A big player from Środa Wielkopolska assigned me the mission of entering the top free search results. The digital marketing consultant got to work. So let's fasten our seatbelts.

Website positioning — difficult home decor — vinyl panels

Short phrase assessment

• Vinyl panels according to Ahrefs: 135K in volume, although the top positions are dominated by Castorama and LeroyMerlin.

• Vinyl panels according to Semrush: 74K enquiries per month.

The vinyl panel (singular) according to Ahrefs: 8.9K of volume, with Castorama and LeroyMerlin at the top.

The vinyl panel according to Semrush: 5.4K volume.

The initial state of the website

With the usual rhythm, I present the initial state of the website. The situation looked serious. Although the domain has been online since 2004, it does not rank for attractive phrases — and so:

• Visibility of the website for the keyword "vinyl panels" according to Google Search Console data

• Visibility of the web page for the keyword "vinyl panel" according to Google Search Console data

It is not every day that a site which has been online for many years has virtually no visibility on the web. The console did not report any major Mobile Friendly compatibility errors, so I looked at the speed of the site.

The URL of a page is one of the key factors in website positioning

First, I changed the URL of the page from https://arbiton.com/podlogi/ to https://arbiton.com/panele-winylowe/

How did it work? Exactly as it could have been predicted. When the old URL reached its max and could not break through to better optimised pages, there was a momentary bump and the new one soared much higher:

• Page visibility on the old URL for the phrase "vinyl panels"

Naturally, in the process I updated the redirects, improved the internal linking slightly and a few other details.

Page speed — a sore point for all SEO specialists

Page speed is not so much an issue for SEOs as it is for website owners. Few web owners take the subject seriously. It turns out that it's worth taking the subject of site speed head on.

• GTmetrix view, page speed rating 11 September 2020: The category page takes 27 MB and fully loads in over 14 seconds.

• GTmetrix view, page speed evaluation 16 October 2021: The page occupies 2.25 MB and fully loads in over 3.9 seconds.

Page speed is a ranking factor that affects the health of the entire domain. When positioning a website, optimising page speed improves its visibility on all phrases. Here's how things work:

• Senuto view — domain visibility graph for positions 1–3

• Senuto view — domain visibility graph for Top 10

Page positioning through content marketing

In parallel to the technical optimisations, category and product descriptions were ordered from a copywriter. Thrown in regularly, they refined and consolidated the effect.

And why did the charts break in spring 2021? Well, because the process of ordering a new website had begun and I was no longer practising necrophilia on the old website. If you want to see what a proper positioning process looks like from the start, book a consultation and we'll assess your site together.