Brief

Swaledale Butchers is a premium online butcher supplying restaurant-grade meat sourced from small farms in Yorkshire.

Since 2020, SALT.agency has supported Swaledale in pivoting to B2C e-commerce.

In 2024, Swaledale commissioned SALT.agency to:

  • Enhance organic brand visibility.
  • Increase average order value (AOV).
  • Compete in a saturated market dominated by retailers such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Ocado.

The challenge was to position Swaledale’s restaurant-grade quality and craftsmanship as a differentiated value proposition strong enough for Google to reward visibility against multi-billion-pound competitors.

Key strategic actions included:

  • Conducting deep industry and competitor research to refine ideal customer profiles and targeting strategies.
  • Leveraging Ahrefs, Dragon Metrics, and Google Trends to optimise for EEAT, integrating reviews to strengthen authority.
  • Developing two content hubs: a transactional hub and the Swaledale Journal for informational content, hosted on a WordPress subdomain with automated Shopify feed integration.
  • Optimising lower-funnel keywords for compounded performance.
  • Guiding Swaledale to launch curated product collections, e.g. Low and Slow BBQ Meat Box, aligned with consumer trends.
  • Combining SEO with email marketing to increase lifetime value (LTV) and purchasing frequency.

Achievements

The campaign delivered measurable and sustained impact:

  • Traffic growth: Organic sessions grew by over 120%.
  • Revenue efficiency: Average order value increased by 44%.
  • Cost savings: Paid media spend reduced by 90% without loss of acquisition.
  • Competitive advantage: Achieved position one rankings above national retailers for highly competitive terms.
  • Resilience: Maintained ranking stability against higher-budget competitors, even through seasonal intent shifts.
  • Customer profitability: Lifetime value and repeat purchase rates rose significantly through integrated SEO and email campaigns.
  • Business growth: Demand reached capacity, with expansion plans underway to meet increased customer orders.
  • Brand authority: Established Swaledale as a trusted leader in a competitive search environment.

This campaign combined innovation and creativity in SEO to drive sustainable organic growth for a smaller business in a highly-saturated market.

By identifying trends using AI and deep learning we enabled our client to stay ahead of the competition and appeal to various target market segments, optimising their content before their competitors.

Expertise

  • Competitive SEO: Advanced optimisation for EEAT, lower-funnel keywords, and competitive ranking stability.
  • Content Strategy & Development: Creation of dual content hubs and curated product collections aligned with user intent and market trends.
  • Integrated Marketing Approach: Seamless use of SEO and email to increase lifetime value, repeat purchases, and customer loyalty.
  • Competitive Differentiation: Positioning a niche premium brand to outrank and compete directly with national retail giants.

Results

  • +120% organic traffic growth, driving sustained visibility and market share.
  • +44% increase in average order value (AOV), boosting revenue efficiency.
  • 90% reduction in paid media spend while maintaining strong customer acquisition.
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