Challenge

Managing a large inventory of puppies across multiple markets, PMG faced a significant SEO challenge: improving internal linking for thousands of long-tail keyword pages that weren’t part of its existing category tree.

Norbert Hires, Head of SEO at PMG, explains, “We were working with a high number of products and a lot of pages with long-tail keywords which were not part of the category tree of the site. We needed a solution to interlink those pages effectively.”

PMG needed a flexible solution that allowed them to easily modify or add additional internal linking rules.

Solution

PMG turned to Verbolia’s Vlink to address this challenge. Vlink is a smart internal linking solution that generates relevant internal links based on custom rules.

PMG leverages Vlink for linking long-tail keyword pages. PMG had long-tail keyword opportunities but these pages were not integrated within the site’s structure. Vlink helped by interlinking these pages strategically, making them visible to search engines and improving their rankings.

For example, they applied rules based on ‘breed’. On a Golden Retriever breed page, Vlink dynamically displayed only relevant data such as locations and long-tail search terms specific to Golden Retrievers and pages with listings only.

Bonus insight: PMG discovered a virtuous cycle. As long-tail keyword pages began ranking, they also saw improved organic rankings for head terms.

Example of internal links.

Norbert had already used Vlink in a previous role and decided to implement it at PMG as well. He chose Verbolia not only for his past positive experience but also for Verbolia team’s responsiveness to his feedback, as also mentioned by Loïc Hélias, Head of SEO at Decathlon.

Vlink enabled PMG to:

• Automatically generate internal links: Vlink saves time and resources by automatically generating relevant internal links in the exact number needed.
• Flexibility: Vlink allows for easy modification and customization of internal linking rules.
• Improve website structure: By creating a robust internal linking structure, Vlink helped PMG improve its website’s crawlability and indexability, making it possible for search engines to understand and rank their long-tail keyword pages.
• Boost organic traffic: The improved internal linking and SEO performance lead to increased organic traffic to PMG’s transactional pages. Check out the measurable results in the next section, Results.

Implementation process

Implementing Vlink was smooth and fast, requiring minimal technical resources. “The technical implementation of Verbolia requires minimal resources, but the impact is outsized,” says Norbert. 

• Setup time: It took just 2 weeks to integrate the tool with PMG’s website with an API.
• Full rollout: Once Vlink integrated with the website, it took only 1 month to fully implement the necessary rules across all 5 marketplaces.

With Vlink, you set up the rules once and reap long-term benefits, no need for ongoing adjustments, allowing effortless scaling.

“We could have built the same tool in-house since I’m in a privileged position with a team that can handle technical changes. However, it would have taken months of work. Instead, we were able to focus on other impactful initiatives,” says Norbert.

Results

Since implementing Vlink, PMG has seen impressive results:

• 15% increase in organic traffic: Vlink has driven a significant portion of PMG’s organic traffic, contributing to an overall 15% year-over-year growth for its UK website and roughly 10% of the organic traffic is directly coming from Verbolia on long-tail keyword pages with nearly 400,000 clicks the last 28 days.
• Improved keyword rankings: Vlink has helped PMG rank for a wider range of long-tail keywords, increasing its visibility in search results and driving more qualified traffic to its website. “Now we are ranking for the long-tail keyword pages for which we weren’t able to rank before.” as you can see on the image below which represents the evolution of clicks on those long-tail keywords pages.

Evolution of clicks on the long-tail keywords pages

Looking ahead

PMG is now expanding Vlink to its recently acquired marketplaces, ensuring the same successful internal linking strategy across all markets.

They will also further refine its internal linking strategy for local search to achieve even greater SEO success. “Now, I want to refine our location-based linking, so if a user is searching within a region, we only show locations relevant to that region.“

Conclusion

Vlink is a powerful and flexible solution that SEO managers can rely on to strengthen internal linking at scale and boost organic traffic.

With minimal effort and maximum impact, PMG successfully leveraged Vlink to take its SEO strategy to the next level.

Norbert concludes “I would absolutely recommend Vlink to other SEO managers working for classified websites or e-commerce”.