An automotive giant partnered with Thrusture to identify and find fixes for its International Business (IB) websites in LATAM, Africa and other regions across the globe. This case study sheds light on what problems we identified and what SEO solutions we implemented to increase organic visibility and search rankings across key product categories.
Problem Statement 1:
The website visibility on local results was not accurate due to which their global business websites results were not showing accurately. For example: In Mexico, if a user searched for the brand, another country website URL would display, not the specific country website.
Our Solution:
To resolve local SEO problems, we adopted the sub-domain URL structure approach for accurate local result rendering on Google based on user search query and optimally used HREF lang tags to ensure accurate local results.
Problem Statement 2:
We found Sitecore framework issues related to designing, flexibility, content management, collaboration and user management.
Our Solution:
We recommended the client a transition from Sitecore to Liferay CMS as it is best suited to meet the requirements of the International business websites. Initially, the transition was done for 4 sites across different countries. One to one 301 redirections from old to new URLs were achieved in Sep 2024.
Our team created on-page SEO details and had the web development team create the setup. Post-live full review was done and issues were fixed during continuous support. New Liferay websites development started in Jan 2024 and IB countries picked for SEO included France, Germany, and Europe.
Problem Statement 3:
We found several lags in website SEO that significantly limited the website reach, resulting in less organic traffic and SEO authority.
Our Solution:
1. Roadmap and Projection Setup for the Complete On-page SEO
| SEO Activities Involved | SEO Stage |
| Market research, website audit and analysis | Pre-live stage |
| Competitor search and analysis | Pre-live stage |
| In-depth keyword search and analysis in native language | Pre-live stage |
| On-page SEO hygiene elements creation including META | Pre-live stage |
| SEO data monitoring tools setup | Post-live stage |
| Complete review of the website for issues tracking | Post-live stage |
| Coordination with DEV team for issue fixup | Post-live stage |
| Regular SEO search and support activities | Post-live stage |
| On-page SEO Status between Jun 2022 and Mar 2024 for Sitecore+Liferay | ||
| Total number of IB websites picked | 42 | Accountable – SEO team |
| On-page SEO elements creation completed | 39 | Accountable – SEO team |
| On-page SEO elements implemented | 28 | Accountable – SEO team |
| In-depth Post Live SEO audit for issue fixup | 18 | Accountable – SEO and DEV team |
2. Website Brand Authority Enhancement via Off-page SEO
Our digital marketing team did complete off-page SEO that helped get backlinks from high-authority sites, showing search engines that the client’s site is a reliable and authoritative source of information. A strong off-page SEO provided sustained visibility to the IB sites and improved rankings over time, even with algorithm changes. Our SEO team achieved the off-page SEO target of 100 referring domains in a matter of two and a half months, helping the IB sites get more quality backlinks and positive signals to increase the domain authority and ranking for competitive keywords.
3. Enhanced the Technical SEO Setup
Most webpages were not indexed on Google and were not getting enough traffic. Our SEO team provided the following fixes.
- Set up the Google search console for country-wise websites.
- Submitted sitemaps.xml files.
- Done manual indexing of product pages.
- Removed unwanted pages from Google.
4. Proper Usage of HREF Lang and Canonical Tags
Being a product website, the product pages were the same so having issues with content duplicacy for different countries. We provided the following solutions:
- Optimally used country wise HREF lang tags for each country product pages to distinguish from other country product pages and avoid content duplicacy.
- Used proper canonical URLs to avoid content duplicacy.
Overall Impact of SEO on IB Site’s Organic Traffic
| Country | Initial Month | Initial Organic Traffic | Current Month | Current Organic Traffic |
| Mexico | June 2022 | 9905 | Feb 2024 | 41438 |
| Colombia | June 2022 | 304 | Feb 2024 | 1128 |
| Guatemala | June 2022 | 7268 | Feb 2024 | 7565 |
| Honduras | June 2022 | 640 | Feb 2024 | 265 |
| Peru | July 2022 | 186 | Feb 2024 | 2408 |
| Iraq | Sep 2022 | 286 | Feb 2024 | 4355 |
| Bolivia | Sep 2022 | 916 | Feb 2024 | 2820 |
| El Salvador | Sep 2022 | 2409 | Feb 2024 | 9872 |
| Costa Rica | Oct 2022 | 311 | Feb 2024 | 2076 |
| Philippines | Oct 2022 | 1622 | Feb 2024 | 3915 |
| Panama | Jan 2023 | 194 | Feb 2024 | 408 |
| Egypt | Mar 2023 | 370 | Feb 2024 | 1514 |
| UAE | Mar 2023 | 803 | Feb 2024 | 1736 |
| Turkey | Apr 2023 | 26373 | Feb 2024 | 66948 |
*Disclaimer: The current traffic for Guatemala and Honduras seems low, possibly because of the recent domain transition in Dec and Jan. More accurate data in later months showed a rise in traffic for both the countries as well.
Conclusion
The premium automotive brand was struggling to get the desired website traffic and reached out to us for an SEO partnership. Our strategic blend of SEO content optimization and technical enhancements (sitemap updates + internal linking) helped enhance brand awareness and increase website traffic.
The results of strong on-page and off-page SEO demonstrated expansion in the brand’s organic reach and an increase in user base beyond loyalists, thereby driving more organic revenue in a highly competitive digital marketplace.
This brings us to consider that only building a website does not do wonders for any business, but the right SEO does, that too without bearing the high expenses of paid ads. The success of this campaign showcases the impact of holistic SEO in unlocking untapped organic growth for the automotive juggernaut.
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