Intersport SEO Case

Intersport is one of Europe’s largest sports retailers, serving millions of customers across both physical stores and e-commerce. Following the migration of their online platform to Shopify, the company was ready to strengthen its digital presence and invest more strategically in organic growth.

However, by the summer of 2024 it became clear that the existing SEO setup was no longer sufficient to maintain leadership in one of their most important categories: running shoes. Competition had intensified and several valuable rankings had been lost, reducing visibility for high-intent commercial searches.

In August 2024, Intersport partnered with Obsidian Digital to launch a new SEO initiative focused on restoring and expanding organic authority. The strategy combined technical optimisation with a scalable Programmatic SEO approach, with the ambition of reclaiming market leadership within the running universe and securing top rankings for commercially valuable keywords.

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The project began with strengthening the site’s technical SEO foundation. This included cleaning up the site structure, fixing internal links pointing to redirects and 404 pages, removing broken pages, and optimising meta tags. A content gap analysis and internal link audit were also conducted to identify new ranking opportunities and direct authority toward high-value commercial pages.

With the technical groundwork in place, the focus shifted to building topical authority within the running category. A dedicated content universe was developed around running-related topics, supported by custom blog templates that naturally linked editorial content to relevant product pages. Each article helped both attract new organic traffic and strengthen the internal link structure.

Finally, schema markup was implemented through specialised workflows to improve visibility in search engines and emerging AI-driven discovery platforms such as ChatGPT and Gemini.

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The impact of the new SEO strategy quickly became visible.

Within 17 months, organic traffic increased by 119%, while 9,564 new keywords entered the Top 20 search results. At the same time, the number of Top 3 rankings grew by 338% and Top 10 rankings increased by 172%, significantly expanding Intersport’s presence across highly competitive search queries.

The improvement in visibility translated directly into business impact. Revenue from organic search increased by 44%, supported by a 199% uplift in key conversion events.

Equally important, the new visitors proved to be more engaged and relevant. Average engagement time increased by 62%, confirming that the content strategy successfully attracted users with genuine interest and purchase intent.

What started as an initiative to reclaim the number one position for running shoes ultimately evolved into something far more powerful: a scalable SEO ecosystem that continues to build authority, attract qualified traffic, and generate revenue across multiple product categories.

(Data source: Ahrefs.com & Google Analytics 4)

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