Bikes Online
Great service provider, very knowledgable and responsive.
- Organic keywords on the Top-3 positions were up by 63% (AU)
- Clicks across 32 targeted collections increased by 71% (AU)
- Impressions increased by 30% despite a 6% market decline (US)
- Clicks for targeted collections rose by 11% (US)
- Monthly traffic grew by 6.5%, from 108k to 115k sessions
- Keywords in Top 3 positions maintained at 2.5k
- Overall keywords ranked across AU & US reached 40k
BikesOnline has built its reputation as the leading speciality bike retailer across Australia and America. As a one-stop shop for everything cycling, they combine years of industry experience with a dynamic online experience that rivals local bike stores. They stock a wide range of world-class bikes by Polygon, Marin, Superior Bikes, Entity Cycling, and GT, as well as accessories and replacement parts. However, despite premium product offers and comprehensive customer service, BikesOnline faced declining organic performance and significant growth challenges in both markets. They needed specialists in international eCommerce and technical SEO, and LION Digital had the expertise to manage such a high-impact digital transformation project with global visibility.
What started as a website optimisation request resulted in a strategic 2+ year relationship that transformed BikesOnline’s digital presence and delivered exceptional growth across US and AU markets.
The Challenge: Platform Limitations Hold Back Growth
By mid-2022, BikesOnline was running its operations on the Neto platform, which was increasingly limiting:
- SEO visibility was restricted by outdated systems and unclear URL strategies.
- The platform created barriers to effective user experience and operational efficiency.
- Scalability issues restricted international expansion.
- No options to integrate with modern marketing tools.
Clicks and impressions were falling year-over-year, and the website needed a serious upgrade. LION Digital performed a comprehensive 140-data-point SEO technical audit covering 9 major category areas, including accessibility, architecture, geotargeting and more. This detailed analysis highlighted many critical technical issues, and the best solution was SEO migration.
Pre-Migration SEO Improvements: Building the Foundation
Before tackling the major platform migration, we focused on strengthening BikesOnline's presence across the Australian and US markets. Our approach targeted immediate wins but also prepared the brand for long-term success. A critical early milestone was a domain migration, completed without impacting SEO authority or organic traffic. Alongside this, the team invested hundreds of hours in Total Market Keyword Research, which became the cornerstone of our strategy. We gathered and analysed data to understand search intent, buyer behaviour, competitors, and overall growth potential. These insights revealed untapped opportunities and guided the creation of a new SEO site architecture with more eCommerce segments (landing pages) optimised for both brand and category search intent. We started with:
- Reworking content to target high-intent searches across AU and US.
- Eliminating SEO cannibalisation and aligning content with buyer intent.
- Introducing SEO-first content briefs to revive pages that had lost traffic.
- Building safe, high-quality backlinks to boost authority.
- Enhancing site structure with schema markup, refined navigation, validated canonical tags, and optimised URL strategies.
Over two years of ongoing SEO improvements, we systematically enhanced organic visibility. We managed to stop the decline and rebuild trust in organic search.
First Achievements
Our targeted SEO strategy brought impressive results even before the platform migration. The organic traffic showed strong performance across major bike categories, and BikesOnline maintained competitive positioning. In Australia, organic became the 3rd highest channel for sessions and revenue:
- 71% net increase in clicks for 32 targeted collections.
- 63% increase in positions 1-3 rankings.
In the USA, the brand got:
- 30% increase in impressions despite a 6% market decline.
- 11% net increase in clicks for targeted collections.
The outcomes were significant and set the stage for the coming migration.
Managing a Complex Migration: Neto to Shopify Plus
In February 2024, LION Digital started a complete platform migration from Neto to Shopify for both AU and US BikesOnline sites. This was a make-or-break moment: with organic search being a leading revenue driver, we had no room for error.
Platform migrations are one of the biggest pitfalls in eCommerce; when they fail, they can cost brands significant traffic and revenue. We risked breaking years of SEO progress. Yet, the opportunities were also substantial, with a potential SEO boost from modern platform features. Neto to Shopify Plus, in particular, is a more technically challenging migration due to the significant change in the URL structure.
As always, LION Digital approached strategically, so every aspect of the upcoming migration was carefully planned and executed. Our specialists managed:
- Complete content migration while maintaining structure and accessibility.
- Site-wide 301 redirects to preserve link equity and avoid broken links.
- Exhaustive staging audits of internal and external links to eliminate technical SEO issues.
- URL mapping and validation to ensure search engine compliance.
- Dual-market coordination to maintain performance across AU and US sites.
The migration went successfully and generated great growth.
RESULTS
LION Digital delivered a flawless website migration with exceptional results across all metrics:
- Traffic grew from 108k to 115k per month (6.5% increase immediately post-migration).
- SEO keywords maintained at 2.5k in the top 3 positions.
- 40k total keywords ranking across both markets.
- Consistent month-over-month growth trajectory.
The outcomes clearly show the power of a well-performed SEO strategy and expert migration management. By combining technical knowledge with market understanding, LION Digital helped BikesOnline survive a major platform change and transform a weak SEO channel into a growth engine.
Since June 2022, BikesOnline has continued to achieve outstanding organic performance across both AU and US markets. For LION Digital, this partnership is another successful example of turning challenges into lasting competitive advantages.
63%
Increase in
Top-3 keyword rankings
40k
Keywords ranked
overall across AU & US
6.5%
Monthly traffic
growth after the migration
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