📈 Case Study: A content strategy that outranked Balenciaga

About the business

UK’s third-largest independent designer childrenswear retailer
Brands including Chloe, Gucci, Lacoste Kids

Nature of the work

The challenge

My client was a leading independent childrenswear retailer that had recently replatformed from Visualsoft to Adobe Commerce (at the time, Magento). Before the migration, the business held strong organic visibility in several areas, ranking well for brand names, generic terms driven by a fortunate brand name, and individual product SKUs across a large, regularly updated inventory.

After a poorly handled migration by an external agency, much of that visibility was lost. Rankings had dropped, organic traffic and revenue had declined, and the site was no longer competitive where it previously performed strongly. Paying extra for paid search clicks to compensate for the loss, the business needed a content strategy that would rebuild organic search presence, particularly for the high-value brand and product terms that drove significant revenue.

The approach

With thousands of SKUs across dozens of brands, prioritisation was key. I mapped out a plan of activity based on where the biggest opportunities sat. These were:

where good search volume existed,
where the competitive landscape was realistic,
and where the business had strong enough inventory to back up the content.

The answer was facet pages, targeting specific brand + product type combinations such as “moschino boys tracksuit” or “balmain girls shoes.” These terms sat in a sweet spot: strong search demand, a competitive gap where much larger retailers and even the brands themselves weren’t creating dedicated pages, and a user intent match that was difficult to beat.

I prioritised a few hundred of these opportunities, ranked by potential impact, and mapped them against the business’s annual buying calendar. By preparing new content ahead of product launches, pages would be indexed at their best — with great content, and new and plentiful product lines. When new season products landed and search demand peaked, the pages were primed to capture it.

The work

Working as content strategist on a monthly retainer over approximately 18 months, I directed the internal team of copywriters who understood the brands and their customers intimately. For each category, I provided detailed content briefs specifying target keywords, related terms, internal linking opportunities, and content structure — alongside competitor analysis and basic merchandising recommendations. The team then wrote the copy, adding the depth of product and brand knowledge that made the content genuinely useful to customers. I’d review, make a second pass if needed, and upload to the CMS, making the process almost end-to-end for the client.

In Magento, these facet pages allow targeting of longer-tail keywords on more specific, distinct URLs which offers a structural SEO advantage. Adding best-in-class content pushed performance even further, particularly where competing retailers had no corresponding pages.

For brand-level pages where the content was more research-based, I was able to write the copy directly. But even then, the internal team applied their customer-facing lens before anything went live. Once in a good cadence, this process was slick and required little additional input from the client.

The facet pages were staggered across the marketing calendar, aligning with seasonal launches and stock availability. The site was well-trusted and established, carried strong domain authority, and the depth of quality of the content meant we consistently matched user intent more effectively than competitors.

In several cases, these pages outranked the brand pages themselves. A retailer appearing above Moschino or Balmain for their own product terms was a win for the wider business, showcasing them as a serious retailer within the space. This often enabled wider business discussions and partnerships with brands — showing the business as serious and proactive with its marketing efforts.

Achievements

✅ Hundreds of targeted facet pages created across a priority-ranked content roadmap
✅ Pages consistently ranking positions 1–3 for competitive brand + product terms
✅ Retailer pages outranking global fashion brand sites for their own product terms
✅ Content strategy aligned to buying calendar, capturing peak demand at product launch
✅ New facet landing pages benefitted other channels and campaigns such as email and paid search

From 18 ➡️ 128 keywords ranking in positions 1-3 in 12 months

Outperformed much larger competitors on key searches

Improvement in PPC performance off the back of organic efforts

Key takeaways

Even in categories dominated by global brands, a retailer with the right content strategy can compete and win. Sometimes, this is an open goal.
Aligning content production with the buying calendar meant pages were live and indexed before the peak demand hit. Scrambling to update the pages after launch would have meant missing the peak — so communication was key.
Working in collaboration with subject matter experts is often the most effective way to produce best-in-class content — and enables quality content production at some level of scale.
Facet pages continue to be an underused but effective tool in ecommerce SEO.