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CASE STUDY · CATEGORY PAGE SEO · UNITED STATES
Category page SEO case study: moving a US retailer onto page 1 for a head keyword
One category page, one very competitive keyword, five months. No new site, no rebuild — just the on-page and technical work the page needed to compete.
CATEGORY PAGE SEO
ON-PAGE SEO
TECHNICAL SEO
PAGE SPEED
Project facts
AT A GLANCE
Position 8
"sunglasses for girls"
Google SERP
274
Organic visits / month
SEMrush
86
Organic keywords
SEMrush
25
Page Authority Score
SEMrush
Every number on this page names the tool it came from.
The brief
This was not a whole-site engagement. It was one category page, competing for a head keyword against Claire’s, Kohl’s, Aeropostale and H&M — retailers with the same budget and more history on the term.
The work was narrow on purpose: make this page the most obviously relevant result for “sunglasses for girls”, and remove every technical reason Google might have to rank it lower.
Where it ranks
The page sits at position 8 on page 1 for “sunglasses for girls” — inside the first ten results, above two of the four competitors it started behind.
[ Figure: cs3-childrensplace-fig1-serp-position-8.png — Fig. 1 — Google results page, position 8 ]
What the page is worth now
- Organic visits / month274, up 3.4%
- Organic keywords86
- Page Authority Score25 — 11 backlinks from 8 referring domains
[ Figure: cs3-childrensplace-fig2-semrush-domain-overview.png — Fig. 2 — Domain overview, SEMrush ]
COUNTRY SPLIT
75%
United States
SEMrush
18%
India
SEMrush
5.1%
United Kingdom
SEMrush
1.5%
Philippines
SEMrush
Three quarters of the traffic is in the market that can actually buy. For a US retailer that is the number that matters, not the worldwide total.
[ Figure: cs3-childrensplace-fig3-traffic-by-country.png — Fig. 3 — Traffic distribution by country, SEMrush ]
The trend
[ Figure: cs3-childrensplace-fig4-organic-traffic.png — Fig. 4 — Organic traffic trend, SEMrush ]
[ Figure: cs3-childrensplace-fig5-organic-keywords.png — Fig. 5 — Organic keyword footprint, SEMrush ]
[ Figure: cs3-childrensplace-fig6-keyword-positions.png — Fig. 6 — Keyword positions and search volume, SEMrush ]
“sunglasses for girls” carries roughly 1,400 monthly searches. The rest of the footprint is the long tail that arrives once the head term starts working.
Technical health
MOZ
- Domain Authority63
- Page Authority42
- Domain age26 years
A strong domain does not rank a weak page on its own. It only means the page deserves the effort.
[ Figure: cs3-childrensplace-fig7-moz-authority.png — Fig. 7 — Website authority metrics, MOZ ]
What I worked on
- Find the most profitable keywords
- Recheck the competitors
- SEO audit
- On-page SEO
- Technical SEO
- Page speed optimisation
- High-quality backlinks
- Weekly and monthly reports
What I would tell a similar retailer
- A category page is a landing page. Most retailers treat it as a filter.
- Competitive head terms are won on relevance and speed long before they are won on links.
- Check the country split before you report the traffic number.
- Five months is a realistic window for one page against established competition.
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