Boosting leading beer brand’s ecommerce presence

Northern Monk is one the most popular breweries in Leeds and across the UK, with a number of pubs throughout the Yorkshire region and UK-wide product distribution through retail and online sales. While they have brand recognition within pubs across the country, they were struggling with their ecommerce sales.

Key information

Organic revenue up 27% YoY
£££

The Challenge

Northern Monk has been rapidly expanding since its foundation in 2013. From its Leeds brewery it now sells thousands of litres of beer. And in its refectory pubs in Leeds and Manchester, as well as its new craft beer venue in York, it has an outlet for its best ales, IPAs and stouts. But its website wasn’t hitting the right notes when it came to online sales.

Edge45® was brought in to help boost these sales across their key beer products.

The Edge45® Approach

We tackled their website from two angles – technical SEO and on page content. As an ecommerce SEO agency, we knew that having a technically sound website was equally as important as having relevant and optimised copy on key money driving pages.

Our technical audits found:

  • Page title & H1 weren’t optimised
  • 404 errors were wasting backlink power
  • Layout Shift Issues with their Core Web Vitals

On a content front, we also found:

  • Navigation didn’t link to core beer categories
  • Category pages lacked content
  • Product page content was thin

Our tactics

We tackled each issue one by one working with the client’s in-house development and marketing teams when and where necessary. This approach meant we could implement fixes fast.

For the content, we did the following:

  • Added optimised H1s to target core beer terms
  • Updated the navigation to include categories like ‘IPAs’ and ‘Stout’
  • Created optimised and engaging category content to sell their USPs, link to related pages and add a touch of Northern Monk TOV to each page
  • Implemented 404 redirect plan

Our Results

  • Organic revenue up 27% YoY
  • Online transactions up 46%
  • Total website conversion rate up 32%
  • Tracked visibility rose 376%
  • Started ranking for new keywords like:
    • ‘Stout’ (SV 12,100) in position 3
    • ‘Hazy IPA’ (SV 880) in position 2
    • ‘Beer online’ (SV 480) in position 4
  • Saw existing keywords rise up the rankings:
    • ‘Low alcohol beer’ (SV 1600) up from 38 to 4
    • ‘Beer gift sets’ (SV 1600) up from 6 to 3
  • Number of keywords in positions 1 to 3 increased by 38%
  • Increased visibility in LLMs and AI Overviews
  • Organic users up 18% year on year.

If your online store isn’t connecting with your audience, or is languishing on page 3 of Google, we can help you get found again, driving valuable traffic to high converting pages and boosting your revenue. Speak with our ecommerce SEO specialists today.

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