Fothergill's

Objective

Despite a strong brand reputation, Fothergill’s faced challenges in amplifying their organic visibility, particularly for non-branded search terms. In 2023, they suffered from a failed migration to Shopify, which ultimately resulted in their site health taking a hit, with a sharp decline in impressions, clicks, and sessions. Fothergill’s had previously ranked for brand-related terms but were missing out on valuable informational and commercial keywords that didn’t include ‘Fothergill’s’ and could attract new users, expand their customer loyalty base, and drive sales.

In 2024, Fothergill’s partnered with House Digital in hopes of boosting organic recovery and long-term growth. As part of the Greenregis family, Fothergill’s shared overlapping content and tone of voice with sister brand D.T. Brown, making differentiation and establishing a clear brand identity an integral part of the site’s growth strategy. They also needed support in modernising their brand, ditching the ‘Mr Fothergill’s’ name in place of ‘Fothergill’s’.

The site was crying out for structural and UX improvements, richer on-page content, and enhanced performance to align with evolving SEO best practices.

What We Did

Our strategy to supersede the brand’s pre-migration performance and propel them in front of new audiences involved:

• • A focus on intent targeting, paying attention to what gardeners need, exactly when they need it.
  • Creating unique blog, collection, and product content, with input from professional horticulturalists, to engage users and improve conversion.
  • Enhanced UX with clearer CTAs, additional content blocks, and improved navigation.

SEO Strategy & Content

To begin with, we created a performance-led optimisation matrix, taking into account seasonal planting trends, sales data, and search demand. This would help inform our content creation and ensure that content went live ahead of seasonal peaks, boosting visibility when search interest was highest and boosting non-branded keyword rankings by appealing to a much broader audience. Typing away with our green fingers, we successfully delivered over 200 dedicated collections with unique, expert-led content using mid-tail keywords targeting our core product pillars.

Our content aimed to inspire and intrigue the amateur gardener, creating a real buzz around the fascinating possibilities that lay buried deep beneath the soil and showing that gardening is actually a lot easier and more accessible than people may think. In adherence with Google’s ‘helpful content’ update and snapping up AI Overviews, our content strategy ensured sustained engagement and improved search visibility. Our team also endeavoured to help the blog grow, addressing its problems at the very root by establishing key content pillars, recouping lost keywords from the failed migration and gaining a whole lot more in the process.

Combined with an updated mega navigation, diligently crafted by our SEO experts, rookie gardeners were given easy access to the appropriate seasonal products, as well as the content to help guide them through the growing process. 

UX Design

To ensure users and search engines alike were able to consume all of this fantastic information in the easiest way possible, we completely redesigned the category collection and product pages as well as creating two brand new custom templates for the blog. These redesigns enabled us to implement enriched on-page content via additional metafields such as FAQs, sowing and growing advice, and key features and USPs, ensuring that our content would be favoured by traditional and AI-driven search engines alike as well as provide an accessible online experience for the user.

Link Building & Digital PR

Additionally, we launched targeted link building and reactive PR coverage to capitalise on keyword volatility and algorithm updates, delivering strong gains in both rankings and traffic.

Our reactivity to seasonal trends and growing periods within the digital PR space helped us to secure some fantastic content placements for Fothergill’s over the last 6 months, with features in Ideal Home, The Times, and expert gardening sites such as Tom’s Guide.

Technical SEO

On the technical side, we tackled page speed and mobile responsiveness issues, optimising site performance in line with Google’s Core Web Vitals standards. These combined efforts enhanced both user experience and organic search rankings, driving long-term growth.

Results

Our strategic efforts meant that peak period traffic increased by +208% YoY:

A +70.8% increase in non-branded impressions year over year. (3 months Year over Year):

And a +114% increase in non-branded clicks year over year. (3 months Year over Year):

Our organic keyword visibility saw substantial improvements, with a +141% increase in keywords ranking on page 1 and a +130% increase across positions 1-3 year over year.

Not only this, we saw impressive organic growth across all key categories within the sector.

In the Flowers category, page-one keyword rankings surged from 107 to 196 (+83%), driving a +9% increase in monthly impressions to 336K. The high-value keyword “flower seeds” (6,400 SV) secured position 1, boosting visibility dramatically.

For Vegetables, keyword rankings climbed from 60 to 87 (+33%), while monthly impressions more than doubled (+115%) to 152K. Crucially, we secured position 1 rankings for “vegetable seeds” (6,200 SV) and “veg seeds” (2,000 SV), cementing Fothergill’s authority in this space.

The Seeds category also saw outstanding gains, with keyword rankings rising from 746 to 1,009 (+35%) and monthly impressions soaring from 601K to 929K (+54%). Notably, “seeds” (8,400 SV) reached position 1, strengthening Fothergill’s presence in a competitive market.

Through a combination of technical SEO enhancements, content optimisation, and UX improvements, we successfully elevated Fothergill’s organic search performance. The results demonstrate the power of a well-rounded digital strategy in driving measurable growth, ensuring sustained visibility and engagement for the brand.