Project Summary

Crafted from alpaca fleece by an all-women team of Peruvian artisans, PAKA Apparel creates stylish outdoor clothing with a brand story that is as cozy as it is sustainable. Alpaca fiber is naturally soft, lightweight, breathable and durable, making it an increasingly popular alternative to merino wool.

By pairing sustainable operations with functional designs, PAKA had emerged as a leader in alpaca apparel, bolstered by a strong social media presence and prominent digital media placements. But search engine optimization (SEO) had been an afterthought, limiting visibility in non-branded searches.

PAKA turned to Purple Orange for an SEO audit and keyword mapping aligned with consumer search behavior. Coordinating with the PAKA team and its other agency partners, we implemented a dedicated strategy that drove a ~40% year-over-year increase in both new users and revenue from organic search.

Problem Identification

PAKA held top rankings for general alpaca searches but lagged in specific product categories due to thin content, limited keyword use, missing metadata or keyword cannibalization.

This gap was especially timely as Google’s algorithms emphasized “helpful content” – descriptive, trustworthy material that anticipates consumer questions. Evidence was also growing that the same signals were also influencing visibility in emerging generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.

A clean content map and structured data (ex. FAQPages, Product Schema) offered an opportunity to improve PAKA’s visibility across both search engines (i.e. SEO) and AI tools (i.e. generative engine optimization, or GEO). 

Strategic Roadmap

Purple Orange identified 39 target keyword categories mapped to collection and product pages. In addition to primary alpaca searches, we outlined four secondary keyword opportunities across categories:

1. “Wool” – Consumers search for “alpaca wool” despite alpaca being a fiber. Strategically adding this phrasing would improve rankings for both alpaca and higher-volume wool clothing searches.
2. “Peru” – Targeting “alpaca clothing from Peru” and similar terms would highlight PAKA’s heritage and traceable sourcing, while increasing search visibility.
3. Values-driven terms – Aligning closely with PAKA’s story, the targeted use of “natural fiber,” “sustainable” and “ethical” across collection and product pages would attract highly qualified consumers.
4. “Outdoor” and ”Hiking” – PAKA was ranking inconsistently for “outdoor” and “hiking” clothing terms, despite having more functional outdoor designs than its alpaca competitors.

Execution

Our SEO project combined thoughtful content development with technical improvements and parallel media outreach. 

Working closely with PAKA’s e-commerce team, we updated copy across the 39 targeted collection and product pages, weaving keywords naturally into title tags, meta descriptions, headings, on-page text, image alt attributes, and internal link anchor text. On higher-level collection pages, new FAQ sections were developed to capture long-tail informational queries, which are prevalent on AI platforms and showcased in Google’s “People also ask” SERP feature. 

Purple Orange addressed keyword cannibalization by “noindex”-ing redundant pages and boosted page performance by identifying unused third-party apps that were slowing load times with unnecessary code. Structured data was strengthened across the site, with collection schema implemented and product schema expanded to include variants like color and size, making them eligible for richer organic product results.

Beyond the website, we improved the flow of keyword-rich product data into PAKA’s Google Merchant Center feed, aligning its organic and paid search efforts in product grids. Meanwhile, Purple Orange’s PR and affiliate teams continued to secure backlinks from authoritative sites (ex. CNN, CNET, Men’s Journal and Travel and Leisure) that not only helped PAKA improve its traditional search visibility, but also boosted its brand citations in AI-generated answers.

Outcomes

In the six months following the SEO project launch, PAKA’s new users from organic search traffic rose by 40% year-over-year, with attributed revenue increasing 38%. These gains accelerated during the holiday season, with new users climbing 52% and revenue rising 63% compared to the previous year.

Outpacing PAKA’s growth for its own branded queries, non-branded queries accounted for a 44% increase in clicks, with especially strong gains in the categories identified during our keyword mapping. Rankings solidified at No. 1 for a range of alpaca keywords, while secondary keyword categories – those containing “wool,” “Peru” and values-driven terms like “sustainable” – delivered some of the steepest growth.

Across 1,000 keywords tracked for the project, PAKA captured an additional 10% share of visibility in Google search results, tripling the footprint of its nearest competitor. It also outpaced competitors by 8.5x in brand citations within generative AI answers across ChatGPT’s search mode, Google AI Mode and Perplexity. 

By aligning its heritage-driven story with consumer intent, PAKA greatly strengthened both visibility and revenue through traditional search while securing an early edge in AI-driven discovery. Our project built a durable SEO foundation for PAKA’s ongoing content strategy, ensuring new product launches can scale faster and reach more targeted audiences in search.