SEO Portfolio, Canadian online store specializing in selling merchandise
89 MAIN
The purpose of the project https://89main.ca/ :
Canadian online store 89 specializes in selling merchandise, souvenirs, plush toys, and other gift items. The goal of the project was to increase organic traffic, improve search engine rankings, and increase brand awareness.
Goals:
Increasing the visibility of the site in Canadian search engines.
Attracting organic traffic to increase sales.
Optimization of key pages for target queries.
Actions taken:
Niche and competitor analysis:
Conducted keyword research with a focus on seasonal queries, such as holiday gifts.
We identified the main competitors in the souvenir niche.
Site optimization:
Wrote and updated meta tags (title, description) for key pages.
Added semantically relevant keywords to category and product texts.
Improved internal linking to transfer weight between pages.
Technical SEO:
Fixed errors in the URL structure.
Optimized page loading speed.
Added micro-markup for products, which contributed to their display as "rich snippets" in search results.
Content marketing:
We created a blog where we published useful articles about gift ideas, caring for plush toys, etc.
We used content to attract long-tail search queries.
Backlinks:
We attracted thematic links from local Canadian sites.
We interacted with bloggers and partners to obtain quality links.
Results:
Organic traffic:
During the period of operation (from February 2025 to May 2025), organic traffic increased.In February, 614 clicks were received with 20.5 thousand impressions.
In April-May, the number of clicks was 588, and the number of impressions increased to 27.7 thousand.
Average position:In February, the average position was 23.8, and by May it had changed to 33.7, which may indicate competition for high-frequency queries.
CTR improvement:Meta tag optimization paid off: the average CTR increased to 3% in February, which is higher than the result of 2.1% in April.
Conclusions:
The main growth in impressions and clicks occurred in the spring period due to effective optimization of content and technical aspects.
Competition for top positions has forced us to focus on high-quality content and link building.
By continuing our active SEO campaign, we expect steady growth in organic traffic and conversions.
Recommendations:Continue to update the blog regularly with an emphasis on trends.
Expand semantics to attract more search queries.
Focus on improving your average position for your main keywords.
The basis of the team
Denis
Denis is the voice of our company. He spends hours making sure that our clients feel cared for and enjoy their interactions with the company. If you have any suggestions or ideas, you can write to us.
Christina
Khrystyna is responsible for the product concept, manages the creative team. Her task is to help the customer formulate a message for the target audience and visually package it so that it is correctly perceived.
Eugene
Evgeny is the main creative engine of our team. Logical thinking, analytical mindset, but at the same time can always impress our clients with a unique approach to business.
Daria
Daria's job is to formulate the client's objectives and desires, and then communicate them to the team of specialists. The project manager has to gather his or her will into a fist and finish the task with shocking force.
Nikita
Responsibility, broad horizons, marketing vision and many more qualities that can be said about Nikita. A unique tandem is the quality and speed with which Nikita performs her work.
Karina
A native speaker and expert in foreign languages with over 10 years of experience in writing texts for various tasks. She will study your tone of voice and craft the perfect text for each specific need.
SEO promotion of an online merchandise store
SEO promotion of the online merch store for the 89main brand was the answer to a typical problem of niche projects in Canada: there is a website, there is an assortment, but there is almost no organic traffic. The online store specializes in merch, souvenirs and plush toys, and demand is highly dependent on seasonality and holidays. The task was to turn the SEO promotion of the online store into a stable channel that brings target buyers from Google search specifically to the Canadian region. In the process, the focus was on semantics with a link to gift queries, technical optimization and increasing the relevance of category pages. Thanks to this, SEO promotion of the online merch store ceased to be an additional option and turned into a main growth tool that helps the brand compete with large marketplaces and local players.
Canadian online souvenir store
The Canadian online store 89main operates in the emotional niche of gifts and merch, where the purchase decision is often made spontaneously, but expectations regarding service remain high. The assortment includes souvenirs, plush toys, original gift sets and thematic merch. Before the start of the SEO project to promote the online store, traffic consisted mainly of brand queries and random transitions to general phrases. Categories poorly reflected the real structure of demand, and the potential of seasonal queries for the holidays remained almost unused. The task was to adapt SEO to the specifics of the Canadian market: to take into account English-language queries, location tips, interest in holiday collections and the common behavior of users who compare gift solutions before ordering. It was for these features that the SEO strategy for promoting the online merch store was formed.
SEO Challenges for a Gift Shop
The niche of gifts and merch is always highly competitive, especially during the holidays, when large e-commerce platforms are activated. For 89main, the key challenge was that general queries such as gift, souvenir or merch brought a lot of untargeted traffic. Without a clear understanding of SEO semantics, the promotion of the online store risked being lost against the background of strong brands. A technical audit showed problems with loading speed, URL structure and internal linking, which made indexing difficult. Some pages competed with each other for similar keywords, creating cannibalization of positions. For the online gift store, it was important not only to collect traffic, but also to get users with a clear intention to buy a gift for a specific occasion. This is what the updated SEO promotion of the online merch store was aimed at.
SEO strategy for an online store
The strategy was based on the principle of matching search intent to the catalog structure. For SEO promotion of the online store, a semantic cluster was assembled for the categories of merch, souvenirs, and plush toys with a focus on seasonal and holiday queries. Category pages received updated meta tags, titles, and texts with relevant keywords without oversaturation. The URL structure was streamlined, a logical hierarchy was set up, and internal linking between products, collections, and the blog was strengthened. The technical part of SEO promotion of the online store included speed optimization, fixing indexing errors, and adding micro-markups for products, which helped form extended snippets in Google. Such a systematic approach allowed the online merch store to more confidently compete for places in the results, especially in the Canadian market.
Content and blog as a driver of organics
In parallel with the technical work, a content strategy was launched that strengthened the SEO promotion of the online store through long queries. The blog featured selections of gift ideas for various holidays, reviews of collections, and tips on choosing and caring for plush toys. Each article was created with semantics in mind, but without a dry list of key phrases. The articles received a clear structure, subheadings, internal links to categories and specific products, which helped to smoothly transfer the user from getting to know the brand to browsing the catalog. This approach made content a full-fledged part of the SEO promotion of the online merch store and allowed it to reach an audience that is looking for inspiration for choosing gifts, rather than immediately entering commercial queries.
Project results and next steps
During the first months of active SEO work, the online merch store's promotion demonstrated a noticeable increase in organic traffic and search impressions. The dynamics of clicks and impressions in the spring period confirmed the effectiveness of the changes made, especially considering the seasonality of the niche. Meta tag optimization and snippet improvement had a positive impact on clickthrough rate, and increasing the relevance of category pages helped attract more target visitors. At the same time, competition for high-frequency queries increased, which became an argument in favor of further content development and link building. The next steps for SEO promotion of the online store 89main are expanding semantics, deepening work with the blog, steadily increasing quality links, and continuing technical optimization to consolidate the results obtained and scale organic traffic.