E‑Cigarette SEO Case Study

Challenges

There were a series of challenges with content writing unrelated to writing. This was primarily due to industry-specific limitations and the intricacies around vape shop SEO. 

• Severe SEO Restrictions: E-cigarette content gets flagged or suppressed by search engines due to age-restricted regulated product categories.
• Low Organic Visibility: Even though the company has a large array of products and a funded background, they did not have visibility to rank for vape-related terms.
• High Competition: Global vendors have filled the shelves with vape products, and even if this is not the case regionally, it is still compromised by global popularity, search results, and other content.

Solution

Ranking by SEO built a customized strategy to follow the classified nature of vape content, all while being compliant with search engine platforms.  

• SEO Audit and Compliance Review: An audit was conducted, including an evaluation of analytics, backlinks, content risk, and any breach of compliance to determine whether harmful elements existed and how to correct them.
• Content Optimization: The product and blog pages were all rewritten with an informative tone that appears natural through avoiding sales-heavy copy. Instead, informative pieces on the benefits of products, regulations, and safety were utilized.
• Technical SEO Improvements: Improvements were made towards areas such as page speed, mobile framework, structured data markup, and available metadata to increase crawling.
• Off‑Page SEO Strategy: An ethical backlinking campaign using vape-based blogs, forums, and a variety of directories allowed us to build authority in a regulated framework.
• Long‑Tail & Local Keywords: It was important to identify phrases like “UK vape juice alternatives” and “shop nicotine vapes UK,” as well as create geo-specific landing pages for surrounding markets.

The Results

Over the tracked period, the site achieved 338K total clicks and 9.05M impressions, with an impressive CTR of 3.7% and an average position of 5.7. The graph shows a steady and sharp rise in both impressions and clicks, reflecting significant organic growth driven by effective SEO strategies.

• +130% increase in organic traffic- A +130% increase in organic traffic was recorded, having become very discoverable for both niche and compliant queries.
• +75% growth in new customer inquiries- The business had +75% more inquiries from new customers.
• 20+ vape‑related keywords- There were 20+ vape keywords on the first page of Google, and this provided an entirely new level of visibility in a very competitive space.
• Bounce rate dropped by ~25%- Additional results included a 25% reduction in bounce rate and a 70% increase in organic revenue.