Brief

Jewson has supplied building materials to the trade since 1836. Bricks, timber, plaster, tool hire (all the essentials of the construction industry) delivered through around 400 branches across the UK, alongside a growing e-commerce platform.

The business has evolved over time. Saint-Gobain expanded the branch network through the 2000s, before STARK Group took ownership in 2022/23. But the core proposition has stayed consistent: getting the right materials into the hands of tradespeople, quickly and reliably.

Jewson first partnered with SALT during a site migration tied to the launch of its e-commerce platform in 2020. That project laid the groundwork for an ongoing relationship focused on maintaining organic visibility as demand in the sector declined.

As search demand fell across a large number of relevant keywords, the challenge they faced shifted. Jewson’s priority was no longer growth at all costs, but stabilising organic performance in line with changing demand. This meant protecting visibility in key commercial areas, maintaining performance across high-value categories, and ensuring the business remained competitive.

Since partnering with SALT during the launch of our e-commerce platform, they’ve been a valuable partner to Jewson and STARK UK, helping us lay a strong technical SEO foundation that continues to support the business today. 

They have consistently brought a high level of strategic SEO expertise to the table, helping us adapt to changing market conditions while staying focused on the areas that matter commercially. Their understanding of the realities of our business has meant recommendations have remained practical, while the work delivered has helped us maintain visibility, strengthen key categories, and drive measurable improvements in organic performance. 

– Luke Giles, Digital Content & SEO Manager, Jewson 

Expertise

  • Commercial optimisations for categories
  • Research and creation of additional categories
  • Seasonal search trends research
  • Expert advice, informational content research and production
  • Local SEO and branch page optimisation

Results

  • Organic revenue increased 7% year on year
  • Organic traffic outperformed declining search demand, with a 5% decrease against a 22% drop in search volume 
  • Focus categories showed stronger resilience, with just a 2.3% decrease against the same 22% decline in search demand
  • Organic clicks to branch pages increased 6.6% year on year
  • Page one rankings for target keywords increased 9% year on year

Achievements

Our aim throughout was to keep Jewson visible in a sector that has seen a number of challenges in recent years.  

We needed to stabilise organic performance in line with declining search demand, so the SALT team focused on optimising key commercial areas, particularly category pages, while also expanding category coverage to better reflect more specific customer needs.  

Alongside this, we maintained and improved the quality of descriptive content across commercial pages, making sure the site remained consistent and useful for users.  

On the content side, a key priority was restarting the production of Expert Advice content. To support this, we established a monthly workflow and introduced more focused reporting, giving clearer visibility over activity and helping to maintain a consistent output.  

We also developed a content architecture restructure to improve the overall effectiveness of Jewson’s existing content offering.  

Local SEO remained a core focus throughout, ensuring branch pages were optimised in line with how users search at a regional level.  

Across all of this work, we were mindful of the client’s resource and technical constraints, shaping recommendations so they could be delivered within a realistic scope.  

The success of the project was built on transparency on both sides, allowing us to deliver practical, achievable work that supported the wider objectives.  

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