ProNails | International SEO Case Study

ProNails, a Belgium-based nail beauty brand, wanted to improve their organic search presence in not one, not two, but three locations and languages.. on three different sites. An international SEO campaign was in the offing!

The Results

Nailed It 💅

74.2%

YoY increase in first page keyword rankings worldwide.

83%

Increase in organic revenue between July 2023 and July 2024.

#1

Positions achieved for competitive terms such as ‘ongles en gel tendance 2023‘

HOW WE GOT THERE

When setting out to tackle ProNails’ challenges, our strategy was clear 🔎

International SEO

There were no basic international SEO features such as hreflangs on the site when we were brought in, and so we trained the ProNails team on that and ensured that their sites were well set up and clean from an International SEO perspective.

Content

We helped the team kickstart their blog strategy, producing research and wireframes to guide their experts. We also updated their hub page design and emphasised informational content. In the background, we also supported the team on new product launches and best practices there.

On-Page SEO

We advised changes for their salon location pages to add extra information and give those a boost and open new doors to the site. We also looked at existing blogs and optimised them to perform better in search, and found questions that were often asked by nail technicians to integrate.

THE CHALLENGES

Time Management & Splitting Ourselves

With a multi-lingual international SEO campaign like this one, splitting ourselves between different sites in different locations, each with their own teams and priorities, was always going to be challenging.

We had to not only split our time well between the three domains, we also had to split our link building resources and try to keep all three plates spinning simultaneously. Added into this was the fact that we had very little time to action changes, as we were often relying on limited internal resources from ProNails’ small but dedicated team to confirm translations and get those actioned.

We managed to navigate these changes in the end, and made ProNails a success. We even picked up some Dutch phrases along the way!

THE CHALLENGES

Navigating CMS Challenges

Another key challenge we faced with ProNails was its unique CMS, which meant that we were often limited as to what changes we could make, or even brief to a developer.

To give one example, we couldn’t change H1 headings – the most important on-page SEO element – without changing the whole URL & every subcategory underneath it, which created cascading problems down the line.

This meant the internal linking structure and category page headings couldn’t be changed. What didn’t help was that these were very nondescript, reducing their chances of ranking well for their important keywords, so we had to use other on-page areas to find optimisation opportunities. Fortunately, we are always prepared with a Plan B and C, and are prepared to get creative to secure results.

Lily-Mason-StudioHawk-SEO-Specialist-London

Our Hawks Are The Best in Class..

Meet the team behind the case study you’ve just read.

SOPHIE GIBSON

LILY MASON

Sophie Gibson:

Sophie is the Technical SEO Director at StudioHawk. Her favourite place is knee-deep in data unravelling SEO problems in an audit or putting together a cracking report. When she’s not doing that, you can find her sharing her knowledge at conferences such as BrightonSEO.

Meet Sophie

Lily Mason:

Born and raised in Bath, Lily pursued a degree in History and Archaeology at the University of Southampton in 2017 whilst working in the hospitality industry. As a former mixologist, she can make a mean espresso martini, even if she does say so herself.

Meet Lily

CASE STUDIES

ProNails SEO Case Study