TLDR
- Who: Vape Juice, a B2C vape marketplace selling e-liquid, nicotine salts, and vape hardware online and in-store.
- What changed: NUOPTIMA rebuilt their SEO foundation through technical audits, on-page optimization, and 20 backlinks per month, recovering rankings lost from inventory disruptions.
- The number: 621% more leads in the 11 months October 2023 to August 2024, versus the same window before.
456%+
Increase in Total Revenue
621%+
Increase in Leads
2,184
Keywords in Top 3 Positions
About Vape Juice and the Challenge
Vape Juice is a B2C vape marketplace selling e-liquid, nicotine salts, and vape coils and tanks, both through their website and a brick-and-mortar store.
They came to NUOPTIMA after losing a substantial amount of organic traffic. The cause was inventory disruptions: products going out of stock caused search engines to drop their rankings. Their goal was to recover to 100,000 organic monthly visitors.
Who we were targeting
Vape Juice needed to win back the buyers actively searching for its products after inventory gaps had knocked it out of the rankings.
- Online and in-store vape shoppers searching for e-liquid, nicotine salts, and vape hardware, the core categories the marketplace sells.
- High-intent buyers using commercial terms like "vape juice" and "vape juice online", where recovering top rankings mattered most.
- Search visitors who had previously found products via organic search before the inventory-driven ranking drop, making recovery of core commercial pages the priority.
Team
Responsible NUOPTIMA Team
George Ilich
Head of Business Development & Clients
Adrijana Palatinus
SEO Lead
Nada Petrovic
Off-Page SEO Lead
What We Did
After auditing Vape Juice's site and understanding the inventory-driven ranking drop, we built a program with two core tracks: off-page link acquisition and on-site SEO remediation.
Deliverables each month:
- 20 backlinks built per month
- Ongoing SEO consultancy
Key on-site work included:
- Technical audit and speed optimization. We identified page speed issues and fixed them to reduce bounce rates and support ranking recovery.
- On-page optimization across the site. This covered:
- Title tag and meta description rewrites on collection pages and blog articles;
- Collection page content rewrites, enhanced headings, and in-depth keyword research;
- Internal linking additions to help search engines map the site and help visitors navigate it;
- A manual backlink disavow to remove low-quality links that were hurting rankings.
Results
Vape Juice started working with NUOPTIMA in October 2023. The results below compare the 11 months before the engagement (October 2022 to September 2023) against the first 11 months of the engagement (October 2023 to August 2024), unless otherwise noted.
Leads and Revenue
Leads (tracked as key events in Google Analytics, covering mailing list signups and completed purchases) grew 621.4% in the 11-month comparison window. Total revenue grew 456.3% in the same comparison.
Keyword Rankings
In October 2023, Vape Juice had 985 keywords in the top three positions. By August 2024, that count reached 2,184, a 121.7% increase. They now rank first for their core terms, including "vape juice" and "vape juice online."
Organic Traffic
Organic traffic stood at 41,571 when we began in October 2023. By August 2024 it had reached 164,869, a 296.6% increase. Vape Juice's original goal was 100,000 monthly organic visitors; they exceeded it by more than 60%.
Total Clicks, Impressions, CTR, and Average Position
The Google Search Console comparison covers April 30 to October 31, 2023 (before the engagement) against March 1 to August 29, 2024 (during the engagement):
- Total Clicks: 335K to 668K, up 99.4%.
- Total Impressions: 17M to 23.8M, up 40%.
- Average CTR: 2.0% to 2.8%, up 40%.
- Average Position: 19.3 to 13.4, nearly six positions gained.
Referring Domains
Referring domains grew from 1,280 in October 2023 to 2,834 by August 2024, more than doubling over the engagement period.
Domain Rating
Domain rating rose from 47 in October 2023 to 65 by August 2024, an 18-point gain that reflects the cumulative effect of consistent link acquisition over 10 months.
Key takeaways
- Inventory gaps that pull products offline damage rankings fast and for a long time after stock returns. A technical SEO audit that treats out-of-stock pages as a structural problem, not just a content issue, is the right starting point for recovery.
- Consistent link building at a fixed monthly cadence compounded steadily: domain rating climbed 18 points and referring domains more than doubled in 10 months, which pulled organic traffic from 41K to 164K without paid spend.
- Setting a specific traffic goal (100,000 monthly organic visitors) kept the engagement focused. Vape Juice hit that target and surpassed it by more than 60%, because the work was scoped to a clear benchmark from the start.
If you run an eCommerce store and want to see what a structured SEO program could deliver for your revenue and traffic, book a strategy call with the NUOPTIMA team.