Case Study: Driving Organic Growth for Deb’s Design Lab – A Personalised Gift Store in Australia

Client Overview

Deb’s Design Lab is a Melbourne-based e-commerce store specialising in personalised gifts and decor, including keepsake boxes, customised cake toppers, and personalised cheese boards. Known for its high-quality craftsmanship and fully customisable offerings, the business aims to stand out in the competitive Australian gift market by delivering thoughtful, tailored products for every occasion.

Project Duration: 6 Months
Client Goals:

• Increase website traffic and visibility in search engines.
• Improve keyword rankings for targeted products.
• Drive conversions by attracting relevant traffic from customers searching for unique personalised gifts.

Challenges

1. Short Contract Period: With only six months to achieve meaningful results, we faced a tight timeline to strategise, implement, and measure the effectiveness of SEO initiatives.
2. High Competition: The personalised gift niche in Australia is dominated by large e-commerce players, making it challenging to rank for lucrative keywords.
3. Technical Issues: The website was not mobile-responsive, and technical glitches prevented some pages from loading correctly, hindering user experience and search engine crawlability.
4. No Structured Content Strategy: The site lacked a blog section, topical authority, and structured internal linking, which limited organic growth opportunities.
5. Limited Budget: Budget constraints restricted extensive link-building efforts, requiring a stronger focus on technical and on-page SEO.

Strategy and Execution

To address these challenges and deliver results, we adopted a multi-faceted strategy tailored to Deb’s Design Lab’s needs:

1. On-Page SEO Optimisation

• Product Pages: We revamped product titles, meta descriptions, and product descriptions to include targeted, non-branded keywords such as “personalised cheese boards” and “custom keepsake boxes.” This ensured pages were optimised for search intent.
• Image Optimisation: Product images were compressed, renamed with descriptive keywords, and given alt text to improve load speed and visibility in image searches.

2. Keyword Strategy

• Focused on high-intent, revenue-driving keywords with moderate competition, such as personalised wedding gifts Melbourne and custom Mother’s Day gifts.
• Balanced branded and non-branded traffic by targeting generic search terms (e.g., keepsake boxes) to capture broader audiences.

3. Technical SEO Fixes

• Responsive Design: Collaborated with developers to ensure the site was fully mobile-friendly, addressing a significant usability barrier.
• Structured Data Implementation: Added schema markup for products, breadcrumbs, and FAQs to enhance visibility in rich search results.
• Fixed slow-loading pages and eliminated crawl errors identified through tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush.

4. Content Marketing

• Created a blog section to support topical authority, targeting themes like gift ideas, seasonal trends, and wedding inspiration. Published keyword-rich blog posts like “10 Unique Wedding Gift Ideas in Melbourne” to attract traffic and engage potential buyers.
• Internal links in blog posts passed authority to high-priority product pages.

5. Minimal Link Building with a Focus on On-Site Efforts

• Due to budget constraints, link-building efforts were minimal. Instead, we prioritised optimising the site’s internal structure to improve navigation and link equity distribution.

6. Analytics and Iteration

• Used Google Search Console and Google Analytics to track keyword performance, click-through rates (CTR), and traffic trends. Adjusted content and optimisation efforts based on the insights.

Results

In just six months, Deb’s Design Lab witnessed significant improvements in key performance metrics:

Traffic and Rankings

Total Clicks and Impressions

• Increase in Clicks:
  From 185 clicks (June) to 661 clicks (November), indicating a 257% growth in traffic. This shows the effectiveness of the optimisations in driving more organic users to the website.
• Growth in Impressions:
  Impressions have increased significantly from 19.3K (June) to 40.7K (November), marking a 111% improvement. This reflects better keyword rankings and more visibility in search engine results.

Sales Performance

• Generated $3,473, a 77% increase. (SEO – Google)

Additionally:

• Non-Branded Traffic Growth: Non-branded organic traffic increased from 155 daily visits in June to 476 in November, demonstrating our success in attracting broader audiences.
• Improved Product Rankings: High-priority product pages such as custom cheese boards and keepsake boxes began ranking on the first page of Google for their respective keywords.

Key Takeaways

This project illustrates how targeted on-page and technical SEO, combined with strategic content marketing, can deliver measurable results even within a short time frame and budget constraints.

Success Factors:

• Keyword Focus: Prioritising revenue-generating, non-branded keywords.
• Content Creation: Launching a blog section that complemented product categories and supported topical authority.
• Technical Enhancements: Resolving site responsiveness and implementing structured data to improve SERP visibility.

Lessons Learned:

• Investing in technical fixes early can unlock significant growth potential.
• A well-planned internal linking strategy can substitute for extensive link-building when budgets are tight.

Conclusion

Despite facing a tight deadline and challenging market conditions, our SEO strategy for Deb’s Design Lab delivered substantial organic growth, improved product visibility, and significantly increased sales performance. By addressing technical barriers and building a strong content foundation, the website is now well-positioned to sustain long-term growth and achieve greater success in the competitive personalised gift niche.