Case Study: How Solaris Outdoor Transformed Their Digital Strategy Amid Google’s Evolution

Company Background

Solaris Outdoor, a mid-sized outdoor equipment retailer with both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar operations, had traditionally relied on organic Google search for nearly 65% of their digital traffic. Founded in 2015, the company had invested heavily in SEO best practices and content marketing to secure top rankings for valuable keywords in the camping, hiking, and outdoor gear categories.

The Challenge

By mid-2024, Solaris noticed concerning trends in their analytics:

• Declining organic traffic: Despite maintaining high rankings, click-through rates dropped by 18% over six months
• Rising customer acquisition costs: Their paid search campaigns required 32% higher bids for the same conversion rates
• Changing customer behavior: Internal surveys showed 41% of their under-30 customers were researching products through AI tools before making purchase decisions
• Reduced content engagement: Their long-form buying guides, once reliable traffic generators, saw a 26% decrease in time-on-page metrics

Marketing Director Elena Rivera recognized these signals aligned with the broader trends in Google’s changing landscape: “We were still showing up in search, but our content wasn’t connecting with users the same way. The data suggested our customers were getting information differently than before.”

The Strategy Transformation

Rather than abandoning their SEO foundation, Solaris implemented a four-pronged approach:

1. Content Restructuring for Dual Optimization

Solaris completely overhauled their content strategy to serve both traditional search and AI tools:

• Structured data implementation: Added comprehensive product schema markup to all pages
• Clear factual sections: Reorganized content with distinct, factual blocks that could be easily extracted by AI systems
• Question-focused hierarchy: Restructured content to directly address specific customer questions
• Comparison frameworks: Created standardized comparison sections that worked well for both human readers and AI summarization

2. Strategic Channel Diversification

Instead of spreading resources thinly across all platforms, Solaris conducted customer research to identify where their specific audience segments spent time:

• Dedicated resource allocation: Created specialized content teams for Google, specialized AI tools, and social discovery
• Audience-specific targeting: Developed distinct content approaches for different demographic segments
• Cross-channel measurement: Implemented attribution modeling to understand how channels worked together in the customer journey

3. Data-Driven E-E-A-T Enhancement

To combat perceptions of declining information quality, Solaris doubled down on demonstrating expertise:

• Expert collaboration program: Partnered with outdoor professionals to co-create and verify content
• Transparent sourcing policies: Added clear attribution for all technical information
• Experience documentation: Incorporated real-world testing protocols and methodologies in all product reviews
• Trust signals: Implemented comprehensive citing practices and third-party verification

4. AI-Assisted Human Creativity

Rather than seeing AI as a threat, Solaris integrated it into their content workflow:

• Research acceleration: Used AI tools to analyze competitor content and identify information gaps
• Draft enhancement: Employed AI editing to improve clarity and readability
• Topic identification: Utilized AI trend analysis to identify emerging customer questions
• Quality assurance: Developed an AI-powered content checklist to ensure all content met both technical SEO and readability standards

The Results (After 9 Months)

Solaris’ integrated approach yielded impressive results:

• 23% increase in overall site traffic despite the changing landscape
• 41% growth in conversion rate from organic traffic
• 17% reduction in customer acquisition costs across all channels
• 35% increase in “featured snippet” appearances in Google search results
• 28% higher engagement with restructured content optimized for both search and AI
• 127% growth in referral traffic from AI tools mentioning their content

Key Takeaways

Rivera attributes their success to embracing evolution rather than resisting it:

“We stopped thinking in terms of ‘SEO versus AI’ and started thinking about comprehensive information accessibility. Our goal became creating content so genuinely helpful that it would rise to the top regardless of how customers searched for it.”

The Solaris experience demonstrates that:

1. Integration trumps replacement: Companies that integrate new channels alongside existing ones outperform those that rapidly pivot from one to another
2. Quality transcends platform: Genuinely helpful, factual content performs well across all discovery platforms
3. Structure matters increasingly: As AI intermediaries become more common, content structure becomes as important as content quality
4. Adaptation requires data: Regular analysis of changing user behavior patterns is essential for timely strategy adjustments

Long-Term Outlook

Solaris continues to refine their approach, viewing the changing digital landscape as an opportunity rather than a threat. As Rivera notes, “The fundamentals haven’t changed – connecting customers with genuinely helpful information that meets their needs. The methods of discovery may evolve, but the core mission remains the same.”