When this sauna brand reached out to us in May of 2024, they were frustrated with their stagnant organic presence.
Competitors were dominating Google for search terms like “infrared sauna” and “home sauna”, while they were stuck relying heavily on paid ads to generate sales.
They knew SEO was a long-term play. But they didn’t want to waste months trying to figure it out themselves.
So they brought us in to lead the charge.
Our SEO Framework
As with all of our e-commerce SEO campaigns, we followed our proven five-part framework:
- Technical SEO
- Keyword Research
- On-Page Optimization
- Content Creation
- Link Building
Each element plays a critical role in making the campaign work.
Miss one, and the whole system falls apart.
1. Technical SEO
Before we could grow the brand’s traffic, we needed to clean up its foundation.
We kicked off the campaign by auditing the site using Screaming Frog and Ahrefs, and found a handful of issues that needed immediate attention:
I. Canonicalizing Paginated Pages
The site had paginated category pages indexed in Google — pages like /collections/saunas?page=2.
These low-value pages were bloating the site’s index and contributing to duplicate content.
We added canonical tags pointing to the “root” version of each category page to remove them from Google’s index, while still allowing crawlers to navigate through them.
II. Broken Internal Links
There were 7 broken links throughout the site, each leading to a dead page.
We fixed all of them by redirecting to the most relevant, live pages using 301s.
III. Duplicate Product Category Pages
We uncovered 26 duplicate category pages.
These duplicate pages were competing with each other in Google’s eyes and hurting rankings.
We removed the duplicates and 301-redirected them to the correct, primary variation.
IV. Pruning Low-Performing Blog Posts
A site-wide blog audit revealed that several articles weren’t ranking for any keywords or receiving any traffic.
We unpublished this dead weight content to reduce the number of low-quality pages in Google’s index.
All of these changes signaled to Google that the site’s structure was improving, making it easier to crawl, trust, and rank.
2. Keyword Research
Once the technical foundation was set, we turned to keyword research.
Our goal was twofold:
- Identify keywords for existing product category pages
- Expand the number of keyword opportunities through niche category creation
I. Reverse Engineering Competitors
To find keyword opportunities for product category pages, we reverse engineered top-ranking competitors.
For example, if we were optimizing a “2 person sauna” page, we’d plug a competitor’s product category page into Ahrefs, analyze the keywords it ranked for, and extract a list of high-opportunity targets with solid search volume and manageable competition.
II. Building Niche Product Category Pages
We didn’t stop at existing pages.
We expanded the brand’s keyword footprint by building new, more specific product category pages like:
- Outdoor Infrared Sauna
- Home Infrared Sauna
- 2 Person Infrared Sauna
- Low EMF Infrared Sauna
This allowed the site to capture more long-tail traffic, and less competitive rankings, without creating brand-new products.
3. On-Page Optimization
Once we had our keyword targets, we optimized each product category page from top to bottom.
We updated meta titles, meta descriptions, H1 tags, and URL slugs to include the target primary and secondary keywords.
We also wrote 500 to 1,000 words of content for each page that explained why users should choose this brand over others, addressed common objections, and answered frequently asked questions.
To support internal linking and relevance, we also wove in links to other product category pages.
All of this content was placed just below the product listings, so it wouldn’t interfere with the customer experience, but would still get recognized by Google.
4. Content Creation
With the site fully optimized, we turned to content. Our blog strategy was centered around one thing: supporting the product category pages.
We used Ahrefs to find informational keywords related to saunas:
- Question-based keywords (e.g. “how long should you stay in a sauna?”)
- Comparison keywords (e.g. “infrared vs traditional sauna”)
- Best-intent keywords (e.g. “best home sauna”)
These keywords had solid volume, low competition, and many of them had strong buying intent.
Our goal was to create the best article on the internet for each keyword, whether it took 1,000 or 3,000+ words to do so.
Every post was optimized for its keyword, naturally integrated internal links to relevant product categories, and cross-linked with other blog content.
We published four blog posts every month like clockwork.
This strategy didn’t just bring in top-of-funnel traffic, it funneled that traffic toward purchase-ready pages.
5. Link Building
One of the biggest challenges the brand faced early on was a lack of domain authority. So we prioritized link building heavily.
We reached out to sites in the wellness and home improvement spaces and secured placements on websites with a Domain Rating of 30+ and 1,000+ monthly organic clicks.
Each month, we built 11 new backlinks, 4 to the homepage to strengthen domain-wide authority, and 7 to our new blog content.
Because our blog posts were internally linked to key product category pages, link equity flowed naturally through the site, helping the most important money pages rank faster and higher.
The Results
By November 2024, just six months after starting, the site had gone from 5,594 to 17,219 monthly organic clicks. That’s a 207% increase in organic traffic.
More importantly, monthly organic revenue grew from $72,194.30 to $135,173.30 — an 88% increase.
We also secured first-page rankings for some of the sauna industry’s most competitive keywords, including home sauna, infrared sauna, traditional sauna, outdoor sauna, barrel sauna, and more.
This brand now owns its organic visibility.
It doesn’t have to rely solely on ads to drive revenue.
It’s built a defensible moat around its digital presence, and it all started with fundamentals.