one that we inherited and is based on the open source e-commerce project OSCommerce. We have had dealings with OSCommerce in the past so were aware of a number of modules that should have been installed to not only encourage customers to purchase but to also promote the products on other sites such as Froogle. These, along with other alterations have generated a number of sales that were neglected before.
The initial alterations we made to Florame's website have took the website from a virtually non-existent ranking for “organic aromatherapy” to a consistent 3rd/4th place with regular 1st place positions. Although the emphasis for the search engine position was initially on “organic aromatherapy”. Florame organic aromatherapy have also signed up to a monthly service level agreement with us which allows us to make additional alterations to the Florame organic aromatherapy website inline with industry alterations, in addition to offering Florame organic aromatherapy system support, this monthly maintenance agreement has begun achieving useful rankings on other related search terms and traffic to the site continues to rise on a regular basis.
What the patient said:
"The team at The Site Doctor is professional, efficient, friendly and patient! They understand what’s required and just get on with it. No job is too much trouble for them which leaves us time to focus on the rest of the business."
Rocky Husain
Visit the site:
Home page - after
Home page - after
Home page - before
Google Results Nov 2007
Traffic overview
Traffic source overview