Hirawats Case Study
SEO Case Study — Agency Project
How I Helped an Indian Medical
Apparel Brand Dominate Google with
E-Commerce SEO
A comprehensive Shopify SEO project executed through Shiftwave Technologies for one of India's leading medical scrubs and uniform brands — covering product page optimisation, technical SEO, schema markup, Core Web Vitals, and organic growth across a highly competitive healthcare apparel market. Note: Client details are shared at a general level in line with agency confidentiality practices.
Medical Apparel Brand — India
Shopify E-Commerce
Via Shiftwave Technologies
2020 – 2022
India (Nationwide)
Top 3
Google rankings — primary keywords
180%+
Organic traffic increase
200+
Product pages optimised
40+
Keywords on Page 1
3×
Organic conversion uplift
About the project
Agency Project at Shiftwave Technologies
Agency Confidentiality Notice
This SEO project was executed during my tenure at Shiftwave Technologies (Jun 2020 – May 2022, Visakhapatnam, India), where I served as Digital Marketing Specialist. The project was assigned to me through the agency as part of a client engagement. In line with standard agency confidentiality practices, specific client branding details are kept general in this public case study. The SEO strategies, approaches, tools, and results described below are entirely accurate and reflect my direct hands-on work on the project.
During my time at Shiftwave Technologies, I was assigned as the lead SEO specialist for a large Indian medical apparel and uniform e-commerce brand built on Shopify. The client operated one of India's most extensive online catalogues of medical scrubs, lab coats, nursing uniforms, and professional workwear — serving doctors, nurses, medical students, hospital administrators, and healthcare institutions nationwide.
Beyond medical apparel, the client also ran a significant B2B uniform division covering school uniforms, college uniforms, chef and hotel uniforms, legal wear, and office uniforms — making this a complex, multi-vertical e-commerce operation competing across several highly contested Indian search market segments simultaneously.
When I took over the account at Shiftwave, the client had a well-stocked Shopify store with strong product photography and growing brand recognition — but their organic search visibility was severely underperforming relative to the quality and breadth of their catalogue. I was responsible for the full SEO strategy, execution, and monthly reporting from day one.
The challenge
What Needed to Be Fixed
The Indian medical apparel market is fiercely competitive online. Ranking organically for high-intent product keywords like "medical scrubs online India", "buy lab coat for doctors", and "nursing uniforms online" required a structured, multi-layered SEO strategy — not just basic optimisation.
Weak product page SEO
Product titles, meta descriptions, and page content were not optimised for search intent. Many pages had duplicate or thin content across colour and size variants — a common Shopify SEO issue suppressing indexation and rankings.
Collection pages underperforming
Shopify collection pages for key categories (lab coats, nursing uniforms, scrubs by colour) had no unique content, no keyword-targeted headings, and weak internal linking — missing major organic traffic opportunities for category-level searches.
Technical SEO issues on Shopify
Shopify's default URL structure was generating duplicate URLs for product variants. Canonical tag management, sitemap configuration, and crawl efficiency all needed attention to ensure Google indexed the right pages.
No structured data / schema
Product pages had no Product schema, Review schema, or BreadcrumbList markup — missing out on rich results (star ratings, price snippets) in Google that directly impact click-through rates in competitive product searches.
No dedicated keyword landing pages
Commercial keywords like "reversible medical scrubs India" and "half sleeve lab coat for doctors" had no dedicated, optimised landing pages despite strong search volume and clear purchase intent.
Page speed impacting conversions
Core Web Vitals scores were below Google's thresholds. Heavy product images and unoptimised theme scripts caused slow LCP scores on mobile — directly affecting both rankings and conversion rate.
My approach
The 6-Step SEO Strategy
1
Comprehensive SEO Audit & Keyword Research
Conducted a full technical SEO audit using Screaming Frog to crawl the entire Shopify store — mapping crawl errors, duplicate content, indexation issues, missing meta tags, and broken internal links. Simultaneously ran deep keyword research using Ahrefs and SEMrush to build a keyword universe across all product categories, segmenting by intent (informational, navigational, transactional) and mapping each cluster to the right collection or product page. Identified keyword gaps where competitors ranked but the client had no dedicated page.
2
Shopify Technical SEO Fixes
Resolved Shopify-specific technical issues suppressing organic performance. Configured canonical tags correctly across product variant URLs, cleaned the XML sitemap to include only canonical URLs, corrected robots.txt to prevent crawling of filtered collection URLs generating thousands of low-value pages, and fixed crawl errors in Google Search Console. Submitted a clean sitemap to ensure efficient indexation across all 200+ product pages.
3
Product & Collection Page On-Page Optimisation
Systematically optimised all 200+ product pages and 50+ collection pages. For each product page: rewrote title tags with primary keyword + differentiator, rewrote meta descriptions with value proposition and CTA, restructured product descriptions to be unique and keyword-rich (covering fabric, fit, pockets, wash care), and added ALT text to all product images. For collection pages: wrote unique intro content targeting collection-level keywords, added keyword-targeted H1s, and built a strategic internal linking framework connecting related collections.
4
Schema Markup & Rich Results Implementation
Implemented structured data across the entire product catalogue to unlock rich result features in Google. Added Product schema (price, availability, brand, SKU), AggregateRating schema to display star ratings in search results (leveraging existing customer reviews), BreadcrumbList schema across all pages, and FAQPage schema on key collection pages. Rich results — particularly star ratings and pricing — directly improve CTR in competitive product searches, giving organic listings a visual advantage over competitors.
5
Core Web Vitals & Page Speed Optimisation
Improved Core Web Vitals scores across the store — particularly LCP and CLS. Implemented lazy loading for below-the-fold product images, converted large JPEG product images to WebP format, deferred non-critical JavaScript (third-party widgets, chat apps), configured browser caching with Shopify's CDN, and removed unused Shopify apps loading scripts on every page. LCP improved from 4.8s to under 2.5s on mobile — moving the store from "Poor" to "Good" in Google's Core Web Vitals report.
6
Content Strategy & Category Keyword Expansion
Developed and optimised dedicated landing pages for high-value keyword segments with no targeted presence — "medical scrubs by colour" (individual colour collection pages), "reversible medical scrubs India", "half sleeve lab coat for doctors", "nursing uniforms for women", and "starter kit for medical students" — each with unique buyer-intent content. Also guided SEO-focused blog content targeting informational keywords (how to choose medical scrubs, fabric guide for lab coats) to capture top-of-funnel traffic from medical students and new healthcare professionals.
Keyword rankings
Target Keywords & Positions Achieved
The keyword strategy focused on three tiers: high-volume primary category keywords, commercial product-specific keywords, and long-tail buyer-intent terms. A representative sample of ranking improvements achieved:
| Keyword | Intent | Monthly Vol. | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| medical scrubs online India | Commercial | 2,400+ | Top 3 |
| buy medical scrubs online | Transactional | 1,900+ | Top 5 |
| lab coat for doctors | Transactional | 3,200+ | Page 1 |
| nursing uniforms online India | Transactional | 1,400+ | Top 3 |
| medical scrubs for men India | Transactional | 1,100+ | Page 1 |
| medical scrubs for women India | Transactional | 980+ | Page 1 |
| buy lab coat online | Transactional | 2,800+ | Page 1 |
| reversible medical scrubs India | Transactional | 590+ | Top 3 |
| navy blue medical scrubs | Commercial | 720+ | Top 5 |
| half sleeve lab coat doctors | Transactional | 480+ | Top 3 |
| v neck scrubs India | Transactional | 390+ | Top 3 |
| medical uniforms for nurses | Transactional | 860+ | Page 1 |
| starter kit medical student India | Transactional | 340+ | Top 3 |
| school uniform online India | Commercial | 4,100+ | Page 1 |
| chef uniform online India | Transactional | 720+ | Page 1 |
Rankings represent positions achieved during the optimisation period. Search volumes are approximate monthly averages from Ahrefs and SEMrush India data.
Results delivered
Measurable Outcomes
180%+ Organic Traffic Growth
Organic sessions from Google Search grew by over 180% — driven by first-page rankings across 40+ target keywords and improved CTR from rich results appearing in product search queries.
Top-3 Rankings for Primary Keywords
Core commercial keywords including "medical scrubs online India", "reversible medical scrubs India", "nursing uniforms online" all achieved top-3 positions in Google India — above major competitors.
Rich Results Unlocked in SERPs
Product and AggregateRating schema unlocked star rating rich results for 100+ product pages — visually differentiating listings from competitors and improving organic click-through rates significantly.
Core Web Vitals — Poor to Good
LCP improved from 4.8s to under 2.5s on mobile through WebP conversion, lazy loading, and script deferral. CLS reduced to near-zero. The store moved from "Poor" to "Good" on Google's report.
3× Organic Conversion Uplift
Better-qualified organic traffic combined with improved product page content and faster page speed produced a 3× uplift in organic conversion rate — more orders from SEO without increasing ad spend.
200+ Pages Fully Optimised
Every product and collection page received unique keyword-targeted title tags, meta descriptions, structured content, image ALT text, and schema markup — giving the full catalogue a strong organic foundation.
"E-commerce SEO on Shopify is fundamentally different from service business SEO. The challenge is scale — you have hundreds of product pages that need individual attention, plus Shopify's platform quirks around duplicate URLs and crawl budget. This project was a perfect example of what happens when you combine thorough technical cleanup with high-quality product-level content and proper schema implementation — organic traffic doesn't just grow, it compounds."
Tools & technology
What I Used
Screaming Frog
Full site crawl & audit
Ahrefs
Keyword research & competitor analysis
SEMrush
Keyword tracking & site audit
Google Search Console
Indexation & performance
GA4
Traffic & conversion tracking
Looker Studio
Monthly dashboards
Shopify Admin
Meta tags, sitemaps, URLs
Schema Markup
Product, Rating, Breadcrumb, FAQ
PageSpeed Insights
Core Web Vitals monitoring
Key learnings
What This Project Taught
Learning 01
Shopify's URL structure requires specific SEO attention
Unlike WordPress, Shopify generates multiple URLs for the same product (via collections, direct URLs, and variant filters) — creating duplicate content and wasted crawl budget if not managed through canonical tags and robots.txt. This is a critical step that most generic SEO guides miss entirely.
Learning 02
Collection pages are the biggest organic opportunity in e-commerce
Collection/category pages drive the majority of organic traffic in most e-commerce projects because they match the broader queries buyers use at the start of their journey. Writing unique, keyword-targeted content for each collection page was one of the highest-ROI activities in this project.
Learning 03
Schema markup is not optional in competitive e-commerce
In a SERP full of product listings, star ratings and price snippets from Product and AggregateRating schema give organic listings a significant visual advantage — improving CTR even from positions 3–5, often outperforming position 1 listings that lack rich results.
Learning 04
Page speed directly affects e-commerce revenue, not just rankings
Every second of mobile page load time reduces e-commerce conversion rate. On a catalogue with 200+ product pages each loading multiple high-resolution images, image optimisation and Core Web Vitals work delivered measurable benefits in both organic rankings and revenue per visitor.
Need SEO for your e-commerce store?
Whether you're on Shopify, WooCommerce, or a custom platform — I bring the same structured, results-driven approach applied to this and 200+ other projects. I can audit your store, identify exactly what's limiting your rankings, and execute a full SEO programme that delivers measurable growth. Available for remote engagements worldwide.