Cigars International is an online and catalog-based retailer of cigars that distributes 19 million catalogs on an annual basis with over 90 leading brands in its portfolio. This one-stop shop for cigars and cigar accessories called on Cigarketing to overhaul the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of its six affiliated websites.
Cigars International was facing a wide range of SEO issues on all of its domains. These problems included legacy platform issues on the technical front to poor user experience optimization. For example, there were many off-page and on-page issues with deploying consistent and appropriate re-directs.
A major source of these problems was the bad backlinking portfolio full of toxic, spammy, and low-quality backlinks. With too many poor backlinks on a site, Google begins to let it slide further and further down the search page. Other link issues such as dead pages were causing CIgars International’s traffic to drop when it could otherwise be directed back into active pages.
“It was overwhelming to have literally hundreds upon hundreds of pages, all with their own issues and challenges needing correction. Knowing where to start and how best to proceed was definitely a big headache.”
In the landscape of SEO in 2022, optimizing Core Web Vitals (CWVs) has never been so important. CWVs are integral to a site’s SEO performance because having a fast-loading website can help boost your rankings. These factors also determine the quality of users’ experience.
Cigarketing helped organize and roadmap the SEO challenges from “lowest-hanging fruit” to those requiring a high level of effort. Then, both teams worked together to create Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to streamline the remodeling process.
Once on track, the work truly began. One of the most common changes made across the Cigars International domains was backlink disavowing of the lowest quality links. Disavowing these links and building new, healthy links was a major part of overhauling Cigars International’s SEO.
As for legacy issues (such as discontinued product pages, for example), 301 redirects were utilized. 301 redirects are permanent redirects that take users back to a live page on your domain, instead of leaving them at a dead-end 404 error page.
Both refined keyword mapping and the implementation of Google Tags were also used to bring in more traffic and track these visitors’ activity, respectively. Cigars International was happy to see these efforts turn into results. There were six sites that underwent multiple SEO technical and onsite revisions. These domains saw an aggregate increase of organic web traffic by 16.8% and an aggregate increase in revenue of 22%.
Both refined keyword mapping and the implementation of Google Tags were also used to bring in more traffic and track these visitors’ activity, respectively. Cigars International was happy to see these efforts turn into results. There were six sites that underwent multiple SEO technical and onsite revisions. These domains saw an aggregate increase of organic web traffic by 16.8% and an aggregate increase in revenue of 22%.
“Cigarketing delivers and is knowledgeable about SEO and the restricted niche of tobacco. Kyle and his team are great extensions to deploy and make a difference in helping you get that extra edge in the SEO game.”
- Anthony Cantelmo
Cigars International
The Cigarketing team understands the daily challenges business owners face and is ready to show that they don’t have to do it alone.