Assertive Media
E-commerce / Vape

88Vape

Driving 250%+ organic traffic growth and doubling organic product sales for one of the UK’s leading affordable vape brands.

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CASE STUDY

88Vape SEO Growth & Commercial Visibility

A combined technical, on-page, content and authority programme that lifted organic traffic by 250%+, doubled organic product sales and outranked specialist multi-brand retailers across thousands of high-intent commercial vape queries.

  • Technical SEO audit and remediation across 88vape.com
  • Site architecture restructured around a hub-and-spoke model
  • Schema markup at scale (Product, Review, AggregateRating, FAQ, Breadcrumbs)
  • Keyword research across thousands of commercial and informational queries
  • On-page optimisation across category, product and brand templates
  • Editorial content production: buyer guides, flavour profiles, strength comparisons
  • Internal linking programme to consolidate topical authority
  • CTR optimisation across meta titles and descriptions
  • Authority building through digital PR and reclaimed brand mentions
  • E-E-A-T strengthening across author, compliance and trust signals
88Vape

Organic Traffic

250%+

Organic Product Sales

2x

WHAT WE DELIVERED

Services Performed & Key Results

A breakdown of the work delivered and the measurable results achieved.

Services Performed

  • Technical SEO Audit & Remediation
  • Site Architecture Restructuring
  • Schema Markup Deployment
  • Keyword Research & Mapping
  • On-Page Optimisation
  • Editorial Content Production
  • Internal Linking Programme
  • Digital PR & Authority Building
  • E-E-A-T Strengthening
  • Ongoing SEO Reporting & Performance Analysis

250%+

Organic Traffic

2x

Product Sales

5k+

Ranking Keywords

Key Achievements

Outranked larger competitors with multi-thousand-SKU catalogues on high-volume generic terms, despite 88Vape’s narrower own-branded product range.
Built a defensible long-tail keyword footprint across every flavour variant, nicotine strength and bottle size combination in the catalogue.
Doubled organic product sales without paid media support, a critical outcome in a vertical where Google Ads, Meta and most mainstream PPC channels are unavailable for nicotine products.
Established 88vape.com as a credible organic competitor in a market dominated by specialist multi-brand online retailers.
Created a scalable content and ranking framework that continued to compound with each new flavour, strength or product launch.
Translated visibility on commercial intent queries directly into revenue growth, not vanity traffic.
Top-of-page-one visibility on high-value generic commercial terms, including “vape juice” and “e liquid” variants.
Comprehensive ranking coverage across the full 88Vape e-liquid flavour range, in every nicotine strength and bottle format combination.

THE CHALLENGE

Out-Ranking Specialist Vape Retailers

The UK vape market is one of the most competitive verticals in eCommerce search, dominated by specialist online retailers operating with thousands of SKUs across hundreds of e-liquid brands. 88Vape is fundamentally different: a narrower, own-branded catalogue competing against retailers with vastly greater catalogue depth, longer-established domain authority and almost no access to mainstream paid acquisition.

Catalogue Depth Disadvantage

Specialist competitors stock the entire UK e-liquid market, generating dozens of brand-modified queries per additional brand stocked. 88Vape’s own-branded model gives it a fraction of the SKU count, so we had to out-rank them on the queries that mattered rather than out-catalogue them.

No Paid Acquisition Safety Net

Google Ads, Meta and most major ad platforms restrict or prohibit nicotine product advertising. Organic search is the dominant route to qualified traffic, putting all commercial weight on rankings.

Restricted Link Landscape

Most mainstream UK publishers, lifestyle sites and category-relevant blogs avoid linking to vape brands, narrowing the pool of viable editorial placements and forcing a niche-led authority strategy.

YMYL & Regulatory Pressure

TRPR rules, age-gating obligations, advertising restrictions and Google’s elevated scrutiny of health-adjacent commerce raised the E-E-A-T bar for ranking and added on-site content constraints not present in most other verticals.

Dense Commercial Keyword Set

The keyword landscape is packed with high-intent, high-competition commercial terms, with entrenched specialists holding every front-page position on the queries that drive purchase behaviour.

The Solution

With a smaller product catalogue, every page on 88vape.com had to work harder than the equivalent page on a competitor’s site. The strategy compressed into four interlocking pillars: technical and architectural foundations, category-led commercial ranking, flavour and variant coverage at scale, and editorial authority paired with E-E-A-T strengthening.

4

Strategic Pillars

Hub & Spoke

Architecture

The Strategy

Strategy

88Vape Our Strategy

Our approach was built around a simple commercial reality: with a smaller product catalogue, every page on 88vape.com had to work harder than the equivalent page on a competitor’s site. The strategy compressed into four interlocking pillars.

First, technical and architectural foundations. We rebuilt the site’s technical and architectural footprint to remove the friction suppressing rankings on existing inventory. Crawl waste was eliminated through faceted navigation control, parameter handling and pagination cleanup. Core Web Vitals were brought into the green across mobile and desktop. Internal redirects, orphan pages and indexation bloat were resolved. A clean hub-and-spoke architecture was implemented to consolidate topical authority around flavour, nicotine strength and hardware clusters.

Second, category-led commercial ranking. Rather than relying on product page volume, we made category and sub-category pages the primary ranking vehicles for high-intent generic terms. Each category page was rebuilt with optimised editorial content, structured on-page targeting, schema, internal links from supporting content, and tightly mapped query coverage. This is what allowed 88Vape to compete for terms like “vape juice” and “e liquid” against retailers with multi-thousand-product catalogues. We treated the category page as the answer to a query, not as a filter view.

Third, flavour and variant coverage at scale. Every 88Vape e-liquid flavour, in every nicotine strength and bottle size, was mapped to the long-tail and modified queries it could realistically capture. Templated but uniquely written on-page content, structured data and internal linking ensured comprehensive coverage of the brand’s own catalogue across the full long-tail of “[flavour] e liquid”, “[flavour] vape juice”, “[flavour] [strength]mg” and bottle/format variants. Combined, this generated thousands of ranking keywords from the existing SKU set without expanding the catalogue itself.

Fourth, editorial authority and E-E-A-T. A sustained editorial programme built out beginner guides, flavour profile content, nicotine strength comparisons, PG/VG explainers and vape kit selection content. Each piece was engineered to rank for an informational query and to internally link onward to the relevant commercial categories. This served three purposes simultaneously: it captured top-of-funnel traffic, it strengthened the site’s topical authority signals, and it gave the domain genuine editorial substance to support E-E-A-T at both the page and site level.

Authority building ran in parallel through digital PR campaigns, niche outreach, reclaimed mentions and relationship-led placements, calibrated to the realities of a vertical where most mainstream publishers won’t engage.

The Goals

  • Material organic traffic growth: a step-change in non-brand sessions, not incremental movement.
  • Visibility on commercial and purchase-intent keywords: ranking specifically on the queries that convert.
  • Direct revenue impact: organic sales growth, measured against pre-engagement baselines.
  • Comprehensive long-tail coverage across every flavour, strength and bottle size combination.
  • Top-of-page-one visibility on generic, high-volume commercial vape terms.
  • A scalable content and ranking framework that compounds with each new product launch.
  • Strengthened E-E-A-T to compete in a YMYL-adjacent commercial vertical.
  • Defensible authority position despite restricted link acquisition opportunities.

About 88Vape

88Vape is a leading UK vape brand specialising in affordable e-liquids and vape hardware, with wide national distribution through high-street retail and a direct-to-consumer eCommerce presence at 88vape.com. The catalogue spans fruit, menthol, tobacco, dessert and beverage flavour profiles across multiple nicotine strengths and bottle formats, supported by an in-house hardware range engineered for ease of use and everyday reliability.

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