How InTheMarket.ie Reversed a Traffic Slide and Grew Clicks 53%

InTheMarket.ie is an Irish ecommerce store carrying a wide range of home, sports, garden, and gift products. When UAWC joined the project in June 2023, the site had already been losing rankings for about six months — unstructured, with unoptimized categories, weak keyword coverage, and declining online visibility.

On top of that, the backlink profile lagged behind direct competitors: Decathlon.ie had 966 indexable links, while InTheMarket had only 595. We restructured the site, re-optimized key pages, and closed the authority gap.

Result: +53% organic clicks and +42% non-branded clicks, with the strongest category page gaining +43% traffic.

Problem

A broad catalog losing ground on every front.

The store had suffered a significant drop in traffic and impressions over the previous six months. The root causes were structural: a confusing site architecture, unoptimized category organization, and ineffective keyword placement across a wide product range.

Off-site, the brand was noticeably behind. Analysis showed Decathlon.ie had 966 indexable backlinks versus 595 for InTheMarket — an authority gap that limited the store's ability to rank highly in competitive categories like treadmills and garden equipment.

Key issues:

1. Weak site structure and category organization that diluted relevance.
2. Ineffective keyword targeting on high-value category and product pages.
3. A backlink profile trailing key competitors.
4. Crawling and indexing issues holding pages back.

Setup

A broad catalog with declining visibility. Categories that didn't match how people actually search. A backlink profile that needed to catch up to competitors like Decathlon.

Strategy

Fix the structure, target the right keywords, close the link gap.

1. Technical SEO Audit

We ran a comprehensive audit and resolved critical crawling and indexing issues.

2. On-Page Optimization of Key Pages

We reorganized and optimized priority category and product pages to match real search demand.

3. Metadata Improvements

We optimized titles, descriptions, and H1 tags across key pages.

4. Structured Data for Product Snippets

We implemented structured product markup to improve rich results and CTR.

5. Backlink Strategy on High-DA Donors

We built a backlink strategy and placed the brand on high-Domain-Authority, high-traffic sites to close the gap with competitors.

Results

The situation turned around — and the top pages surged.

Before

• 11.1K clicks, 367K impressions, 3% CTR, average position 23.4
• About 6 months of declining traffic and impressions
• 595 indexable links vs. 966 for Decathlon
• Poorly structured categories and keyword targeting

After

• +53% clicks (all queries) and +42% non-branded clicks
• +16% impressions (all queries), +8% non-branded impressions
• Best category page: +43% traffic (treadmills page: 1,463 visits, 113 keywords)
• Total clicks 11.4K → 12.7K; non-branded clicks 7.94K → 9.02K (+18.2%)
• Backlinks 7.4K (+1.3K), referring domains 643 (+38); 46 placements on high-DA sites
• "treadmill ireland" 3 → 2 (+178 traffic); "treadmil" 2 → 1; "treadmills for sale" 3 → 2

Key Metrics

• +53% growth in organic clicks (all queries)
• +42% growth in non-branded clicks
• +16% growth in impressions
• +43% traffic on the top category page
• +1.3K backlinks, +38 referring domains, 46 placements on high-DA resources