UV-Blocking Activewear Site Gains 4x More Traffic with The HOTH

BloqUV began shortly after its founder, Corina Biton, noticed she had small white dots on her arms. 

After rushing to the dermatologist, she was diagnosed with sun exposure. 

This came as a total shock since she always wore long-sleeve t-shirts whenever she played tennis. After doing some digging online, she discovered that most t-shirts only block 5% of harmful UV rays from the sun. 

Not about to give up her active, outdoor lifestyle – Biton began searching for fashionable clothing that provided ample protection from the sun. Dissatisfied with what she found, this led to the founding of BloqUV in 2009 and the creation of BloqTek, Biton’s proprietary fabric that blocks 98% of UVA and UVB rays.

Their clothing line was beyond excellent and perfect for lovers of outdoor activities, but they had one problem – their website wasn’t generating much traffic.

BloqUV had amazing products that provided true value to its target audience, but its website wasn’t optimized to rank on search engines like Google. 

As a result, their site wasn’t appearing for relevant search keywords like ‘UV-blocking shirts’ and ‘women’s UPF clothing.’

They knew SEO was the answer, but they lacked proper in-house capabilities to tackle it themselves. 

SEO takes A LOT of work, especially for sites facing ‘new website obscurity.’

Google likes to rank sites that it trusts as reliable, accurate, and high-quality. Websites need the following factors in place to build trust on search engines:

• Lots of backlinks (links on other sites pointing to your content) from other reputable sites 
• A large library of quality content consisting of blogs, videos, how-tos, learning hubs, and guides 
• Targeted keyword research and optimization to appeal to Google’s search algorithm 
• Flawless on-page and technical factors like optimized metadata, fast loading speed, a logical internal linking structure, and proper keyword placement 
• Positive relationships with related websites for guest posts, article syndication, and press release distribution 

That’s a metric ton of work for a small business like BloqUV to take on, especially when they’re already working at full capacity developing amazing activewear and supporting their customers. 

When BloqUV first came to us more than 9 years ago, they were only generating approximately 1,000 organic visitors each month. 

While some traffic is better than no traffic, we knew their top-tier activewear was capable of much more than that. 

They also had a considerable backlink deficit, with their top competitors looking at them through the rearview mirror. 

To kick things off, we started running a series of paid ads for them through Google. This provided a speedy boost in traffic as our longer-term strategies took time to gain momentum. The client ordered content creation and link-building services, and we were off to the races. 

The SEO audit 

We always begin work with new clients by auditing their websites through the lens of SEO. This gives us the chance to determine where the client currently stands in relation to their competition. 

Not only that, but it also gives us a chance to identify and correct any on-page or technical errors, including:

• Duplicate content 
• Keyword spam (using the keyword too many times throughout the content) 
• Broken links 
• Slow loading speed 
• Missing metadata (title tags and meta descriptions) 

Another mainstay of our SEO audits is to look for ‘easy win’ keywords, which are search terms the site already ranks for in positions 4 – 30. These keywords are great because, with a little optimization, you can boost their rankings in a short period of time. 

BloqUV had quite a few ‘easy win’ keywords, so we took advantage of them straight away. 

Establishing thought leader status 

As stated before, Google ranks sites that it trusts and views as authoritative. We knew that we could establish BloqUV as an authority in the sun-blocking activewear space. 

Our team began writing informative and educational blog posts for the brand, but we also helped provide other resources like:

• Infographics 
• A UV Index breakdown for customers
• Testimonials and reviews 

Every piece of content we created was backed up by keyword research to ensure the topics were viable to BloqUV’s target audience. 

The website is now a leading resource for information on UV protection and preventing skin cancer. 

Closing the link gap 

Acquiring backlinks from relevant and authoritative websites is one of the (if not the) best things you can do for your search engine rankings. 

Link-building is our specialty, and we were able to grow BloqUV’s links from just over a thousand to 2.5k, and our efforts are still bearing fruit. 

In particular, we utilized our massive link network consisting of over 300 news outlets and media sites to gain more mainstream visibility for BloqUV. 

BloqUV’s website has come an extremely long way since we first started working with them nearly 10 years ago. 

They’re now one of the leading brands in the UV-blocking activewear space, and their traffic continues to grow.

Also, remember the two keywords we mentioned earlier, ‘UV-blocking shirts’ and ‘women’s UPF clothing?’ 

Well, BloqUV now ranks in the #2 organic spots for both keywords, along with hundreds of other relevant keywords to their business.