In a recent article on The Clare Echo, Wix and Wax co-founders Chantell Keane and Danielle Kenneally admit:

Designing a website, researching Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips and sending packages to bloggers helped bolster the company’s profile online

In this article, I am going to take a look at their website, wixandwaxireland.com from a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) perspective.

The Company

Wix and Wax is an Irish company based in Co Clare, Ireland and co-founded by long-time best friends Chantell Keane and Danielle Kenneally.

They specialise in wax melts:

We decided after a long search for amazing wax melts that we would give up and just make our own.

We pride ourselves on a superior product and outstanding customer service. Our products are soy based and are highly fragranced. All our products are cruelty free and we are CLP compliant.

Search Volume

Up until writing the article, I didn’t even know wax melts were a thing. I then went and looked for ‘wax melts’ as a search term on Google Trends Ireland for the last 12 months (surprise):

While the popularity of the term was relatively stable between 20-40 (on a scale of 0-100) throughout the year, the term hit 100 in the last week of October.

A similar search on Google Ads Keyword Planner shows a peak in the number of monthly searches for ‘wax melts’ and related terms in May 2020 with 84% of searches coming from mobile:

The average CPC cost for bidding on such a keyword is a relatively low €0.15 – €0.40. This to me seems to be in contradiction with a keyword that I would consider highly-transactional in intent.

The SERP

This is what my Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for ‘wax melts’ look like:

As expected, the SERP real estate is made of, from top to bottom:

1. Google Shopping Ads
2. Google Ads
3. Google Organic Search
4. Questions (People Also Ask)
5. Google Local Pack (Google Maps)

Wixandwaxireland.com is not on Google first page. They currently rank #38 (4th page) for ‘wax melts’ on Google.ie.

From what I see there are no Google Shopping or Google Ads campaigns in place at the time of writing.

The Website

The website is powered by Shopify and they don’t seem to use any particular app to help with SEO (source: builtwith.com).

Onpage Optimisation

For the SEO title of the homepage they went for ‘Luxury Wax Melts & Candles’.

It’s an interesting choice, which I can understand in terms of positioning (higher-end product) but it has a significantly-lower average search volume per month.

If we consider ‘luxury wax melts’ as the primary focus keyword, this is not replicated in the Meta Description.

The majority of Image Alt Texts on the homepage simply replicate the name of the brand ‘Wix and Wax Ireland’.

Subheadings h1-h4 are present on the page but there is no focus keyword in any of them.

Page Load Speed

The website is well-optimised for speed:

• The homepage loaded up in 2.6s and scored 94% / 91% respectively on PageSpeed and YSlow from desktop on GTmetrix
• The homepage loaded up in 4.1s and scored 94% / 90% respectively on PageSpeed and YSlow from LTE Mobile on GTmetrix

Link-Building

The website has a very limited number of backlinks (10) and all from websites with a relatively low Domain Authority (DR)(source:ahref.com)

Things to Improve

If I were them, I would focus on these three main areas:

1. Onpage Optimisation – For each page, I would think about a focus keyword that is relevant and that has a significant search volume. I would add the focus keyword to the different elements on the page, aiming at a 1.5 keyword density (the ratio between the overall text content and the number of times the keyword is included in the text)
2. Link-Building – Initially, I would recommend a serious outreach effort to relevant websites: the more local the better. Local newspapers like The Clare Echo or The Clare Champion (two of their current backlinks) can help with increasing domain authority and push the website up the rankings.
3. Blogging – There is only one article available on the blog. If I were them, I would look for questions related to wax melts and candles. The People Also Ask box in Google SERP or Google Autocomplete is a great starting point. I would also recommend websites like Alsoasked.com and Answerthepublic.com