SUCCESS STORIES

Cooper & Co: From Brand Search to Category Search

Cooper & Co came to StudioHawk with an authority score of 14 and organic search barely contributing to the business, against established players like Temple & Webster, Adairs and Freedom. The goal for 2026 wasn't incremental growth, it was building a channel from a standing start.

On Shopify, selling design-led furniture, mirrors and lighting, with a catalogue too large to map by hand and 1,000 AI-generated product descriptions already live. Here's how a category-first SEO strategy, backed by a full schema rebuild, took Cooper & Co from a brand nobody searched for to a business found on the pages that sell.

Drive Similar Growth in Your Brand

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931%

Increase in AI referral traffic YoY

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103%

Increase in non-branded organic clicks

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93%

Increase in Authority Score

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Cooper & Co is an Australian design-led furniture brand selling mirrors, lighting and homewares through Shopify, competing in a market dominated by Temple & Webster, Adairs and Freedom. With no history in organic search and an authority score of 14 against three established competitors, the challenge was never demand for the category, it was building authority from zero, on the collection pages that could actually compete for category-level search.

The Need

With no organic footprint to build from, the real challenge wasn't finding opportunity, it was working out where to spend a lean budget first when every category was starting from the same disadvantage. The key challenges:

No baseline to forecast from. A domain with no category visibility and an authority score of 14 meant targets were directional rather than fixed, there was nothing to measure growth against yet.
A catalogue too large to map in one pass. Hundreds of products across dozens of collections meant keyword research and information architecture had to be split across two months, not rushed into a single sprint.
A catalogue partly written by a chatbot. Around 1,000 product descriptions were already AI-generated, with 500 more products arriving within the year, so quality had to scale with the catalogue rather than be rewritten by hand.
Broken product schema at scale. Two competing Product blocks were firing on every reviewed product, neither complete enough alone to qualify for a rich result, a technical gap affecting thousands of items in Search Console.
A lean, tightly scoped budget. With no media spend and no development budget, every recommendation had to be specified by StudioHawk and shipped entirely by the client's own team.

The Plan

With a catalogue too large to map at once and no authority to spend on head terms, the strategy started with sequencing: map the whole site before touching a single page, then work outward from where intent was sharpest and competition thinnest.

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Two-month keyword and IA mapping

A full information architecture built across 74 URLs, each assigned a primary keyword, search volume and starting position, split across two months given the size of the catalogue.

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Descriptive-first metadata rewrite

Metadata rewritten for 46 URLs on a consistent convention, colour, then noun, then size, then range, so titles read the way a customer actually searches rather than the way a catalogue is organised internally.

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Collection content sequenced by revenue

New collection page content briefed and written from February, roughly ten pages a month, prioritised by revenue potential rather than by raw search volume.

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A single, consolidated schema block

Product pages rebuilt onto one schema block carrying gtin, priceValidUntil, seller, shippingDetails, hasMerchantReturnPolicy and product-level review data, replacing two competing, incomplete blocks.

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Product data as one visibility surface

Shopify catalogue and Google Shopping feed treated as a single dataset, built for eligibility in AI shopping surfaces as Shopify's Agentic Commerce Protocol goes live.

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IA and Technical Foundations Live

The mapped IA of 74 URLs went live alongside PLP and PDP wireframes, a dedicated showroom page for local search, and heading tag and rendering audits, giving every collection page a clear structural baseline before content or metadata work began.

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Descriptive-First Metadata at Scale

Metadata rewritten for 46 URLs on the colour, noun, size, range convention, replacing internal naming logic with the language customers actually search in.

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Revenue-Sequenced Collection Content

Around ten collection pages briefed and written a month from February, sequenced by revenue rather than volume, with always-on seasonal guidelines built in so sale traffic compounds into permanent URLs instead of being rebuilt from scratch each promotional cycle.

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A Schema Rebuild for Merchant Eligibility

An April audit found two competing Product blocks firing on every reviewed product, neither complete enough alone to qualify for a rich result, and traced 3,850 Search Console flags to a single root cause: review schema scoped to the wrong product variant. Product pages now run on one consolidated block, returning valid Product, Merchant listing and Review snippets on every reviewed page.

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Product Data as an AI Shopping Surface

With Shopify's Agentic Commerce Protocol live, the Shopify catalogue and Google Shopping feed were treated as one dataset rather than two, with an AI information page giving assistants a structured account of the brand, so the same attributes improving a product page also shape how an assistant recommends it.

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The stone side tables collection didn't rank for a single term in January. Rebuilt with descriptive, search-led product titles and full schema markup, it's the clearest proof that authority built on the right category pages compounds fast, even from a standing start.

Since launch, this collection has grown from 1 click to 1,304, a category that didn't exist in search terms StudioHawk could measure now carrying real, ongoing traffic.

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No authority to win head terms.

A domain sitting at 14 was never going to compete for "mirrors" against three established retailers. Instead of fighting for the head term, the strategy built out the subcategories beneath it, where intent is sharper and incumbents thinner. LED mirrors went from 170 to 1,823 clicks, on terms the majors hadn't bothered defending.

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A catalogue partly written by a chatbot.

Around 1,000 product descriptions were already AI-generated, with 500 more products arriving that year, and a fixed monthly content cap that made rewriting them impossible. Rather than attempt a rewrite that couldn't scale, the team built a process instead, source-of-truth rules, a naming convention and feed standards, so quality holds as the catalogue grows.

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A change of lead at month two.

The original strategy lived in a mapped IA and a costed roadmap rather than in one person's head, so the handover cost the campaign nothing. Cooper & Co's General Manager, asked directly about the transition, called it "super smooth."

The Results

Category-wide movement, not a single lucky term: bedside tables grew from 1,672 to 6,554 clicks, buffet sideboards from 867 to 4,029 (a category that didn't rank at all for "sideboards" in January), and table lamps from 787 to 4,660, up from position 24. The growth landed across the catalogue, not on one hero page.

Showing up in AI search, measured not asserted: AI referred sessions grew from 759 to 7,825 year on year, with Cooper & Co now cited across 154 pages in AI-generated answers and 476 brand mentions split across ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews and AI Mode.

103%

Increase in non-branded clicks

Clicks grew from 31.3K to 63.5K in Google Search Console.

93%

Increase in Authority Score

Score rose from 14 at signing to 27, the clearest single measure of authority built from nothing.

132%

Increase in collection page click

Non-branded clicks to collection pages rose from 21.1K to 49K, landing precisely on the pages the strategy targeted.

151%

Increase in engaged organic sessions YoY

Sessions rose from 49,713 to 124,733.

931%

Growth in AI referred sessions YoY

Sessions grew from 759 to 7,825, as schema and product data work took effect.

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Brand mentions across AI platforms

152 in ChatGPT, 138 in Gemini, 97 in AI Overviews and 89 in AI Mode.

The Conclusion

Cooper & Co's SEO campaign shows what's possible when a brand with zero search authority commits to the pages that actually sell, rather than chasing the traffic that looks good in a report.

Through a fully mapped information architecture across a 74-URL catalogue, revenue-sequenced collection content, a schema rebuild that fixed merchant eligibility at the root, and product data treated as a single visibility surface across Shopify and AI shopping assistants, StudioHawk helped Cooper & Co move from an authority score of 14 to a genuine competitor in category search, all on a lean budget with no media spend and no development budget.

+115%

Growth in AI Overview placements

How giving one journalist first access to Genea Fertility's donor data earned national coverage and real AI search authority.

Cooper & Co: From Brand Search to Category Search

The Need

The Plan

The Execution

The Challenges Overcome

The Results

The Conclusion

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