Case Study: A Greenhouse Importer’s Climb From Page 3 to Page 1
Overview
Exaco Trading Co. is the exclusive U.S. importer and distributor of premium European greenhouses — Belgian glass Victorians by Janssens, British cedar structures by Alton, and Germany’s cult-favorite Riga polycarbonate line — plus composters, fountains, and garden products. Operating from Austin, Texas since 1988, they’ve sold more than 10,000 greenhouses through retail partners like Costco, Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Wayfair, and run the only greenhouse showroom in the country.
The business had earned its authority. The website hadn’t kept up. A two-decade-old PHP site was ranking on pages 2 and 3 of Google, a previous SEO vendor had left behind a toxic backlink profile, and a shifting customer base — younger buyers comparison-shopping against imported knockoffs — was forming first impressions Exaco couldn’t control.
Over two phases, I delivered a brand identity expansion and a ground-up custom WordPress rebuild, launched January 23, 2026 — three weeks ahead of the February trade shows that anchor Exaco’s selling season. Six months in: page-1 average rankings, click-through rates up 76%, and retailer referrals — the conversion that actually pays a wholesale distributor — up 70%.
- Client: Exaco Trading Co.
- Sector: Consumer Products — B2B Wholesale Distribution (Greenhouses & Garden)
- Services: Brand identity, content strategy, UX & information architecture, web design, custom WordPress development, SEO migration
- Platform: WordPress (custom theme) · WP Engine · Yoast Premium · Gravity Forms · Vimeo
- Timeline: Launched three weeks before the February trade-show deadline
The Challenge: 38 Years of Authority, Invisible Where Buyers Look First
Exaco’s customer takes roughly 18 months to go from inspiration to purchase — a long, research-heavy journey that lives almost entirely in search. The old site was losing that journey at every step:
- Rankings buried the brand. The site averaged position 19 on Google — pages 2 and 3 — showing up poorly for thousands of low-quality queries while premium buyers searched “custom greenhouse” and “european greenhouse” without ever seeing Exaco.
- A toxic SEO inheritance. A previous vendor charged $1,500/month while accumulating spammy backlinks and junk-query visibility that eroded trust with Google.
- The market was moving. Instagram-era buyers aged 35–55 were comparison-shopping Exaco’s Victorian line against cheaper lookalike imports — and the dated PHP site wasn’t making the premium case.
- Content was trapped. Every update required a developer, so product education, buying guides, and seasonal content simply didn’t ship.
The Objective
Rebuild the digital presence to match the caliber of the products:
✅ Refresh the brand and give it a system that scales across web, print, and trade shows
✅ Rank on page 1 for the commercial searches premium buyers actually make
✅ Route ready-to-buy visitors to retail partners — the conversion a wholesaler lives on
✅ Hand the marketing team full self-serve control of products and content
✅ Survive the replatform without losing hard-won search equity
The Solution: Brand, Architecture, and a Custom Build — In That Order
Phase 1: Brand Identity Expansion & Content Strategy
The engagement began with brand exploration: refining Exaco’s identity around the new “Grow Beyond” platform and expanding it into a full system — logo refinement, color, typography, and application standards ready for everything from the website to trade-show booths. In parallel, a content strategy workshop with the Exaco team mapped what 38 years of product knowledge should become online.
Phase 2: Information Architecture Built Around the Buyer’s Journey
Before design, I delivered a complete information architecture reorganized around how greenhouse buyers actually shop: Products · Learn & Inspire · Why Exaco · Purchase. Deep product taxonomy separates glass, polycarbonate, and cedar greenhouses; a Learn & Inspire hub gives the 18-month research journey somewhere to live; and a dedicated Purchase path routes buyers to retail partners.
Phase 3: Custom WordPress Development
I designed and custom-built the new exaco.com on WordPress, hosted on WP Engine — a platform the Exaco team could run themselves:
- Custom post types for everything. Products, sections, testimonials, FAQs, downloads, media kits, and retailers are all structured content — the team updates any of it without touching a template.
- Product pages built to sell premium. Every greenhouse gets specifications, photo galleries, accessories, assembly resources, and FAQs in a consistent, jump-navigable layout.
- A greenhouse configurator path. The “Design Your Greenhouse” flow connects serious buyers to Janssens’ configurator for custom builds reaching $50,000+.
- A retailer-routing Purchase experience. Because Exaco sells wholesale, the site’s job is the handoff — dedicated retailer pages send ready buyers to Costco, Home Depot, Wayfair, and specialty partners, and every outbound click is measured.
- A partner portal. Retail partners get their own newsletter archive and resource library behind the scenes.
Phase 4: SEO Migration & a Content Engine
Replatforming a 20-year-old site is where search equity goes to die — unless the migration is deliberate. Every legacy .php URL received a 301 redirect, on-page optimization and structured metadata shipped with launch, and Yoast Premium plus a trained internal team turned Exaco’s product expertise into buying guides like “Best Greenhouse for Snow and Wind” — content that now earns page-1 placements on its own.
The Results: Page 1 Rankings, Doubled Engagement, 70% More Retailer Referrals
The new exaco.com went live January 23, 2026 — DNS cutover, full redirect map, zero downtime — with the February trade shows three weeks out. Within two weeks, Exaco’s “Junior Victorian” keyword had jumped 93 positions. Comparing peak season (April–June) against the old site one year prior:
✅ From page 3 to page 1: average Google position improved from 19.4 to 8.6 — with money keywords like “greenhouse builder” (position 35 → 1), “european greenhouse” (66 → 6), and “custom greenhouse” (23 → 10) now in front of premium buyers.
✅ Click-through rate up 76% (2.0% → 3.5%) — when Exaco appears, searchers choose it nearly twice as often.
✅ Retailer referrals up 70%: outbound clicks to retail partners — the wholesale business’s true conversion — grew from 4,122 to 6,998, plus 1,626 visits to the new retailer-locator experience.
✅ Visitors stay and engage: site-wide engagement rate climbed from 40% to 51%, and average session duration rose 40% to nearly three minutes.
✅ Compounding search momentum: search impressions grew every single month post-launch — up 134% from February to June — while 436 tracked keywords improved 3+ positions.
✅ Visible in AI search: ChatGPT is now the site’s #1 external referrer, with AI assistant traffic emerging as its own engaged channel — visibility the old site never had.
Frequently Asked Questions
What platform is the Exaco website built on?
A fully custom WordPress theme hosted on WP Engine, with custom post types for products, testimonials, FAQs, downloads, media kits, and retailers — plus Yoast SEO Premium, Gravity Forms, and Vimeo-hosted video. No page builders, no theme bloat.
How do you redesign a website without losing existing Google rankings?
Deliberately. Every legacy URL was mapped to a 301 redirect before launch, metadata and on-page optimization shipped with the new pages, and rankings were monitored from day one. Exaco didn’t just retain equity through the replatform — average position improved from 19 to 8.6 within six months.
What does “conversion” mean for a wholesale business that doesn’t sell online?
Routing ready buyers to the retailers who do sell. The site is architected around that handoff — measured outbound retailer clicks grew 70% year-over-year, which is revenue Exaco’s retail partners can feel.
How fast did the redesign show SEO results?
Two weeks after launch, a flagship product keyword had jumped 93 positions. By the first full peak season, average rankings had moved from page 3 to page 1 and search impressions were compounding month over month.
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