A fictional business. The figures are a modelled scenario, not a client result.
Case studyCommerce SEO20 months
Quarrystone Fasteners
Industrial fastener distributor · Cleveland, United States
48,000 bolts, nuts and washers — sorted the way a parts counter sorts them. Pull a drawer to see what changed.
Organic revenue / year: $0.9M → $2.1M — Annualised run-rate, month 1 vs month 20. Net: +$1.2M organic revenue.
Tens of thousands of near-identical SKU pages were flagged as thin content, which dragged down the whole domain.
Every length of every bolt had its own URL, its own copy of the same 30 words and its own title. Google saw an ocean of near-duplicates, indexed a fraction and quietly discounted the category pages that actually deserved to rank. Revenue from search had flatlined at $0.9M a year while trade buyers in Cleveland and across the Midwest were ordering from national catalogues.
T-01Content
18,000
SKU pages with fewer than 40 unique words — one template, one length changed, nothing else.
T-02Technical
1.9M
Crawlable facet-parameter URLs from stacking finish × grade × length × pack size.
T-03Technical
71%
Share of Googlebot requests spent on parameter URLs instead of categories.
T-04Content
22,400
Duplicate title tags like “Hex Bolt Zinc | Quarrystone” across sizes.
T-05Feeds
6,100
Merchant Center disapprovals: missing GTIN, MPN and thread-pitch attributes.
T-06Technical
0%
Variant pages with Product schema — no price, stock or bulk-tier markup at all.
T-07Technical
140
Orphaned category pages reachable only through internal search.
T-08Local
1
Will-call counter in Cleveland with no LocalBusiness markup or pickup messaging.
Built on our Commerce SEO plan: four tactics, each one aimed at a finding in the audit — fold the duplicates, let only searched-for facets index, and make every surviving page richer than the 30-word template it replaced.
A single attribute-clean feed powers Merchant Center, free listings and the site itself.
Nine facets earn an indexable URL because people search them; the rest stay filters.
Every variant page tells Google the price, stock, spec and bulk tiers in structured data.
Links follow how engineers actually buy: by thread, by standard, by assembly.
quarrystone.com › p › hex-bolt-zinc-m8x1-25x30-sku-48213
Hex Bolt Zinc | Quarrystone
Hex bolt zinc. Buy hex bolt zinc online. Hex bolt zinc in stock.
quarrystone.com › hex-bolts › m8
M8 × 1.25 Hex Bolts, DIN 933 — 12 lengths, Grade 8.8 & A2
★★★★★ 4.8 · $0.11–$0.42 · In stock
Lengths 12–120 mm, zinc or stainless. Bulk tiers from 100 pcs. Will-call pickup in Cleveland.
Drag the slider or use the arrow keys to move through all 20 months of the engagement.
Month 20 · M16 · Internal linking at scale
310 category pages in the top 3; annualised organic revenue at $2.1M.
Tactic: Internal linking
M1–3
Inventory & crawl audit
M4–8
Consolidate thin SKUs
M9–12
Facet rules & category builds
M13–16
Feeds & Product schema
M17–20
Internal linking at scale
Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.
$0.9M → $2.1M
40 → 310
18,000
| Keyword | Vol / mo | Before | After | Ranking page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| a325 structural bolts | 2,400 | 7 | 1 | /structural-bolts/a325 |
| m8 hex bolts bulk | 1,900 | 34 | 2 | /hex-bolts/m8 |
| grade 8 bolts cleveland | 320 | 12 | 1 | /grade-8-bolts |
| din 912 socket cap screws | 1,600 | — | 3 | /socket-cap-screws/din-912 |
| industrial fastener distributor ohio | 880 | 18 | 2 | / |
| 1/2-13 flange nuts zinc | 590 | 41 | 3 | /flange-nuts/1-2-13 |
| b7 threaded rod 5/8 | 720 | — | 2 | /threaded-rod/b7 |
| metric fasteners wholesale | 1,300 | 23 | 3 | /metric-fasteners |
| stainless carriage bolts 3/8 | 1,000 | 29 | 1 | /carriage-bolts/3-8-16 |
| f436 hardened washers | 480 | 52 | 2 | /washers/f436 |
Big catalogue, thin pages, facets running wild? Commerce SEO starts with the same audit: what to merge, what to index, and what to make worth ranking.