Case brief: Fashion e-commerce SEO
Best for: Week 3 content architecture · Week 1 CAC/LTV · Week 8 “reduce paid dependence”
Source of truth: /case-studies/kathmandu-ecommerce-seo/ · Narrative: /blog/gurkha-technology-ecommerce-seo-case-study/
Situation
Kathmandu fashion & lifestyle store (500+ SKUs). Strong catalog, weak organic; ~90% traffic from paid; slow mobile (~4.2s). Brand withheld.
Numbers (as published, 12 months)
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Organic sessions/mo | ~2,300 | ~13,500 (+487%) |
| Organic-led revenue | — | ~3× |
| Paid share of traffic | ~90% | ~45% |
| CVR | 1.2% | 3.8% |
| CAC / CPA | NPR 850 | NPR 360 (−58%) |
| Load time | ~4.2s | ~1.8s |
What they did (sequence matters)
- Technical foundation (speed, crawl, schema)
- Category/product on-page + Nepal long-tail map
- Links/PR + local signals
- CRO on checkout/snippets late in the year
MBA discussion
- Why is “more blog posts” the wrong first move here?
- How does organic growth change the LTV ≥ 3× CAC conversation for an e-com MBA pitch?
- Tie to Week 2: speed and mobile are acquisition multipliers, not decoration.
Concepts in Play
- Technical SEO: speed, crawlability and structured data (schema) that let search engines read and rank the site.
- Long-tail keywords: specific, lower-volume searches (e.g. “kurta set for wedding Kathmandu”) with clearer buying intent.
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC): marketing spend divided by new customers acquired.
- Paid dependence: the share of traffic or revenue that disappears the day ad spend stops.
Reading the Numbers
Work these from the published figures only; do not add new KPIs.
- Conversion rate rose from 1.2% to 3.8%. Out of every 1,000 sessions, how many more orders is that? Why does this lift matter as much as the traffic growth?
- Paid share of traffic fell from ~90% to ~45%. Explain why a lower paid share can reduce CAC even if the ad budget did not change.
- Load time fell from ~4.2s to ~1.8s. Which other published metric would you expect that change to affect, and why?
Limits of the Evidence
- Twelve months of change overlap with seasonality, catalogue growth and market trends; the case is a before/after comparison, not a controlled experiment.
- “Organic-led revenue ~3×” depends on the attribution model used. Ask how a sale that started on an ad but finished on organic search was counted.
- The brand is withheld, so you cannot verify the rankings independently; cite the source page rather than restating the figures as your own.
Apply It to Your Sandbox
- Run your sandbox’s home and one product or service page through PageSpeed Insights and record the mobile Largest Contentful Paint (LCP).
- Write five long-tail keywords for your sandbox that include a product and a Nepal location or occasion.
- Map each keyword to exactly one page, and note which ones still need a page.
- Name the first technical fix you would make, and why it comes before writing more blog posts.
Cite in pitches
“Kathmandu e-com SEO case: organic sessions +487% and ~3× organic-led revenue in 12 months; CAC −58% (source).”
