Case Study: Allbirds
Allbirds, a leader in sustainable footwear, partnered with Intrepid Digital to enhance non-brand SEO performance and drive sustainable traffic growth. Intrepid’s technical SEO improvements, Core Web Vitals optimization, strategic internal linking, and targeted content enhancements led to a 21% increase in non-brand clicks, an 81% boost in non-brand impressions, and a 48% growth in top 10 rankings.
Challenge
The Allbirds website had technical issues and gaps in content for key products. Opportunities to drive traffic were missed due to unoptimized content and areas lacking strategic SEO enhancements.
Our goal was to increase both Non-Brand Clicks and Non-Brand Impressions—a task that required a multi-faceted approach. To improve performance, we focused on many areas across SEO and content development, including technical hygiene, adding copy to strategic pages, and on-page optimization.
The Specific Issues
Editorial Content
Allbirds was targeting specific keywords related to their product selection, but needed the long-form copy to support the site’s authority on those topics. Enter blogs and category page FAQs.
Our Solution
By creating targeted content on existing pages, paired with blogs that speak to their audience’s common questions, Intrepid was able to expand Allbirds’ semantic authority on their most important terms. Non-branded keywords ranking in position 1 that led specifically to the blog increased 54% YoY, while non-brand clicks increased 244% YoY.
Broken Backlinks
Many URLs come and go, especially as products are discontinued or pages are de-prioritized and removed from the site. Often, these pages have backlinks that contribute to site authority and rankings. However, when these backlinks lead to 404 errors, they lose their impact. Managing these broken links effectively can help regain their value and maintain the site’s authority.
Our Solution
We mapped 100+ different types of pages to more relevant alternative URLs to preserve their value. This approach ensures that backlinks pointing to the original, broken URLs continue to pass value and support the site’s rankings.
Missed Core Web Vitals Opportunities
Core Web Vitals (CWV) provide a standardized way to measure essential aspects of page speed and user experience. Improving Core Web Vitals not only enhances rankings but also leads to better user satisfaction, lower bounce rates, and potentially higher conversions, as visitors are more likely to stay and interact with a fast, seamless website.
Our Solution
We conducted a thorough site analysis to identify the remaining issues impacting CWV scores on certain page types. Key factors included delays when users click “add to cart,” often caused by slow-loading images and external resources.
Our findings led to specific improvement strategies:
- Optimizing image loading on collection pages to enhance initial load times and reduce delays.
- Enhancing JavaScript performance on product pages to improve the speed and responsiveness of main image displays.
Cannibalization
Multiple URLs can sometimes compete for the same keywords, causing Google to be unsure which URL to rank. This can lead to lower overall rankings, with the primary page competing against others or rankings becoming volatile.
Our Solution
We assessed both brand and non-brand keywords to identify instances where competing pages were causing ranking issues. Overall, brand keywords were not problematic, as the additional URLs were relevant to the different queries triggering them. However, for some non-brand terms, we identified issues, recommending redirects to address the conflicts.
Orphaned URLs and Low Internal Links
Internal links are essential for driving rankings, as they help Google understand the importance of pages on your website. They also aid in discovery—if a page isn’t linked, it becomes much harder for Google to find and index new pages. Pages with few or no internal links often rank lower and for fewer keywords.
Our Solution
We analyzed all pages across the site to identify orphaned pages (those only available in XML sitemaps without internal links) and pages with very few internal links. We then recommended adding internal links to improve their discoverability and ranking potential.
In a Nutshell
- Cannibalization Analysis – Identified pages competing for the same or similar keywords to resolve ranking conflicts.
- Core Web Vitals Review – Assessed opportunities for further page speed improvements.
- Additional Broken Backlink Fixes – Recovered lost external links by addressing broken pages.
- Brand Traffic Boost – Achieved YoY improvement in brand traffic performance.
- New Blog Content – Researched, created, and published 5 new blog posts..
- On-Page SEO Enhancements – Updated 9 pages with keyword-optimized content, covering color pages, FAQs, and targeted content updates.
Results
Our actions led to significant improvements in visibility, with non-brand clicks increasing by 21% and non-brand impressions up by 81% from June 1 to September 30, 2024, year over year. In October, rankings for non-brand keywords also saw positive shifts, with a 9% increase in position 1 rankings and a 48% increase in rankings within the top 10 positions year over year.