The Happy Hay Co.
The Happy Hay Co. offers high-quality, eco-friendly feeding hay for small pets and animals, including Timothy hay from their Leicestershire farm, with next-day UK delivery. After moving to a full-service marketing agency two years prior, amid increased online competition and declining organic performance, they aimed to attract new customers with a refreshed SEO approach and to effectively launch new products.
![](data:image/svg+xml,<svg display="block" role="presentation" viewBox="0 0 42 8" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"/>)
Industry
E-Commerce
Company Size
Less than 50 Employees
Timeline
9 Months
SEO recovery of 300 lost keywords leads to +231% revenue surge
The Challenge
The challenges within the project stemmed from declining organic performance amid increased online competition, prompting a focus on a fresh SEO approach and new product launches.Performance issues were evident in the overall revenue, which, according to GA4, appeared to be down 40% compared to the previous year.
A primary structural deficiency was widespread keyword cannibalisation, where pages like `/all-hay/` and the homepage, or the dedicated FAQ pages and product category pages for “Rabbit hay” and “Guinea pig hay,” were duplicating efforts and confusing search engines. In addition, the main “Timothy Hay” product page was currently underperforming for broader queries, sitting at the bottom of the first search results page with low visibility. The project also confronted several critical technical and data-related infrastructure obstacles. Reporting Reporting accuracy was compromised by e-commerce data being split across two GA4 properties, requiring immediate investigation. Technical issues Technical site health issues included a confirmed sitemap error that impeded crawlability and 404 errors for previously valuable SEO pages, such as the crau hay page, which did not properly redirect to suitable alternatives. Product categories Category pages lacked a consistent structure, and the brand’s review collection system was insufficient, as it did not fully reflect the brand and required updates to collect both Product and Company reviews. Inconsistent reputation signals The issue with review collection was that Happy Hay’s existing reviews did not fully reflect the brand.
The Solution
Our goal was to strategically identify and launch new product categories to grow our market reach. We needed a systematic, data-driven method to assess which potential animal categories were most viable and offered the best return on investment for content development and product stocking.
Structured Category Evaluation We established a clear set of criteria to evaluate each potential animal category, ensuring every decision was based on a core business rationale. Product-First Content Alignment The foundation of the content strategy is ensuring every piece directly supports a key business objective, specifically by aligning with a particular product or product category, such as ‘Guinea pig hay’. Alongside traditional content formats, we introduced interactive tools as part of the SEO strategy to capture problem-solving searches. A key deliverable was the Hay Feeding Calculator, an asset designed to provide users with instant, personalised feeding guidance. This allowed us to guide users seamlessly to the relevant products. 3rd-party review collection process We address the inconsistency by ensuring the collection of both Product and Company reviews.: Investigated and updating the review emails setup Created a dedicated “Happy Hay Reviews” page to potentially capture branded search traffic
The Results
Previously, HappyHay.co.uk struggled to rank for key commercial queries organically. After working with us for 6 months, we were able to increase visibility by 61%.
SEO Recovery: +300 keywords
Organic Revenue: +231% YoY
Non-brand Clicks: +233% YoY
Content: from zero to +1,000 clicks/month
90% increase in new customers
"Kevin and his team provided an excellent service at a competitive price. Their reporting on how the SEO was growing is the best that I have worked with to date. I really appreciate the work Growthack has done so far and the support along the way. It has been incredibly helpful in getting the SEO back to a healthy place. They helped The Happy Hay Co. transition to Shopify after technical issues with the old WooCommerce site. I’m now in a position to self-manage SEO activity and take back control of the business in-house. We’re now on track for a record year of website growth."
Harry Brooks
Owner
More cases.
Trusted by more than 50 companies, from ambitious startups to major enterprises.
![](data:image/svg+xml,<svg display="block" role="presentation" viewBox="0 0 42 12" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g d="" fill="transparent" height="0px" id="Hvws_Oxb8" transform="translate(0 0.24)" width="0px"/></svg>)
