In this SEO success story, we’ll take a closer look at Pastreez, an online macaron business based in the United States. Founded by two French pastry chefs from Paris, Pastreez specializes in handcrafted macarons that are delivered to customers across the country. Through our work with Pastreez, we were able to help the business increase its online visibility and attract more customers to its website.
Our objective was to help Pastreez, a small macaron bakery based in the United States, establish and expand its online presence through effective SEO strategies. We focused on improving the bakery’s brand awareness and visibility on Google, with the goal of driving more traffic to its website and increasing sales.
To achieve this objective, we developed a comprehensive SEO plan that included keyword research, on-page optimization, link building, and content marketing. While advertising and social media were important for supporting the bakery’s SEO efforts, our main focus was on building a strong foundation for its online presence through organic search traffic.
Our aim was to position Pastreez as a leading macaron bakery in the US and to ensure that it would continue to grow and thrive in the highly competitive online marketplace.
Our SEO strategies had a significant impact on Pastreez's online visibility, sales, and business growth. Within six months of launching the website, it ranked #1 for the highly competitive keyword "macarons near me," which helped drive a steady stream of organic traffic to the site.
The success of our SEO efforts was reflected in the bakery's sales, which exceeded 1 million macarons, with a majority of sales being driven by organic traffic. Within four years of starting online sales, Pastreez was able to expand its business by opening a brick-and-mortar store.
Six years after launching the website, Pastreez is still within the top 5 positions on Google for its targeted keywords, which has helped the business maintain a steady stream of organic traffic and sales. Today, 55% of sales come from non-branded organic traffic, and 10-15% from branded organic traffic.
Thanks to the success of the bakery's online business, Pastreez was able to expand its facility and launch a new product line of crepes. The organic traffic to the website continues to grow, and the bakery's online presence remains a vital channel for generating sales and revenue.
To ensure the highest traffic from potential macaron buyers, UpGrow took a targeted approach to finding high-intent keywords. The company's aim was to capture the attention of individuals actively searching for macarons in their area.
By using localized search terms, such as "macarons near me," Pastreez maximized their visibility to potential customers. This particular keyword was chosen due to its significant search volume and low competition in the US market.
Additionally, it had demonstrated stable trends and growth over time.
In addition to the primary keyword 'macarons near me', Pastreez used the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool to identify related secondary keywords and sub-topics that were also relevant to their business. These included phrases such as 'fresh macarons near me' and 'best macarons near me', among others.
This further emphasized the high demand for macarons across the United States, and Pastreez decided to focus its SEO strategy and business model on providing handmade macarons to customers throughout the country.
To succeed in SEO, it's not enough to simply target a keyword. The real challenge is to outperform all the domains that currently rank in the top 10 search results.
This means that the next step in SEO is to thoroughly analyze the winning strategies of your competitors and find ways to surpass them.
To achieve this, UpGrow conducted a comprehensive analysis of the domains that were ranking on the top of Google for the keyword 'macarons', using two key parameters:
- All organic keywords
- Backlinks
The objective was to rank for most of these keywords and also look for opportunities to get backlinks from those domains.
However, let's talk about that later. For now, the essential research work was complete, and it was time to launch the website and focus on boosting the revenue!
When it comes to SEO, relying solely on product pages will only take you so far. Eventually, investing in content marketing becomes necessary in order to maintain your search engine positioning.
In SEO, product pages only get you so far. You will have to invest in content marketing sooner or later, to maintain your search engine positioning. For Pastreez, that was in 2021, when they started a blog and started developing content, consistently, based on a clear digital content strategy.
Pastreez had a clear advantage in that it focused on selling a single product: macarons. This allowed them to adopt a topic cluster strategy, where they created posts on every topic related to macarons.
To find the relevant keywords, UpGrow used the Keyword Magic Tool and prioritized the following:
- Insert your content here
- Answer questions that people ask
After finding numerous high-volume and low-difficulty keywords, we created blog posts on each one to establish Pastreez's small business website as an authority on macarons.
Subsequently, we expanded our strategy by creating content on popular sub-topics such as 'gifts', 'vegan', and 'gluten-free' to include additional posts on macarons relating to these areas.
To further increase its online presence, UpGrow focused on optimizing for local SEO keywords to capture potential customers who are looking to buy macarons nearby.
By targeting high-intent keywords with a location modifier like "near me," they were able to attract local customers actively searching for macarons.
We expanded its keyword list and blog posts to include more location-specific terms, which helped them rank for various local keywords such as "macarons near me," "buy macarons near me," and "macaron delivery near me."
Ranking for these location-based keywords helped Pastreez to increase its visibility in local search results, resulting in more foot traffic to its physical store and increased online orders from nearby customers.
As part of its competition analysis, Pastreez evaluated the high-ranking domains linking to its competitors and came up with an innovative link outreach strategy.
Instead of sending a generic email asking for links, UPGrow sent free samples of its delicious macarons to these domains, along with a request for links. This creative approach proved to be highly successful, as who could resist such a tempting offer?
Overall, UpGrow's out-of-the-box thinking and willingness to take risks helped it achieve remarkable results with its SEO strategy.
SEO success, even for local SEO, can be steady, but over time it is easy to slip in rankings. That's why constant ongoing SEO maintenance is necessary, which is something that Pastreez also did.
To maintain its SEO success, We implemented the following SEO maintenance steps:
Regular Site Audits: UpGrow always kept a close eye on the technical health of their website, using the insights from the Semrush site audits to improve and optimize their content.
On-page Optimization: The team also ensured that all of their website pages were optimized for SEO, with the correct meta tags, heading tags, and other HTML elements.
Position Tracking: Fluctuations in rankings are inevitable in SEO, but we closely monitored their rankings. If there was a big drop, the team took immediate action to refresh the content and regain its ranking.
