TACTIC 01
Product feeds
One master catalogue, localised into feeds for 12 Merchant Center countries.
- GTIN-exempt handmade flags and custom labels
- Country-specific currency, shipping and returns
- Supplemental feeds for pattern and colour attributes
Azulejaria Lume
Hand-painted azulejo e-shop · Porto · Portugal
How a Porto tile workshop sold azulejos to 31 countries without a marketplace
+246%organic ordersover 15 months · Commerce SEO
Each tile in the panel is painted from one number in this engagement: busier patterns mean more orders. Hover, focus or tap a tile to turn it over.
Fig. 1 — The results panel. 15 month tiles, 3 metric tiles, 4 tactic tiles.
The challenge
A Porto workshop renting its shop window from a marketplace.
Sales depended on marketplace fees, and the own shop was Portuguese-only with untagged images.
Three painters, one kiln and 412 patterns, many copied from 19th-century façades around Porto. Demand existed far beyond Portugal, but buyers abroad found the tiles through a marketplace that took up to 15% per order plus listing fees, and kept the customer relationship.
The own shop could not compete: it spoke only Portuguese, priced only in euros, and its photographs were invisible to the image search that tile buyers rely on. The brief was simple to state: make the own shop the place the world buys these tiles.
78%
Share of orders via marketplace
1
Locales on own shop
0 of 1,940
Images with alt text
5.8 s
Mobile LCP, product page
Diagnosis: eight cracks in the glaze
Critical· International
Shop served only /pt/; no English, French or German URLs existed, so 92% of non-PT sessions bounced to a marketplace.
→ Subfolder locales with hreflang clusters
High· International
Prices shown in EUR only and shipping quoted after checkout started, so non-EU carts were abandoned at 81%.
→ Per-market currency and shipping in the feed
Critical· Images
1,940 product photos named IMG_xxxx.jpg with empty alt text; zero impressions in Google Images.
→ Descriptive filenames, alt and ImageObject
High· Images
Uncompressed 4–6 MB JPEGs; mobile LCP of 5.8 s on product pages.
→ AVIF/WebP derivatives, explicit sizes
Critical· Feeds
No Merchant Center feed: products invisible to free listings and Shopping surfaces.
→ Localised product feeds per country
High· Collections
One flat “Loja” page of 412 SKUs; no pattern, colour or room collections to rank for.
→ Collection architecture by pattern and use
Medium· Technical
Faceted filters generated 11,300 crawlable parameter URLs, diluting crawl budget.
→ Canonicals and parameter rules
Medium· Content
Product copy was a single line in Portuguese; no dimensions, glaze or installation detail.
→ Spec-rich templates in four languages
The strategy
Four tactics, laid like a panel: each one only works next to the others.
Built on our Commerce SEO plan: feeds put the catalogue in front of buyers in each country, hreflang sends them to the right language, image SEO wins the visual search, and collections give every search a page worth landing on.
TACTIC 02
Hreflang
Four locales (pt, en, fr, de) with regional variants where pricing differed.
- x-default pointing to the English shop
- Reciprocal tags generated from one sitemap index
- Locale-aware internal links, no IP redirects
TACTIC 03
Image SEO
Every photo treated as a landing page in Google Images and Lens.
- Filenames like azulejo-pombalino-cobalt-14cm.avif
- Alt text in each locale, describing pattern and use
- ImageObject and Product schema with licence info
TACTIC 04
Collection pages
From one flat shop to 64 collections people actually search for.
- Pattern families: pombalino, enxaquetado, floral
- Room intent: kitchen backsplash, stair risers, house numbers
- Editorial intros, FAQs and installation guides
Month by month
15 months, one tile at a time.
Diagnose
Month 1 · 70 orders
Audit and baseline
Crawl, Search Console and marketplace sales mapped by country.
Month 2 · 72 orders
Catalogue model
412 SKUs normalised into pattern, colour, size and glaze.
Build
Month 3 · 78 orders
Locale architecture
/en/, /fr/, /de/ subfolders and hreflang clusters shipped.
Month 4 · 85 orders
Feeds go live
Merchant Center free listings in PT, ES, FR, DE, GB, US.
Month 5 · 96 orders
Image pipeline
1,940 photos renamed, compressed and described.
Month 6 · 108 orders
First 18 collections
Pattern families and the kitchen backsplash hub.
Grow
Month 7 · 124 orders
Translated product copy
Spec-rich templates rolled out in four languages.
Month 8 · 139 orders
Room collections
Stair risers, house numbers and bathroom panels.
Month 9 · 153 orders
Feed expansion
Six more countries added, incl. CA, AU and the Nordics.
Month 10 · 168 orders
Guides
Installation and care guides linked from every collection.
Compound
Month 11 · 184 orders
Lens and Discover
Lifestyle imagery tuned for visual search surfaces.
Month 12 · 199 orders
Seasonal collections
Gift and house-number collections ahead of Q4.
Month 13 · 214 orders
Facet clean-up
Parameter URLs collapsed; crawl focused on 64 collections.
Month 14 · 229 orders
Long-tail patterns
Collections for rare historic patterns from Porto façades.
Month 15 · 242 orders
Review and roadmap
Marketplace share cut; year-two plan for Japan and the Gulf.
Results
+246% organic orders, and a shop that now speaks four languages.
Organic orders / month
70 → 242
Countries with sales
9 → 31
Image-search clicks / month
1.2k → 9.8k
Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.
- Organic orders / month
- 242from 70
- Countries with sales
- 31from 9
- Image-search clicks / month
- 9.8kfrom 1.2k
Countries with an organic sale by month 15: 31
- Portugal (before)
- Spain (before)
- France (before)
- Brazil (before)
- United Kingdom (before)
- Germany (before)
- Netherlands (before)
- Belgium (before)
- Switzerland (before)
- United States (new)
- Ireland (new)
- Italy (new)
- Canada (new)
- Austria (new)
- Luxembourg (new)
- Denmark (new)
- Sweden (new)
- Australia (new)
- Norway (new)
- Poland (new)
- Finland (new)
- Czechia (new)
- Greece (new)
- New Zealand (new)
- Israel (new)
- Mexico (new)
- United Arab Emirates (new)
- Japan (new)
- Singapore (new)
- Iceland (new)
- Hong Kong (new)
Selling before Opened by the engagement
Modelled series: orders +246% (70 → 242), countries 9 → 31, image clicks 1.2k → 9.8k.
Rankings by market
| Query | Market | Monthly volume | Before | After |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| azulejos pintados à mão | PT | 2.9k | #14 | 2 |
| hand painted portuguese tiles | US · GB | 6.6k | Not in top 100 | 3 |
| azulejos portugueses comprar | ES | 1.6k | #41 | 3 |
| carreaux portugais peints à la main | FR | 1.3k | Not in top 100 | 4 |
| portugiesische fliesen kaufen | DE | 2.4k | Not in top 100 | 5 |
| portuguese tile kitchen backsplash | US | 4.4k | Not in top 100 | 6 |
| blue and white tile house number | GB | 1.9k | Not in top 100 | 2 |
| azulejo pattern (Google Images) | Global | 12k | Not in top 100 | 1 |
Image search, before and after
portuguese blue tiles
stock photo site
marketplace listing
stock photo site
marketplace listing
stock photo site
marketplace listing
portuguese blue tiles
azulejarialume · shop
azulejarialume · shop
stock photo site
azulejarialume · shop
stock photo site
azulejarialume · shop
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