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Flitch had half a million pages.
Google couldn't read a single one.

Flitch had built a genuinely impressive product — 500,000 pages of furniture from 100+ UK retailers in one place.

What they hadn't built was a single SEO foundation. We built the entire infrastructure from scratch — then competed.

google.com/search?q=furniture+comparison+uk
furniture comparison uk
About 87,000,000 results (0.42 seconds)
F
flitch.co.uk
https://flitch.co.uk › furniture
Compare 500,000+ UK Furniture Products | Flitch
★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,247 reviews
Compare furniture from 100+ UK retailers in one place. Free delivery on thousands of items. Find the best price...
G
Google Shopping
Furniture Comparison UK — Best Prices
Compare prices across all major UK furniture retailers. Same-day delivery available...
B
buzzfeed.com
Best Places to Buy Affordable UK Furniture 2024
We tested 15 furniture retailers to find the best value and quality options...
Flitch website
21K+
Monthly organic visitors
From zero. Year two.
1,800
Keywords on page one
800 in year one. 1,800 by year two. All driving traffic.
#3
For 'desks for sale'
Thousands of monthly searches. Above Furniture Village and major incumbents.
158+
Referring domains built
In just over a year — The Sun, Women and Home, Tom's Guide and more.
THE CHALLENGE

500,000 pages.
Google could barely see them.

Flitch had built a genuinely powerful furniture comparison engine, but the scale of the site was working against it.

Pages weren't being indexed, crawl budget was wasted on the wrong URLs, and the organic opportunity across thousands of product pages was essentially untouched.

Before Dexter Media 12 months
Flitch organic traffic, before Dexter Media
THE RESULTS IN DETAIL

What actually happened

From a site Google could barely crawl to 21,000 monthly visitors. Year one built the foundations. Year two delivered the traffic.

21K+ Monthly organic visitors — from zero
#3 For 'desks for sale' — national competition
1,800 Keywords ranking on page one
0 10K 21K+ Year 1 start Year 2 end
Monthly organic traffic · 0 to 21,000 visitors · year one foundations + year two growth
Monthly organic visitors (year two)
0
→
21K+
New channel
Compounding growth across two years. Year one: 6,000. Year two: 21,000. The trajectory continues.
Organic visitors by year
Year 1
6K
Year 2
21K
Keywords on page one
0
→
1,800
Year two
800 on page one by end of year one. 1,800 by year two. All targeting commercial furniture and home categories.
Competitive keyword positions
Desks for sale
#3
M&S cushions
#3
Referring domains built
0
→
158+
Year one
Built in just over a year through editorial press coverage. Every link earned from a DR70+ publication.
Organic trajectory
0
→
Growing
Ongoing
From a site Google couldn't read to 21,000 monthly visitors. The technical foundation built in year one continues to compound with every new piece of content.
How we did it

The channels that drove growth

Flitch had the product. They didn't have the infrastructure for Google to find it, or the authority to compete with brands that had been online for a decade. We built both.

SEO & Content · 01
1,800
keywords on page one by year two

With the technical foundation complete, we mapped the keyword opportunity across 50+ furniture categories. Bunk beds. Bar tables. Hammocks. Garden swings. 800 keywords on page one in year one — including position three for 'desks for sale', above Furniture Village. By year two: 1,800 keywords, and position three for 'M&S cushions', ranking above M&S itself.

Keyword strategy Category page copy Brand-adjacent terms Competitor analysis Hub architecture
21K 10K 0 2022 Year 2
Near zero organic traffic 21K/month →
Digital PR · 02
158+
referring domains built in a year

Editors don't want stories about sofas. But they want stories about what makes a home look cheap, how to stay warm without the heating, and what interior experts actually buy. We found those angles, placed Flitch's voice into national and lifestyle press, and earned links that a furniture site simply cannot buy. Every link DR70 or above.

Adjacent content strategy National press outreach Lifestyle publications Interior expertise Link building
S
The Sun
Interior feature · DR89
W
Women and Home
Home styling · Feature
TG
Tom's Guide
Best home office desks
+
Daily Record + more
Ongoing placements · DR70+
158 referring domains built in a single year. Every placement earned through editorial relevance, not paid promotion.
Technical SEO · 03
500K
pages with complete SEO infrastructure built

A 500,000-page catalogue with no meta titles, no redirect structure, no canonical tags, no schema markup, and no pagination logic. Every one of those issues was suppressing rankings across the entire site before we could target a single keyword. We built the complete infrastructure first — because without it, nothing else would work.

Meta title system 301 redirect mapping Canonical architecture Pagination logic Schema markup Internal linking
Before
After
Meta Titles
✗ None across 500K pages
✓ Dynamic rules built
301 Redirects
✗ 404s bleeding authority
✓ Full mapping deployed
Canonical Tags
✗ Self-referencing
✓ Authority consolidated
Pagination
✗ No structure
✓ Series signals added
Schema Markup
✗ Zero structured data
✓ Product/breadcrumb/org
Internal Links
✗ No intentional flow
✓ Category hub architecture
The full picture

How we built it

The order mattered as much as the work itself. With half a million pages and no foundation, we couldn't target a keyword until the site could be read.

Phase 01
Technical
Building the foundation first
Phase 02
SEO
Mapping the keyword opportunity
Phase 03
Competition
Going head to head with the incumbents
Phase 04
Digital PR
Earning authority adjacent to furniture
Phase 05
Compounding
How the channels reinforced each other
Technical SEO

Why the foundation had to come first

First 90 days
500K
pages with no SEO infrastructure — zero could rank until this was fixed

With 500,000 pages and none of the foundations Google needs to understand them, targeting any keyword was premature. The site was haemorrhaging authority through broken redirects, confusing Google with self-referencing canonicals, and failing to communicate what any page was about through meta titles.

We fixed every structural issue before writing a single piece of content. That discipline meant when we did start targeting categories, the pages had a fair chance of competing — instead of fighting infrastructure problems at the same time.

Technical SEO auditMeta title system Redirect mappingCanonical architecture Schema deploymentCrawl budget optimisation
SEO & Content

Mapping 50+ categories

Year one
800
keywords on page one by end of year one — the fastest gains on the strongest categories

With the foundation solid, the question was which categories to target first. Not every furniture category has the same search volume, intent, or competition. We mapped the full opportunity across bunk beds, desks, garden furniture, and 47 other categories, then prioritised by where Flitch had the most to gain with the least resistance.

By the end of year one, 800 keywords were on page one. Position three for 'desks for sale' — a term with thousands of monthly searches — demonstrated that the strategy was working faster than even we expected.

Keyword opportunity mappingCategory prioritisation Commercial intent targetingOn-page optimisation Competitor gap analysis
Competitive SEO

Competing against the market leaders

Year two
#3
for 'M&S cushions' — ranking above M&S itself for their own brand-adjacent term

By year two, the ambition shifted. With 800 keywords already ranking, we turned to the tougher terms — categories where Dreams, Furniture Village, and M&S had spent years building authority. Competing for 'desks for sale' against Furniture Village. Ranking above M&S for their own brand-adjacent searches.

Getting above an incumbent in their own category is the proof that domain authority and content quality can close a gap that seemed insurmountable. 1,800 keywords on page one by year two.

Competitive keyword targetingBrand-adjacent strategy Authority signalsCategory depth content Link velocity
Digital PR

Authority that furniture alone won't earn

Ongoing
158+
referring domains built in a year — every link DR70 or above

A furniture site cannot easily earn national press coverage by writing about furniture. Journalists need angles with broader appeal. We found those angles in the spaces adjacent to what Flitch sells: home styling, interior mistakes, cost-of-living solutions, and expert buying guides.

The Sun, Women and Home, Tom's Guide, and the Daily Record all covered Flitch-adjacent stories. Each placement earned a high-authority backlink that fed directly into the ranking campaigns already in progress.

Adjacent content strategyNational press outreach Interior expertise anglesLifestyle publications Link acquisition
Compounding

When all three work together

Ongoing
21K
monthly organic visitors by year two — a number that continues to climb

The compounding effect became visible in year two. Technical SEO meant every new piece of content had a fair chance. Content strategy meant we were targeting the right terms. Digital PR meant those pages had the authority to compete for them.

None of these phases would have produced 21,000 monthly visitors alone. It was the sequence that made the number possible — foundations first, then content, then the authority to compete at the top.

SEO compoundingAuthority accumulation Content flywheelCompetitive positioning Long-term organic growth
Phase 1 of 5
"

We had a site with half a million pages and no idea how to get any of them ranking. Dexter Media didn't just solve the technical problems — they built the entire organic growth engine. Competing with Dreams and Furniture Village felt impossible until it wasn't.

FL
Founder, Flitch
Furniture comparison · UK
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