Pet Products
Fractional SEO Retainer · 12 months
United States
How a US pet brand cut paid dependency and grew non-brand organic revenue 142%
🌎 United States
🛒 Shopify
🎯 Fractional SEO retainer
🧠 Includes AI search visibility
+142%
non-brand organic revenue, year on year
+41%
increase in organic sessions YoY
29
new collection & category pages built from TAM gaps
The situation
A category growing faster than almost any other in US ecommerce — and a brand not capturing its share of it
US online pet sales are growing roughly nine times faster than in-store, and the category has become one of the most loyal, highest-repeat-purchase segments in American ecommerce. This brand had genuine product quality and a loyal existing customer base, but came to me after a stretch of slow growth under their previous agency and an over-reliance on PPC to hold market share.
They wanted to own more of the organic conversation around their core category terms rather than continuing to pay for visibility that should have been earned. The brief was a full fractional engagement — audit, keyword strategy, content, internal linking, and link development — built around capturing genuine category growth, not just defending existing brand traffic.
SEO audit
Fixing the Shopify-specific issues a generic audit would missx
Shopify is a strong platform for SEO, but it carries platform-specific issues that generic audits routinely miss. The first phase focused on identifying and resolving these foundational problems before any content or growth work began.
1
Product URL structure and canonical resolution
Fixed the product URL structure and resolved canonical tag conflicts that were splitting crawl equity across duplicate paths, allowing Google to crawl indexable product pages far more efficiently.
2
Breadcrumb and internal linking foundation
Improved breadcrumb implementation using Matrifix to significantly enhance internal linking — the foundation that every later content and linking improvement was then built on top of.
The result
From PPC-reliant to a genuine organic growth engine
Before
✕ Heavy reliance on PPC to hold share
✕ Canonical errors limiting crawl efficiency
✕ Weak internal linking, shallow breadcrumbs
✕ 29 category gaps with no dedicated page
✕ No structured link development programme
After
✓ +142% non-brand organic revenue YoY
✓ Indexable product URLs, canonicals resolved
✓ Internal linking rebuilt via Matrifix
✓ 29 new pages built from TAM-identified demand
✓ Active digital PR and link programme
Non-brand organic traffic pre-audit baseline vs 90 days post
Baseline
+142%
Keyword research
Building a full Total Addressable Market view, not a keyword list
With the technical foundation resolved, the focus moved to segmenting collection pages and fully optimising product pages to drive revenue — built on a genuinely comprehensive view of category demand rather than a standard keyword list.
Keyword data collected from Google Ads, Google Search Console, and competitor insights
Clustered using Keyword Insights into a full Total Addressable Market document
Every keyword mapped to an existing page, or flagged as a gap requiring a new page
Pages prioritised by search volume and profit margin for the fastest commercial impact
Why TAM mapping mattered here specifically
In a fast-growing category, the risk isn't just missing existing demand — it's building a site structure around last year's search behaviour while the category itself is still shifting. Mapping the full addressable market rather than a fixed keyword list meant new collection pages could be built ahead of demand the brand's existing taxonomy simply hadn't accounted for.
Content strategy
A full roadmap covering existing content updates and new page development
Once keyword data was clustered, the next step was a comprehensive content roadmap — covering both updates to existing content and new collection and article recommendations, delivered in collaboration with the brand's UX and design teams.
Added FAQs to collection pages to capture informational, pre-purchase search demand
Expanded product page information to improve both user experience and SEO depth
Link building
Earned authority once the foundation could support it
Only once the technical and content foundations were resolved did the engagement move into link development — sequencing matters here, since acquiring links to a site with unresolved canonical and crawl issues wastes a meaningful share of the authority being built.
Data-driven digital PR campaigns
Competitor link analysis and replication
Outreach to relevant industry associations for link opportunities
Engagement details
Type - Fractional SEO
Duration - 12 months
Platform - Shopify
Market - United States
Sector - Pet products
Services delivered
✓ Technical SEO audit
✓ Keyword & TAM mapping
✓ Content strategy
✓ Internal linking
✓ Link building
✓ Monthly reporting
Growing fast and still over-reliant on paid?
Pet, wellness, and other high-growth categories — let's build the organic engine alongside it.
Book a discovery call
Ready to build an organic channel that works without the brand?
Supplement, health, and DTC brands — let’s talk about what non-brand growth looks like for you.
Previous case study
US DTC brand grows organic revenue 136% in 12 months
Kev Wiles - Shopify SEO Consultant © 2026- Stratford upon Avon, Warwickshire, UK
