SEO case study: more Google clicks and higher rankings

A retailer increased its clicks from Google search over one year, improved its average position from 11.6 to 7.3 and lifted its click-through rate above 11%.

This case study shows the starting point, the approach and the results.

• +11% clicks a day in September 2026 compared with September 2025.
• 11.6 to 7.3 average position in Google, from October 2025 to September 2026.
• 11.2% click-through rate in September 2026, compared with 8.8% in October 2025.
• 90% of the most important general queries on the first page of Google.

The study is anonymous, so we do not name the client. All data comes from Google Search Console and covers the period from July 2025 to the beginning of October 2026.

The client and the starting point

The client is an established retailer in Slovenia, where we do most of our work. It has a network of physical shops and a web shop with several thousand products for the home, the garden, the workshop and farming, including a seasonal range. The brand is well known, so a large share of the traffic arrives through searches that contain the brand name.

The difficulty lies in general searches for products and categories, where the buyer has not yet decided where to buy. In those searches the retailer competes with every larger web shop on the market, including international ones with far bigger budgets.

These are the searches that decide growth. Someone who searches by brand name has already chosen the shop. New buyers arrive mostly through general searches, so organic search is a channel that brand recognition cannot replace.

The goal: more traffic from organic search

• Higher positions for product and category searches.
• More clicks from the same number of impressions, which means a higher click-through rate.
• Products visible in the search results themselves, with price and stock.

Results

More clicks from Google search

Between July 2025 and the beginning of October 2026, the web shop received more than 1.9 million clicks from Google search. The second quarter of 2026 brought 428,000 clicks. April 2026 was the strongest month, with about 4,906 clicks a day.

Growth compared with the year before

The comparison with the same months in 2025 shows the direction. July was flat, August was higher and September was clearly higher.

Average position: from 11.6 to 7.3

Between October 2025 and September 2026 the average position of the tracked keywords improved from 11.6 to 7.3. Since April 2026 the shop has averaged the first page of results every month.

In September 2025 Google changed the way it records impressions. For that reason we compare position and click-through rate only from October 2025 onwards. The number of clicks is not affected by the change.

More clicks for every impression

The click-through rate rose from 8.8% in October 2025 to 11.2% in September 2026. The shop therefore gets more visits from the same number of impressions.

This matters because Google shows more answers directly in the results, and many searches end without a click on any website. People who are looking for a product still click, but they usually click the result that already convinces them in the list.

General queries: nine out of ten on the first page

Among the 1,000 most frequent queries, 288 are general queries without the brand name. Of these, 259 rank on the first page of Google, which is about 90%, and 38 rank in the top three positions.

Products visible in the search results

About 458,000 clicks, which is almost a quarter of the total, came from results that already showed the price, the stock status or the ratings. Results of this kind are built on structured data. The same product data can also feed Google Shopping ads. Search Console reports several of these channels separately, as we described when Google Search Console started showing image search traffic.

Buyers search on phones

Almost three quarters of the search clicks came from mobile devices. The speed and the usability of the mobile version therefore have a direct effect on the traffic.

What we can learn from this

SEO grows step by step. The results build from month to month, so persistence matters. Companies that stop after three months usually see no results and then conclude that SEO does not work. We published a similar picture in one year of data after a website redesign.

The first page is not the end of the work. Most clicks go to the first three positions, so the next step is to lift the queries that sit between positions 4 and 10. In this study there are 221 such queries. Better category content and well planned internal links usually help the most at this stage.

The way the result looks in Google also matters. Price, stock and a clear title raise the share of people who click.

Most buyers search on a phone, so the mobile experience comes first.

How we help at Kabi

We run optimisation as a long term engagement, because the results build from month to month. You can read more on our page about SEO website optimisation.

We start with the data in Google Search Console. We then choose the queries with the most room to grow and measure the changes as we go. We also use web analytics to follow the results.

We develop web shops on our own Kabi platform. For shops on that platform we handle technical fixes, structured product data and mobile adjustments directly in the system. We have also written about how to redesign a web shop without losing organic traffic.

You can read more about this service on our page about web shop development.

Frequently asked questions

How quickly do SEO results become visible?

SEO works step by step. The first changes are usually visible after a few months, and the larger effect shows over a longer period. In this case the average position improved from 11.6 to 7.3 in one year, and the daily clicks in September 2026 were 11% higher than a year earlier.

Is SEO worth it for a retailer with a well known brand?

Yes. Searches with the brand name bring buyers who have already decided. New buyers come from general searches for products and categories. In this case 90% of the most important general queries rank on the first page of Google.

What is the average position in Google?

It shows the place where a page appears in the results on average. A lower number means a higher place, and positions 1 to 10 are usually on the first page.

Why does the click-through rate matter?

The click-through rate is the share of people who click a result after they have seen it. A higher rate means more visits from the same number of impressions.

Where does the data in the case study come from?

All data comes from Google Search Console and covers the period from July 2025 to the beginning of October 2026. The client is anonymous.