SUCCESS STORIES

Shiels: From Migration to Market Authority

For more than 75 years, Shiels has been a household name in Australian jewellery. Known for affordable luxury, timeless collections, and a strong national store presence, Shiels has earned generations of customer trust.

As consumer shopping habits continued to shift online and competition in the jewellery market intensified, Shiels faced a critical challenge: recovering from a poorly executed website migration and rebuilding its position against Australia's largest jewellery retailers. That's when StudioHawk stepped in.

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874%

Increase in overall site sessions (YOY)

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24%

Uplift in purchase revenue (June 2025)

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6684

Top 3 Keyword rankings (115% YOY increase)

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About Shiels

Shiels is one of Australia's most recognised jewellery retailers, with over 30 stores across South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, and Western Australia. Offering a wide variety of accessible luxury, from engagement rings to everyday jewellery, the brand has built its reputation on affordability, quality, and style.

As a digital-first shopping continues to rise, Shiels recognised the need to refine its online presence. To capture younger audiences, strengthen authority in organic search, and diversify into emerging channels like AI search, Google Shopping, and organic social, they needed a structure, data-led SEO agency.

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The Need

Following a migration from Magento to Shopify in Australia 2023, Shiels was left with a host of technical issues. Poor redirects, bloated themes, and structural inefficiencies were holding the site back. On top of this, Shiels' authority score had fallen behind key competitors in the jewellery space, limiting their ability to rank for high-value transactional terms.

After a review, StudioHawk identified key objectives:

- Recover from migration setbacks and strengthen organic rankings.

- Build domain authority to compete with the largest jewellery retailers in Australia.

- Position the brand to thrive in the emerging AI-driven search environment.

- Streamline theme boat and Shopify issues for better technical performances.

- Diversify organic search channels to ensure sustainable growth.

All of this had to be achieved within budget constraints of a boarder campaign, split across SEO, development, backlinks, and digital PR.

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The Plan

StudioHawk designed a comprehensive SEO roadmap that balanced recovery with long-term growth. The strategy focused on three key areas:

1. Site & Technical Improvements -Audit the site structure, reduce technical bloat, fix redirects, and align the mega menu to transactional intent.

2. Content & Authority - Revamp collection and location pages, optimise metadata, content briefs, and roll out schema for rich results.

3. Offsite & Diversification - Acquire high-quality backlinks, run PR campaigns, and optimise Google Merchant Center for maximum shopping visibility.

This combination ensure immediate recovery from migration issues while laying the foundation for Shiels to become an authority in organic jewellery search.

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The Execution

Crafting a Smarter Site Structure

A full audit of Shiels' information architecture uncovered key inefficiencies. We restructured the site to prioritise transactional keywords, reducing clicks to high-value pages and making it easier for search engines to crawl.

The mega navigation was streamlined to highlight top categories such as Engagement & Wedding Rings, while redundant items were removed. This not only improved user clarity but also distributed link authority more effectively across crucial landing pages.

Strengthening Content & User Experience

Collection pages were rebuilt with keyword-rich content designed for transactional search intent. Each page included optimised metadata, structured internal linking, and schema markup to capture rich snippets.

Location pages were optimised to capture geo-relevant searches and drive foot traffic to Shiels' stores, while blog audits identified thin or outdated content, with recommendations to align posts to topical authority.

Technical SEO Enhancements

We tackled technical debt from the migration by fixing redirects, reviewing pagination, and ensuring efficient crawlability. Theme bloat was addressed with recommendations that improved site and speed and Core Web Vitals performance, directly supporting rankings and conversions.

Expanding Visibility with Shopping & PR

Google Merchant Center feeds were optimised to ensure Shiels' products appeared correctly in Shopping results, complete with GTINs, images, and availability, Structured Product schema was rolled out to improve alignment between on-page content and feed data.

On the offsite side, StudioHawk rank PR campaigns highlighting Shiels' heritage and sourcing practices. These efforts secured placements in authoritative lifestyle outlets and generated high-quality backlinks pointing directly to key collection pages.

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Overcoming Challenges

No sugar coating here, the first six months were tough. Despite a solid SEO strategy, traffic remained stagnant, and year-on-year results were not showing improvement. This led to budget cuts midway through the campaign, but rather than pulling back, the StudioHawk team doubled down on efficiency.

By clearly demonstrating the long-term value of technical fixes and content expansion, we gained buy-in to stay the course. By early 2025, organic performance began to climb, validating the strategy, proving that SEO is a long game and well worth the wait.

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Conclusion

By addressing migration issues, strengthening content, and implementing a balanced on-site and off-site SEO strategy, StudioHawk transformed Shiels' organic performance.

What began as a recovery project evolved into a long-term growth story. The combination of technical improvements, content optimisations, and PR-driven authority building allowed Shiels not only stabilise but to thrive against Australia's biggest jewellery competitors.

Today, Shiels stands stronger in organic search - with SEO as a core pillar of their digital strategy and a foundation built for the future of AI-driven discovery.

874%

Increase in overall site sessions (YOY)

A household name offline, but buried online - until a sharp SEO strategy helped Shiels rise to the top of search and stay there.

Shiels: From Migration to Market Authority

Crafting a Smarter Site Structure

Strengthening Content & User Experience

Technical SEO Enhancements

Expanding Visibility with Shopping & PR

Year-on-Year Performance (FY25):

Monthly Highlights (June 2025):

Transactional Performance:

Shopping & Snippets Impact:

Keyword Rankings:

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