A premium Canadian maple syrup brand established in 1978 — strong offline, virtually invisible online. We rebuilt the technical foundation, structured topical authority, and earned the brand recognition inside ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Today it's the dominant online presence in its category.
Maple Terroir had everything in place offline — a forty-seven-year heritage, quality products, loyal customers, beautiful packaging. The problem was online presence: fewer than ten referring domains, fifty monthly organic visitors, and total absence from the conversations where customers actually search for premium maple syrup.
Four pillars working together — authority, topical depth, evergreen content, and a rebuilt technical foundation.
Cornerstone content paired with white-hat outreach. Unlinked brand mentions converted into live links. Niche directory placements at DR 60 to DR 91.
Structured content hubs around production, tree tapping, Canadian heritage, cocktails and seasonal gifting — with deliberate internal linking funneling readers toward product.
Long-form guides and trend-driven posts engineered to attract traffic, backlinks and conversions. The "$30 Million Maple Syrup Heist" piece was a category-defining win.
Rewrote metadata for search intent, implemented product and local business schema, fixed performance issues, launched a conversion-focused site with A/B testing.
The detail underneath each pillar.
The campaign opened with cornerstone content — "The Complete Guide to Canadian Maple Syrup" — designed to be linkable on its own merits. Outreach targeted publications with domain authorities between 60 and 90, framing Maple Terroir as the credible Canadian source on the subject.
Unlinked mentions across food and travel publications were tracked down and converted into proper backlinks. Niche directories with high authority were sourced and acquired. The result: new backlinks from DR 77, DR 89 and DR 91 sources.
Topical hubs were structured around the entities Google associates with maple syrup — production methods, tree tapping, Canadian heritage, regional terroir. Supporting posts covered angles like "Can You Tap Any Maple Tree?" and the Canadian Maple Syrup Production Report 2025.
Expansion into adjacent categories — cocktails, seasonal gifting — added semantic depth without diluting focus. Internal linking was deliberate: every informational page funneled readers toward product pages via contextually relevant anchors.
Meta titles and descriptions were rewritten across the entire catalogue with search intent alignment. Product schema and local business schema were implemented site-wide. Performance issues — slow images, render-blocking scripts — were resolved.
A new conversion-focused website was launched with stronger social proof, clearer CTAs and built-in A/B testing capabilities so the team could iterate on messaging post-launch.
| Metric | Before | After (6 mo) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly organic traffic | ~50 | 800+ | +1,500% |
| Referring domains | <10 | 60+ | +650% |
| Search visibility | Virtually invisible | Primary traffic driver | Category leader |
| Entity SEO coverage | Isolated pages | Topical hubs | Structured |
| AI visibility | Absent | Featured in ChatGPT | +3,300% |
| Revenue impact | Minimal organic | +143% sales | 39% more orders |
| Technical foundation | Weak metadata, no schema | Full schema, A/B testing | Conversion-ready |