SofaSofa
How we thrashed big-brand competition and increased conversions by 85% for a family-run company using an integrated CRO, SEO, and PPC strategy
The background
SofaSofa is the UK’s largest direct-to-consumers sofa company, operating out of three British workshops located in the beautiful South Wales Valleys.
This family-run factory showroom sells traditional and contemporary sofas and chairs throughout the UK.
![](https://www.digivate.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Background-Illustration-SofaSofa.png)
What we did
Sudden fierce competition and Google’s ‘Big Brand Bias’
For years, SofaSofa ranked on the 1st page of Google for the 2 most popular keywords in the sofa industry – “sofa” and “sofas”, which provided a steady stream of traffic and revenue for the company. Since 2011, the online sofa market has grown increasingly competitive and Google has developed a strong ‘Big Brand Bias’ in organic results. This means that large corporations like IKEA, John Lewis, and Argos that don’t necessarily specialise in sofas monopolise the 1st-page results for some of the most valuable terms, including “sofa” and “sofas”.
Digivate was tasked to find alternative ways to retain SofaSofa’s traffic in a highly competitive market and improve their conversions
To get SofaSofa back into those top results, we carried out in-depth user research and integrated PPC into the strategy. Our research found that there were dozens of long-tail keywords with 1,000 – 10,000+ monthly volume that were overlooked by the competitors and hence presented an opportunity for us to rank high for them.
To retain search traffic, we:
- Created new content to target valuable long-tail keywords
We created a blog strategy targeting some of the most popular long-tail queries sofa buyers search for. We then utilised creative blogger outreach and Digital PR campaigns to promote the content and earn high-quality backlinks. - Improved the rankings for existing pages
We redesigned the website categories for better user experience, improved the content, metadata, internal linking and increased the number and quality of external backlinks. - Managed Google Ads with 40% ROI
We drove valuable paid traffic while building up organic visibility. The challenge was to keep cost-per-acquisition to the minimum, so we could scale our ads without increasing the advertising budget. The 40% campaign ROI was achieved by diligent keyword and location targeting as well as constant ad-copy optimisation & testing.
We also completed a full basket page CRO optimisation which you can read more about here
BEFORE
![](https://www.digivate.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Before-SofaSofa.png)
AFTER
![](https://www.digivate.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/After-SofaSofa.png)
The results
In 6 months, our organic and paid marketing approach resulted in SofaSofa appearing in the top 3 rankings for 50 of the most valuable search terms in the industry. This also resulted in a 24% increase in organic traffic for non-home pages.
- +24% increase in organic traffic for non-home pages
- 50 Top 3 rankings for the most valuable search terms in the industry
- +85% increase in sitewide conversion rate
- +77% increase in revenue per customer
![](https://www.digivate.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/what-we-did-SofaSofa.jpg)