This swing set brand wasn’t struggling because of poor products or bad design.
Their site looked great. Their pricing was competitive. And their product line covered everything from monkey bars to climbing domes.
But month after month, they were stuck watching competitors outrank them on Google, even for the exact products they offered.
In March of 2023, they reached out to us for help.
Twelve months later, they had nearly doubled their organic revenue and were pulling in over 15,000 monthly visitors from search.
Here’s how we made it happen.
1. Technical SEO
We began by running a comprehensive audit of the site.
I. Paginated Pages Indexing
The first issue we tackled was with paginated URLs. The site had product category pages like /swing-sets?page=2 indexed in Google.
These pages didn’t provide meaningful value on their own and were contributing to index bloat.
We added canonical tags that pointed back to the root product category pages, effectively removing these low-value pages from Google’s index without disrupting crawl flow.
II. Broken Links
Next, we addressed four broken internal links and three broken backlinks. All were redirected to relevant live pages to preserve link equity and improve the user experience.
III. Duplicate Product Category Pages
We also discovered that the site had four duplicate product category pages. Each duplicated a page that already existed, creating confusion for both users and search engines. We deleted the duplicates and redirected each to its primary counterpart.
IV. Pruning Low-Performing Blog Posts
During our audit of the blog content, we noticed several articles that weren’t ranking for any keywords and hadn’t driven any organic traffic in months.
Rather than leave them live and dilute the authority of the site, we unpublished them to reduce the number of low-quality pages Google had to crawl.
V. Website Architecture Restructure
One of the bigger technical improvements came from restructuring the site architecture.
Several product category pages were buried four or more folders deep (e.g., domain.com/play/spring/backyard/metal/).
This made them harder to crawl and hurt their ability to rank. We flattened the URL structure so that no product category page was more than three folders deep.
VI. Main Navigation Menu Restructure
Lastly, we reorganized the main navigation menu to feature all of the brand’s primary product categories. This helped boost the authority of these pages by ensuring they were linked sitewide, which gave them a stronger chance to rank.
2. Keyword Research
With the technical foundation set, we moved on to keyword research.
For each product category, we first used Ahrefs to see if the page already ranked for any relevant keywords. These “low-hanging fruit” opportunities often provide the fastest wins. If we found promising keywords, we built our optimization plan around those.
If a page didn’t have anything meaningful in the rankings, we reverse-engineered competitors.
For instance, if we were working on the “playground slides” category, we’d search that term in Google, find a top-ranking competitor category page, plug it into Ahrefs, and analyze the keywords it ranked for.
This process gave us clarity on the exact terms we should be targeting and ensured we were aligned with both search demand and search intent.
3. On-Page Optimization
Once we had our target keywords for each category, we optimized the product category pages accordingly.
Each page was updated to include the primary keyword in the meta title, meta description, H1 tag, and URL slug.
We also added 500 to 1,000 words of optimized content below the product listings.
This content explained why customers should buy from this brand instead of competitors, covered frequently asked questions about the product line, and included internal links to other relevant product categories.
These updates made the pages more helpful for users, and far more relevant in Google’s eyes.
4. Content Creation
To support the product pages and attract additional organic traffic, we implemented a blog content strategy focused on informational keywords.
We identified topics primarily built around question-based queries, “vs” comparisons, and “best” keyword variations related to swing sets and outdoor play equipment.
This included keywords such as:
- how much is a playground set
- metal vs wood swing set
- best swing set
Each article ranged from 1,000 to over 2,000 words depending on the complexity of the topic.
And each was internally linked to the most relevant product category pages to help funnel authority and guide users toward products.
We published three blog posts per month, steadily building out the site’s topical authority over time.
5. Link Building
Finally, we focused on increasing the site’s authority through link building.
We reached out to relevant websites in the home improvement outdoor equipment spaces, looking for opportunities to earn backlinks.
We prioritized sites with a domain authority of 30 or higher, steady or growing traffic, and at least 1,000 monthly organic clicks.
Each month, we built six new backlinks, four pointing to the brand’s product category pages, and two pointing to the blog content we created.
Because our blog posts were internally linked to those same category pages, the authority passed through and helped the entire site rank higher.
The Results
By March of 2024, the swing set brand had:
Increased organic traffic by 92%, jumping from 8,273 to 15,889 monthly clicks.
More than doubled organic revenue, going from $28,742.85 to $58,584.84 per month.
And achieved first-page rankings for some of their most competitive keywords, including monkey bars, outdoor playground equipment, swing set, and climbing dome.
With stronger technical performance, better-optimized pages, and consistent content and link building, the brand now has a scalable channel for customer acquisition that doesn’t rely on paid ads.
They’re not just competing with the top brands in their space — they’re outranking them.
And that’s what a well-run SEO campaign makes possible.