Cellos, bows and violins, filed the way professionals look for them. 200% more monthly clicks in ten months.
This dealer trades in, values and repairs bowed string instruments and their bows for serious players. It had never worked with an SEO before. I took the account on in September 2025, starting with how the inventory was grouped and later adding a keyword plan written only for advanced musicians. Over ten months, monthly Google clicks rose 200% and top-three rankings grew about 600%.
Results
Google clicks
Google impressions
Known by name, invisible by instrument
Most of the search traffic at the start came from people who already knew the shop. Its own name was the single biggest query. In the first three months on record, the site showed up for something like 400 distinct searches, and only a couple of dozen ranked in positions one to three. Average position hovered around 13, at the top of page two.
Structure was the gap. Violins and violas had collection pages, but cellos had no equivalent pages at all, and bows sat in one pile rather than with the instrument each one suits. The audience is narrow on purpose: working musicians, those who teach them, advanced pupils and families settling an estate. Beginner searches were never the target, which ruled out a lot of easy traffic.
Get the stock in order, then write for experts
My records cover onboarding answers and planning documents. They do not log the day each page went live, so I date phases only where the record does.
- 01
Pin down services and buyers
Onboarding in September 2025 set the scope: buying and selling, valuations, selling on commission and restoration, for working players and for estates across the surrounding region. That gave every later page a clear job, whether it was selling an instrument or bringing in an appraisal or consignment enquiry.
- 02
Build a cello structure from scratch
In February 2026 I mapped the cello stock into roughly two dozen collections: where it was made, its size, its price band, its era, its grade, its school and who made it. Names follow how players search, so a page is called 7/8 cellos, not smaller cellos. I dropped a proposed price-on-request collection, because nobody searches for that.
- 03
Split the bows by instrument
In March I divided the bow inventory into one collection per instrument, fitted to the URL pattern the site already used. Keeping the existing structure meant new pages slotted in without breaking links or creating duplicate paths to the same stock.
- 04
A keyword plan for advanced players only
In July 2026 I delivered a plan of around fifty informational keywords chosen for professional and advanced musicians, grouped by instrument plus themes that cut across all of them, such as buying as an investment, paperwork and ownership history, valuations and selling on commission. Every keyword is tied to two pages already live, and those cross-cutting themes go first because they lead readers straight to the valuation and commission-sale services.
Wider reach at a steady rank
Average position barely moved, staying between about 12 and 14 the whole way. What changed was how many searches the site could appear for. Set the opening quarter of the window beside the closing one: the keyword footprint grew 160%, first-page rankings rose roughly 200%, and positions one to three grew 610%. Clicks across those same windows rose 110%.
By August 2026 the site was earning 200% more monthly clicks than in November, from roughly 500% more impressions. August sits outside the shop's usual busy periods, which makes it a cleaner read than January. The rise lines up with the structural changes, but I present it as what happened over the project, not as proof of cause.
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