Development of a website for a waterproofing company Hydrostop. Website redesign, adding products and new structure, SEO and Link building to increase organic traffic and customers.
Hydrostop is a website that offers a rich set of waterproofing solutions. Some of the solutions offered include:
The owner of Hydrostop expressed a desire to change the website’s appearance, reduce page loading times, and, last but not least, add products from the Gedaco and Fatrafol companies.
After careful discussion of the requested changes by the client, we formulated the following tasks to be accomplished:
To efficiently and effectively carry out these tasks, we divided them into the following stages:
During this stage, we utilised various tools to gain a better understanding of the current structure of the website. Once we comprehended how the online store was designed, we moved on to the next stage.
When we embarked on this stage, we were aware that we would propose numerous changes to the client. These changes encompassed the following elements:
To enrich the menu, we implemented the following changes. First, we added several more items to the main menu – the two product families and completed projects. Second, on the left side, we created another menu to display all the subcategories of Products. This way, online store customers can see how products are categorised and easily find the ones they are interested in. Third, concerning this aspect, we enriched the footer as well, aiming to make it more user-friendly. Why should users scroll up to the top of the site when they can have the necessary links to key elements of the site as they browse the store from top to bottom?
One of the main aspects of every redesign we undertake is to add a slider if it’s not present, or to enhance it. We explained to our client that this is one of the things that create a strong first impression, and it’s also a great way to showcase promotions that users can see right when they enter the site.
Next, we focused on displaying the most commonly searched for or top-selling products. Here, our programmers wrote a PHP script to handle this task. The result was well-received by Hydrostop’s owner. We also included a link to view all products for users’ convenience if they wanted to explore more options.
After discussing this with our client, we proposed adding brief descriptions for the different families of waterproofing materials. We received approval and completed this subtask.
To ensure that online store users understand what services are offered, we added the most frequently requested services. Based on our know-how, this redesign of the homepage and more now looks better and more complete.
The last step that remained after finishing the Hydrostop redesign was to add the most recently published articles.
Before starting this phase, we needed to explain why it’s so important and why it takes time to execute. How do we solve this problem?
The semantic core represents a set or list of words that show or explain the meaning of the website, online store, or blog, i.e., what the given site or page is about.
Regarding the time it takes, it requires a detailed study of words and phrases to make an assessment to begin optimisation. If a good semantic core is not created, it is entirely possible not to achieve the required amount of traffic, and thus, weak sales, if applicable.
We solve this problem by using various tools:
Based on the search volume of words or phrases, the audience that performed the search, and other factors, we compiled the core set of words.
Before we started adding the new products to the online store, we first created the product categories. In these categories, we added text that highlights the advantages and disadvantages of the waterproofing membranes, their applications, product transportation, and storage details, among other information. This text appears before all the products to ensure that every user reads it to get familiar with the brand and the most important details.
When adding the products, our teams of programmers and designers created a collapsible design that is visualised when a product is selected.
Upon clicking on one of the accordion-style elements, a div element with information opens. This way, users don’t have to scroll to the end of the product to read everything. Instead, they can simply click on what interests them, read it, and they’re done.
To perform a check on the internal links and keyword saturation, we used Ahrefs and Google Search Console. However, to achieve this goal, we needed to add two links to both websites, allowing them to crawl all internal links – robots.txt and sitemap.xml.
The robots.txt file is a text file that instructs search engine robots on which folders and files can be indexed and which should not. It contains a list of files and directories on the website that should not be indexed by search engine robots.
On the other hand, the sitemap.xml is a critical element for SEO. It is a file that represents a list of all the pages on the website, i.e., pages that should appear in search engine results. The sitemap is not visible on the website; it has its own URL, but it is not intended for website users.
Through the XML file, search engines can efficiently discover each page on the site. To create these files, we used the RankMath plugin. As for the contents of the robots.txt file, we added the following lines:
# Allow crawling and indexing of the entire site
User-Agent: *
Disallow:
# Disallow crawling and indexing of specific site content
User-Agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin
After accomplishing these tasks, we started placing links related to keywords, depending on whether it was a product, category, application, or another page.
For on-site SEO , we used Ahrefs to identify and categorise various errors. These errors are organised in different tables based on missing, excessively short, or overly long meta titles and descriptions.
Regarding the content, we needed to increase it to ensure that search engine crawlers can find more keywords on each page without making it appear as spam. As for the products, we added meta descriptions and titles, included text for each image, added alt text, and modified their titles. All of this was done with the assistance of the RankMath plugin.
One of the things we emphasise the most is reducing loading times. The initial load time is under 2 seconds.
In addition to the full loading time, we also monitor the Speed Index from browserstack.com. This feature shows how long visual elements take to load in the browser. After running the test, the time we obtained was:
It’s important to note that the technical optimisation test was conducted for a machine running Windows 10 and a mobile device, Samsung Galaxy.
With the help of gtmetrix, we observed the total required loading time for the initial page. Prior to working on the site, it took 20 seconds to load, which is unacceptable in today’s standards.
From PageSpeed.web.dev, we obtained the following values when conducting the tests:
Some of the most common errors that occur are 404 errors. A 404 error means that the server can’t find the web page requested by the client. Variations of the error message include “Error 404,” “Page not found 404,” and “The requested URL was not found.” It’s a good practice to create a page, if it doesn’t already exist, to inform users when this error occurs.
Our web developers decided to redirect all attempts to access pages that don’t exist to the main page of the site.
After implementing this, we installed cache clearing plugins. The plugin we used is WP Rocket. WP Rocket is highly regarded as one of the best caching plugins. Its user-friendly interface ensures that anyone using it won’t have difficulties working with it. WP Rocket will improve your website’s loading speed as soon as it’s activated.
Key features of WP Rocket include:
Another plugin we frequently use is Smush. It reduces the size of images and enhances performance.
After completing all the tasks divided into various stages, the last step was to conduct a final review of SEO and to test the functionality of the online store while ensuring there were no deficiencies in the redesign.
During the review of the redesign, everything appeared as it should be. The colors matched the task specifications, the slider displayed all images without pixelation, and the accordion-style layout in the product sections displayed information as intended.
Regarding the website’s functionality, we ensured that the search functionality allowed users to enter text and select the location where the specific word or phrase would be searched.
For SEO, we utilised Ahrefs as mentioned earlier, as it generates reports in tabular form with all the errors or warnings detected.
