Rebuilding Fragrance Direct’s SEO Performance: Delivering 398% Growth in Organic Clicks

The Challenge

Fragrance Direct faced a major setback following a 2022 site migration that disrupted SEO value, reduced visibility, and caused substantial commercial loss. Daily SEO traffic dropped from 7,000 to 3,000, organic sales fell 62% year-over-year, and the business saw an estimated £2.6M loss in sales.

The core issues included:

• Indexation confusion: 670,000 pages were crawled but not indexed, leaving valuable product pages invisible to search engines.
• Duplication: 23 duplicate versions of URLs diluted ranking signals.
• Redirect failures: Missing redirects caused thousands of users to land on dead pages, weakening both user experience and SEO authority.

‍

Our Approach

Curated was brought in to stabilise the website, rebuild trust with search engines, and restore organic performance through a data-led recovery strategy.

Here’s how we did it:

Restoring Technical Integrity and Crawl Efficiency

Fragrance Direct’s immediate need was to fix its broken foundations. Curated conducted a full SEO and content audit, identifying crawl, duplication, and redirect issues that were suppressing visibility.

We:

• Repaired critical broken links and implemented proper redirects
• Optimised crawl paths by de-indexing low-value pages to focus on high-value categories
• Introduced structured URL management best practices to retain SEO equity
• Established a collaborative SEO tracker with THG to streamline progress

These actions restored site stability, improved search engine understanding, and created a foundation for scalable growth.

Optimising Content and Building Commercial Relevance

Once the site was technically sound, Curated focused on optimising content and aligning category pages with commercial search intent.

We:

• Conducted a keyword analysis to match search intent with revenue opportunity
• Rewrote meta titles, descriptions, and top copy for key Product Listing Pages (PLPs), including Luxury, Vegan, Niche, and Classic
• Strengthened keyword targeting for high-volume and trending queries such as “luxury perfume for women” and “clean fragrance”
• Enhanced page structure to improve engagement and encourage conversions

On July 19, 2024, Fragrance Direct recorded 1,704 organic clicks and 157,014 impressions in Google Search Console. By November 29, 2024, that number surged to 8,489 organic clicks and 915,730 impressions (an increase of 398% for clicks and 483% for impressions). 

Our work during this phase re-established Fragrance Direct’s visibility across key fragrance categories, helping customers find the products most relevant to them.
‍

Scaling Long-Term SEO Growth and Brand Visibility

With a healthy, search-optimised website in place, Curated focused on sustainable growth and authority building.

We:

• Implemented always-on search listening to monitor category trends
• Created a 2025 campaign calendar aligned with seasonal search peaks
• Proposed a whitepaper launch to drive backlinks and strengthen authority
• Developed ongoing strategies for brand awareness and community growth

This approach transformed SEO from a recovery effort into a long-term engine for brand visibility and commercial success.