The business
Orientbell Tiles (orientbell.com) is an Indian tiles manufacturer whose range covers floor tiles, wall tiles, bathroom tiles, kitchen tiles and vitrified tiles. It sells through dealers across India rather than online, so the website’s job is to help people find the right tile and send an enquiry. Orientbell is a standalone tiles company and is not related to Orient Electric.
The challenge
When I took on Orientbell, the brand was close to invisible online. The website was a legacy build, and there was no large budget for brand campaigns.
The competition was some of the best-known names in Indian building materials: Kajaria, Somani, H&R Johnson and Nitco, all with large advertising budgets and celebrity brand ambassadors. In a category where the biggest brands win on awareness, the only way to compete was to be the most useful result for every tile search.
What I did
- Built a keyword universe, not a keyword list. Instead of the usual 100 to 200 keywords, I mapped tens of thousands of searches people make about tiles, grouped by tile type, room, size, finish and buying intent.
- Rebuilt the website from scratch around that research. I planned the new site like an e-commerce catalogue, with a silo structure that puts every product within two to three clicks of the home page. Because Orientbell doesn’t sell online, each product page ends in an enquiry button instead of a cart.
- Designed navigation around how people shop for tiles, so both buyers and search engines could move through categories and products without dead ends.
- Wrote the content for the most important pages myself to set the quality bar: each product and category page answers every question a buyer has about it, on that page.
- Reverse-engineered the competition. I studied where competitors’ pages were doing better than ours, worked out why, and built stronger versions of those strengths into the new site.
- Fixed page speed template by template, working through the issues with the tech team until every page type loaded fast.
Results
- Top 10 on Google for the major tile searches within six months.
- Top 3 for the major searches, and top 10 for most others, within the first year.
- #1 on Google from December 2020 through 2022 for the category’s most-searched terms, “tiles”, “floor tiles” and “bathroom tiles”, along with “wall tiles”, “kitchen tiles”, “vitrified tiles” and many more high-volume searches.
- ~5,200% growth in organic traffic over 24 months, ahead of competitors with far bigger budgets.
What other manufacturers can learn
- Depth beats budget. A keyword universe shows you every way buyers search, and a site built around it can outrank brands that spend far more on advertising.
- Treat the website like a catalogue, even without online sales. Clear structure and an enquiry on every product page turn search traffic into leads.
- Set the quality bar on the pages that matter most. When the top pages fully answer the buyer, the rest of the site follows that standard.
Frequently asked questions
Can a smaller brand outrank big competitors on Google?
Yes. Orientbell competed with brands that had far larger advertising budgets and celebrity ambassadors, and still reached first place for “tiles”, “floor tiles” and “bathroom tiles” by building the most complete, fastest and best-structured site for those searches.
How long did it take Orientbell to rank #1 for “tiles”?
About a year. The site reached the top 10 for major tile searches within six months, the top 3 within the first year, and first place from December 2020.
Does SEO work for a manufacturer that doesn’t sell online?
Yes. Orientbell sells through dealers, so the website was built to generate enquiries. Every product page has an enquiry button, which turns organic traffic into leads for the sales network.
