International SEO at Scale: 5 Years, 36 Storefronts, and a Replatform with Zero Traffic Loss

Brand: The Jacket Maker — custom leather jacket ecommerce brand
Role: Digital Marketing Manager (2020–2024)
Scope: Organic growth, international expansion, content, email, platform migration

Where it started

When I joined in 2020, The Jacket Maker had one main website on a custom platform, with newly created UK and Australia storefronts that had almost no organic presence. My initial mandate was on-page SEO for the .com category pages plus building a micro-influencer program — outreach, gifting, and converting creators into affiliates.

Phase 1: Proving the playbook on new markets (2021)

In 2021 I was given full ownership of the UK storefront, which was getting close to zero organic traffic. The approach was unglamorous and effective: complete on-page SEO across the catalog, hreflang implementation across storefronts, and manual link building through direct outreach.

UK organic traffic grew roughly 700% in the first year. The same playbook was then applied to the Australia storefront. On the strength of those results, I was handed the main .com site in 2022 and hired two SEO resources, delegating off-page execution while I moved to strategy: one annual master plan, broken into quarterly targets, broken into implementation roadmaps.

Across the portfolio, organic sessions grew 72% (394K → 677K) and organic revenue nearly 3x ($338K → $999K) between 2019 and 2021, while total site revenue grew from $951K to $3.68M.

The blog as a revenue channel

From mid-2021 I also owned the blog. We targeted high-intent editorial keywords — the “best leather jacket” style queries that publishers were competing for — and ranked our own editorial content alongside them. In 2022, the blog alone attributed around $50,000 in revenue with a conversion rate well above typical informational traffic.

Surviving the algorithm (2022–2023)

The late-2022 Google update hit the site hard. My recovery process: Search Console analysis page by page, monitoring community signals to separate site-specific issues from ecosystem-wide shifts, then fixing what we actually controlled — over-optimization, low-quality backlinks, and technical debt — supported by CRO work using Microsoft Clarity behavioral data.

Traffic recovered to near-peak levels by 2024. Conversion economics shifted in this period across the industry (helpful content updates, AI answers absorbing informational queries), which changed how we valued blog traffic and pushed strategy further toward commercial pages.

Phase 2: Data-driven expansion to 36 storefronts (2023)

Rather than guessing which markets to enter, we combined three data sources: our own order data, traffic-by-country reports from GA and Search Console, and purchased market research on leather product demand by region. That analysis defined the expansion roadmap — and the brand grew to 36 regional storefronts, each with correct hreflang targeting.

Phase 3: The migration (2024)

I led the full replatform from the custom stack to Shopify across all storefronts. The mechanics: URL mapping at scale using Google Sheets and Apps Script, redirect implementation, hreflang re-configuration, Google Ads conversion tracking setup, and daily Search Console monitoring with same-day error fixes.

Old URLs were replaced in Google’s index within 30 days.

More importantly: organic sessions grew 16% (596K → 693K) during the migration year.

Most replatforms lose traffic. This one gained it.

Alongside the migration, I moved email from Mailchimp to Klaviyo — deliverability reached 98% and campaign open rates climbed from 12–14% to as high as 40% on a fully automated flow setup.

Results summary

• Organic revenue ~3x in two years ($338K → $999K)
• UK storefront: ~700% organic traffic growth in year one
• Blog: ~$50K attributed revenue in 2022
• Expansion to 36 data-selected regional storefronts
• Custom → Shopify migration with +16% organic sessions in the migration year
• Email: 12–14% → up to 40% open rates post-Klaviyo migration