Content audit

When I arrived at BEAUTY BAY, there wasn’t an existing content strategy for the blog, Edited. The ongoing strategy was to post new content daily, tapping into trends without using any keyword research or optimisation. This meant the blog was oversaturated and some articles were longwinded, didn’t include any SEO structuring, were without internal links, and weren’t included in any other channel communications. When I carried out an audit alongside our SEO agency (Glass Atlas), this was what I found:

• Internal linking: This was hugely lacking. Articles didn’t link to one another and weren’t featured on the main site which was having a huge affect on our SEO.

• Existing content: This was neglected as new content was constantly being produced, without revisiting historic content that simply needed keywords refreshing and out of stock products replacing.

• Content gaps: Our share of voice was strong (39% traffic share) due to volumes but we identified numerous categories in the beautysphere were being missed, meaning we weren’t as competitive as some brands.

• Optimisation: This needed a lot of work as SEO tools weren’t being used. H1s and H2s weren’t present, as well as a lack of internal links and keywords.

Objectives

• Increase brand awareness: Measured through share of search and backlinks

• Drive revenue organically: Looking at number of purchases and purchase revenue

• Increase clicks to site: Measured through number of people driven to the BEAUTY BAY site

• Improved SEO: Measured through increase in sessions and rankings

• Improved AEO: Measured through increase in LLM citations and PAA features

Strategy

Following an in-depth audit and objective building, I created the below strategy inline with the wider business strategy:

• TikTok and beauty trends: As TikTok was becoming more of a search-focused platform, we know our customers will be searching for and focusing on beauty trends and products.

• By BEAUTY BAY solus content: As our own brand By BEAUTY BAY category was growing, I set out to include more content around the products and brand, including tutorials, product recommendations and reviews.

• Improve optimisation: Internal linking across the blog and site needed improving i.e. linking to more category pages, enhancing meta, and improving keywords.

• Enhance existing content: We had a lot of existing, valuable content that had previously performed well but was now in decline. So, I set out to enhance and update content with up-to-date education, new products, and optimisation.

• Plug content and topic gaps: When we looked at competitors, there were a lot of content gaps that we needed to fill i.e. sexual wellness

• Branch out to new topics and categories: As well as plugging content gaps, I wanted to tap into and rank for pillars and clusters that were untouched and unsaturated i.e. Korean Skincare

• Enhance blog authority: I wanted to bring our knowledge to the beauty space via reviews and industry experts to become more competitive as well as trustworthy and authoritative. We wanted to align with the voices the influencer team used to maximise budget and resource.

Content pillars & Topic clusters

Each of our pillars (Skincare, Makeup, Hair, Nails, Wellness, Fragrance, By BEAUTY BAY) needs it’s own collection of topic clusters that would help us ensure all content plans had a mix of educational, trend-focused, authoritative and inspirational content. This included reviews, cultural pieces, ‘Top 10s’, step-by-steps, ‘Best for’, interviews, and more.

Key tactics

• Build out K-Beauty category: This was identified as a content gap but was a growing topic and trend within the beautysphere. We needed to develop content around ingredients, how-tos, and recommendations to also feature on our product pages and position ourselves as the go-to brand for K-Beauty.

• Work with authoritative voices: To improve our bran authority and SEO, we needed to guest writers and include quotes from specialists and founders by utilising our brand an influencer contacts.

• Focus on revenue-driving articles: Driving revenue was a huge business objective and KPI, so we needed to focus on optimising existing content to drive to site. This looked like featuring more products and categories to increase AOV, plus creating topic clusters around revenue driving brands like OLAPLEX, Sol de Janeiro etc.

• Enhance blog where possible: To improve our content, we needed to include other media in our content, i.e. videos to maximise content. Plus, we needed to add more redirects to ensure we had quality over quantity.

• Channel inclusions: We needed to ensure our content was reaching its full potential and being pushed across social, CRM, paid and site to increase sessions, revenue and awareness.

Results

By the time I had carried our first 6 month review (June 2025), we had undertaken a team restructure and also ceased working with our SEO agency due to budget cuts, so I only had GA4 to refer to for results. We still saw some successes for sessions, PAA appearances, backlinks, and revenue, but I was unable to look at share of search and keywords.

Traffic

• January 1st traffic came in at 3,086 average per article and June 30th ended on 2,480 (-19.6%) - this is an understandable decline with the considerations previously explained

• Our biggest spike was in mid January when our Korean Beauty campaign and content launched and was in full swing – our articles were being pushed on CRM, social, and promoted listers. Our biggest dip was June, which is expected as Edited wasn’t a priority for May with so much NPD and team holidays

Revenue

• Compared with the previous six months, we saw a revenue uplift of +9.02%

• The highest revenue driver – by a mile - over the past six months was our XMONDO Hair article (we recently optimised this in June, so July’s revenue was higher still)

• Korean skincare articles were high-flyers, with our Glass Skin Routine, Korean Skincare Routine, and Best Korean Skincare Brands performing consistently well

• Multiple review pieces that previously performed well also once again appeared in the top 25, including Best Vibrators at BEAUTY BAY, Vibrators for Beginners, and Best Tweezers to Invest In

• From May to June, we saw an uplift of +16.91% in revenue as we revisited all of our Korean Skincare content created in December and January

CONTENT highlights

• Skincare was the dominating category in our top 25 articles, which aligned with the content mix strategy.

• New pieces Top 10 Korean Face Masks (a highly-optimised staff reviews piece) was our top performing article and ranked number 1 on Google.

• 5 Korean Skincare articles appeared in the top 25, including skincare routines, brand-focused articles, and top tips.

• Previously high-ranking historic pieces How To Use A Gua Sha, Bob Hairstyles You Should Try and 17 Products To Use With Your Microcurrent Device made their way back into the top 25 thanks to refreshed keywords and phrases, new product inclusions, stronger internal linking, and improved SEO.

Share of voice

Although we stopped working with our SEO agency and didn’t have access to our share of voice after this, this was pulled in March 2025. This meant an uplift from 39% to 47%, which shows we were ranking for high-volume keywords and filling content gaps.

K-Beauty success

The below results were pulled by our SEO agency, comparing December with the end of January when all of our Korean skincare content was live. This content pillar was a huge success for us and continued to grow as we consistently added more content. We crafted a total of 26 articles, including new and optimisations to existing that covered a range of ingredient, how-to, best of and step-by-step content.

Article Highlights:

• Top 10 Korean Face Masks: #32 to #1 (average monthly searches 4.4K)

• What Are Ampoules?: Wasn’t in top 100 and moved to #3 (3.6K)

• The Best Beauty of Joseon Serums: #19 to #4 (1.6K)

• Best Korean SPFs: #55 to #7 (1.3K)

• What Is Heartleaf?: #29 to #1 (590)

• The 10 Step Korean Skincare Routine: #15 to #8 (320)

Performance highlights:

• Share of voice for keywords tracked for Korean project +91%

• Average rank improved by 36%

• 32% of tracked Korean keywords rank in top #10 positions

AIO & SERP features:

• Volume of tracked Korean keywords triggering AIOs fluctuated daily between 23-4

• The amount of AIOs we were present in for tracked keywords grew from 0 to a peak of x6. This fluctuates daily between 6-2.

• Across all keywords the blog ranked for (outside of tracked keywords) we were appearing in 1.1K PAA features and 17 AIOs.