Shiels: From Migration to Market Authority

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.

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. 

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to capture geo-relevant searches and drive foot traffic to Shiels' stores, while blog audits identified thin or outdated content, with recommendations to align posts to topical authority.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