How I built a full technical SEO strategy for a US-market e-commerce platform — growing from 215K to 1.1M monthly impressions while navigating FDA compliance restrictions.
NEPA Wholesale is a US-market wholesale distributor operating in the vape and smoke industry — a heavily regulated space with significant FDA compliance restrictions on marketing language and claims. When I took over SEO responsibility in August 2024, monthly organic impressions sat at 215,247 and the website had minimal domain authority.
The challenge was to grow organic visibility significantly in a market where content restrictions limit what can be said, and where competitors had years of domain history advantage.
Technical foundation first. Before any content work, I conducted a comprehensive technical audit using Semrush and Google Search Console — identifying crawl inefficiencies, Core Web Vitals failures, and indexation issues across 2,495+ product pages.
Intent-focused keyword strategy. Rather than chasing volume, I mapped keywords to buying intent — identifying the exact search terms US wholesale buyers use when evaluating product suppliers, priced for the compliance restrictions in the space.
On-page and UX improvements. Systematically optimised product descriptions, meta titles, and internal linking across all product pages. Reduced bounce rate from 25.12% to 21.77% and grew average session duration from 2:30 to 5:18 through structured CRO improvements.
Off-page authority building. Executed a backlink acquisition strategy focused on relevant industry directories and partner sites — growing domain authority consistently over the engagement period.
Team training and documentation. Built an SEO checklist and training framework for junior team members — ensuring consistent on-page quality across new product uploads without requiring individual review of every page.
| Period | Impressions | Clicks | CTR | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 2025 | 215,247 | 6,126 | 2.8% | Baseline — strategy launch |
| May 2025 | 1,126,277 | 23,923 | 2.1% | Peak — 423% growth in 4 months |
| Sept 2025 | 30,981 | 2,223 | 7.2% | Login wall compliance impact* |
| Mar 2026 | 943,758 | 5,788 | 0.6% | Recovery to near-peak levels |
In June/July 2025, the website was placed behind a login wall for compliance reasons — blocking search engine crawlers from indexing commercial pages. This directly suppressed rankings and traffic independent of SEO strategy quality. All-time highs for impressions, traffic, and Top 3 rankings were achieved under the same SEO leadership. The recovery to 943K impressions by March 2026 demonstrates the strategy's resilience.
Geography doesn't limit execution quality if your strategy is right. This entire engagement — US market, US audience, US compliance requirements — was executed from Kathmandu, Nepal. The 423% growth in 4 months demonstrates that deep market research, technical precision, and intent-focused content beats location every time.