SEO for a Stationery and Art Supplies Retailer: Domain Migration and +25% Organic Traffic
+25% organic traffic year over year and conversions up 500%, after a domain migration handled with minimal losses
Client & Context
An online retailer of art, stationery and hobby supplies with a 16-year history and a large offline store network across Ukraine. The assortment is wide: art supplies, office and school stationery, hobby materials, children's goods, souvenirs, leisure and home products.
Market: Ukraine. Service: SEO. Engagement started in May 2023 and is ongoing. Tools: Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Keyword Planner.
Primary metrics: organic traffic, conversions and organic revenue. Agreed KPIs: +10–30% traffic every month and +10–20% conversions.
The Challenge
The company was moving from one domain to another. That made the first task a migration with the smallest possible losses, and only then optimization and growth on the new domain, to increase purchases and revenue from organic search.
The goal was to increase the number of orders from the site through the SEO channel. The tasks were to support the migration, improve positions for target queries, expand the semantic core and grow traffic.
Approach
The strategy was built after a market and competitor analysis and a technical SEO audit. It followed the buyer funnel, so that every task answered the intent of a specific stage:
| Funnel stage | User intent | What we worked on |
|---|---|---|
| Top of the funnel | Informational: “what”, “how”, “why” | Blogs, guides, educational videos and infographics, on the site and off it through guest posts and partnerships. Technical audit, landing page optimization, content strategy and plan, link building. |
| Middle of the funnel | Commercial research: “best”, “review”, “comparison”, “how to choose” | Reviews, comparisons and buying guides. Ongoing technical monitoring, landing page optimization, link building and local SEO. |
| Bottom of the funnel | Transactional: “buy”, “discount”, “buy online”, “buy nearby” | Product descriptions, calls to action and purchase pages. Local SEO, a CRO audit and implementation of its recommendations. |
1. Migration support and technical fixes
We prepared recommendations for the move and then fixed the technical issues that could hurt organic performance: speed, security and language settings, crawling and indexation, sitemap and robots, structured data. 301 redirects were built around the new catalog structure, and the technical state of the site has been monitored continuously since.
2. A new site structure
Based on an analysis of the niche and competitors, we designed a new structure that improves positioning, makes search and navigation easier for users and gives internal optimization more room to work. Category pages were reworked in order of priority.
3. Content plan and briefs
We built the content plan and wrote detailed briefs for the client's copywriter. Our side covered audits, strategy, briefs and link building; the client's side covered the developer for technical fixes and the copywriter for texts.
4. Link building and local SEO
Active work with backlinks started in July 2024. Later we added local SEO and optimized the Google Business Profile listings. The strategy is reviewed every six months and adjusted to scale what works.
Results — May 2023 – January 2025
| Metric | 2023 | 2024 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Organic traffic (visits) | 285,564 | 357,379 | +25.15% |
| Organic pages in search | 7,054 | 15,751 | ×2.2 |
| Ranking keywords | 37,857 | 40,061 | +5.8% |
| Referring domains | 342 | 536 | +57% |
Traffic grew with normal fluctuations but a clear upward trend: the fourth quarter of 2024 was 29.76% above the third. The share of keywords in the top positions has been rising steadily, and the referring-domain profile grew after link building started in July 2024.
Conclusion
A comprehensive strategy built around buyer intent delivered growth across all core indicators and reached the agreed KPIs. A domain migration that usually costs a retailer visibility instead ended with organic traffic 25% higher than the year before, about 2.2 times more pages in search and a 57% larger referring-domain profile. Conversions grew by 500%. The work continues, now focused on converting that traffic into more revenue.
