When Oro came to us, it was already a visible player in the B2B ecommerce platform market, with a large site and good numbers. Almost 60% of search traffic, though, came from branded queries. In four years with us, search traffic grew 2.5 times and queries in Google’s Top 10 grew 57%.
Results at a glance
Search visits a month
2,720 → 6,946
Queries in Google’s Top 10
1,009 → 1,586
Queries in Google’s Top 3
378 → 445
Ahrefs data, October 2019 → September 2023.
Here, as in all our case studies, traffic and ranking data come from Ahrefs’ public data, because we can’t share screenshots of analytics tools.
Starting point
A strong site. But most of its traffic was branded
| Client | Oro Inc., oroinc.com |
| Niche | OroCommerce B2B eCommerce platform and related products |
| Markets | US, UK, Germany, France |
| Services | SEO, content marketing, link building and outreach, language versions, enquiry analytics |
| Period | October 2019 – September 2023, 48 months |
| Status | completed |
| Team | 9 specialists on the project and a project manager |
Oro is best known for OroCommerce, an open-source platform that distributors and manufacturers use to build B2B stores and run dealer logistics. The company was founded by Magento’s co-founders. Magento’s B2B branch was among the competitors we had to take on. The buyers are companies that want to digitise how they take and process their B2B ecommerce orders.
When we started working together, the site already ranked decently. Around 25,000 queries sat in the top 100, more than 1,000 of them in the Top 10. Search brought in about 3,000 visits a month. Almost 60% of them came from searches for the brand name.
We joined the project just as traffic started a steady decline.
The site had grown over the years and had a blog, product documentation, whitepapers, product pages and a glossary. As on most large sites, internal redirects and 404 pages had built up, and some important queries were split between several pages.
The goal
The brief was clear: stop the traffic decline and bring in more product demo requests
Many distributors and large companies working on B2B and B2B2C models still take orders by phone and in spreadsheets.
Those were the companies we needed enquiries from, meaning demo requests from distributors, manufacturers and industrial suppliers. From day one the client asked us to focus on placements in industry publications. The biggest challenges and constraints were these:
- the search results were full of big platforms with huge marketing budgets, old and extremely well-known players;
- as is often the case in enterprise, potential clients always have the option of commissioning a custom platform from an IT outsourcing company.
What we did
First we sorted out what was already there, which is always the low-hanging fruit
Since the site already had plenty of content, the decision was to push what already had potential.
October 2019 – June 2020
We worked out what on the site was already working
We always try to use a client’s resources as efficiently as possible. That’s why in many cases we don’t suggest a technical audit. But on a site of this scale the audit paid off, because the technical base affected how important pages ranked. We gave technical optimisation recommendations (duplicates, redirects to the correct pages, fixes for 301 loops and the rest of what turns up on large sites).
There was also a huge subdomain, doc.oroinc.com, full of technical documentation. The forum lived there too.
After the technical fixes, we analysed the competitors and adjusted the structure of the existing service pages. Based on that we wrote briefs for changes to the homepage, the platform page and a few other pages, which almost immediately after implementation paid off in higher rankings and more traffic on the pages we’d worked on.
The blog is a very important source of leads and potential leads who are still in the upper stages of the marketing funnel. So in parallel we went straight into content directly tied to the verticals where OroPlatform could help most.
We broke the blog down using Search Console data, sorting the forty most visited articles by stage of choice and by who reads them. Reoptimisation started with articles that were already bringing traffic from mid-range positions.
During this period COVID restrictions began in the target countries.
Outcome. Overall traffic wasn’t growing yet, but the pages that matter for the buying decision moved up in the rankings.
July – December 2020
Strengthened the pages buyers read before choosing a platform
A B2B buyer compares platforms before ever talking to a salesperson. Oro’s B2B platform comparison page sat at around position fourteen without a single external link, which meant it had room to grow. We wrote a reoptimisation brief for the page, expanded and filled out its structure, and lifted it to position 5. When the client was updating the site structure, we checked that new pages wouldn’t compete with existing ones. On the sales pages we suggested moving the strong wording from the eyebrows onto the buttons, such as “Calculate ROI now for free” and “Download for free”.
We built links every month, and each time a query climbed, we noted which placements might have done it. Each next month’s plan rested on what had worked.
Outcome. From July to December 2020 traffic grew from about 3,000 to 5,100 visits a month.
January – December 2021
Entered Europe through the main domain and added solution pages
The client wanted to sell in the UK, Germany and France. The French version lived on a separate domain and didn’t benefit from the main domain’s authority. We advised moving the language versions into folders on the main domain, because then the domain’s authority would work for them too. In February the French version moved, and we checked the move straight away and supplied fixes. From then on we checked the language versions every month. For the UK we recommended pages in British English in a subfolder, and we looked for publication sites in the .co.uk zone.
That same January we wrote briefs for nine solution pages, including headless, cross-border, enterprise and multichannel eCommerce. We deliberately didn’t target the page about migrating from an old platform at “ecommerce replatforming”, because an article already held that query and the two pages would have competed with each other. In April we gave a brief for rewriting the comparison page, and in October we gathered keywords for the analyst reports that feature Oro, Gartner Magic Quadrant among them. Placements for the UK ran from January, and from the autumn the US and France were added as separate streams.
Outcome. In spring 2021 traffic reached about 7,700 visits a month. A Google update took a quarter of it (more on that below), but in October traffic hit a new high of about 8,600.
January – December 2022
An extra focus on enquiries
In 2022 traffic held on a plateau, and the work centred on the people who buy, meaning who they are and what they want to do before they talk to a salesperson.
Every month from February to July we described personas and their “jobs” (JTBD), for example an ecommerce manager at a medical supplies company. In November we added the CTO and CIO, because replacing a sales platform isn’t decided by marketing alone. And of course we kept building links, creating new content with the client and improving the old.
An IT director choosing a platform may well start with a ready-made RFP template. We advised placing it in articles next to a “how to test the platform” block, and for each document given out in exchange for contact details we set out the stage of choice and a call to action for a demo. In parallel we checked the new site design on test versions and after launch.
Outcome. For almost the whole year traffic held between 7,300 and 9,000 visits a month, peaking at about 10,300 in November.
January – September 2023
Conversion data for every page
The client created some of the content itself, webinars and podcasts for example, and we included it in the overall picture. The site already had a good many pages, but there was still potential. To decide what to update next, we needed one overall picture. We put every page of the site into a table with organic traffic and conversions from Google Analytics plus clicks, impressions and positions from Search Console, for the whole of 2022. The table immediately showed the pages that were competing with the main ones for the same queries. Podcasts, for example, were showing up in search for queries that already had dedicated pages.
Article briefs went up to five a month from three, and we picked topics from the personas’ pain points over the platform’s features. We also secured links and placements in US publications.
Outcome. In May 2023 traffic reached about 9,300 visits a month.
What was hard
A Google update that took a quarter of the traffic
In spring 2021 Google reassessed which pages answer which queries. From March to June Oro’s traffic fell from about 7,700 to 5,700 visits a month. Some pages lost rankings, the marketplace page moved to a new URL, and people simply stopped making COVID-related searches.
Over the summer we reworked the pages that had slipped and pushed the key queries with links. By October the Ahrefs estimate was already above the spring level.
After
Search traffic up 2.5 times
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| 2,720 search visits a month | 6,946, with a peak of about 10,300 |
| 1,009 queries in the Top 10, 378 of them in the Top 3 | 1,586 in the Top 10, 445 in the Top 3 |
| French version on a separate domain | Language versions in folders on the main domain, checked every month |
| Comparison page in 14th position, no external links | Position 5 |
oroinc.com/ — Avg. organic traffic
Ahrefs · 1 Oct 2019 – 30 Sep 2023
Organic traffic to oroinc.com, Ahrefs estimate, October 2019 – September 2023. A dip at the start, growth from July 2020, a Google update in spring 2021 and a 2022 plateau peaking in November.
Traffic is only half the story. What matters more is where it went, namely to the solution pages, the comparison page and the articles people read before choosing a platform.
Our work together ended in September 2023.
Why it worked
Three decisions that carried the result for four years
Depth over breadth
We lifted pages that already sat close to the top. Queries in positions 4–10 grew by 81%, and that is where the traffic lives.
Present wherever buyers choose
The comparison page, analyst reports and placements in industry publications in the US, the UK and France. Buyers came across Oro wherever they compared platforms.
A client who worked alongside us
Weekly meetings four years running and joint work on content.
Takeaways
Two lessons for large product sites
- Language versions are easier to grow in folders on the main domain. A separate domain doesn’t get the main domain’s authority. And check the move right after the switch, including canonical tags and redirects.
- Be in the comparisons people read before they choose. Your own comparison page, analyst reports and third-party round-ups work together. Today AI assistants read the same materials when they put together an answer.
Questions
What people usually ask about this case
How long did it take to see results?
For the first nine months traffic didn’t grow, and in spring 2020 it even dipped. Growth started in July 2020, and by March 2021 traffic had risen from about 3,000 to 7,700 visits a month.
Can these numbers be checked?
Yes. Traffic and rankings come from Ahrefs for oroinc.com, October 2019 – September 2023. Ahrefs estimates traffic from its own index and measures rankings directly.
Why would a product company want placements on other people’s sites?
Because a B2B platform buyer reads comparisons before contacting anyone. That is why these placements bring both links and a presence where buyers compare platforms.
