Before joining Cole-Parmer, I was an SEO Manager running a small team. But I'd never worked on e-commerce SEO before, so this was a whole new ball game.
My path to SEO wasn't traditional. I started at a non-profit helping disadvantaged youth as a backup network admin, then discovered I was more interested in building websites, email marketing, and social media. When I moved to Cole-Parmer, that resourcefulness came in handy — but moving from mission-driven work to revenue-focused e-commerce was a real shift.
The Problem
When I arrived, things were worse than expected. One agency handling technical SEO, zero in-house expertise, no search strategy. One page ranking on Google's first page — not because of smart SEO, but because scientists bookmarked a popular tool. The rest of the site was invisible.
Where the Opportunities Were
After digging into the data, three technical issues were killing organic performance. Each one was fixable. Together, they were costing the business millions.
The 3 Critical Fixes
90% Internal Nofollow
Nearly all internal links were marked nofollow — telling Google not to trust its own content.
Faceted Nav Chaos
Every filter combination created a new indexed URL, flooding Google with thousands of near-duplicate pages.
Old Products Winning
Outdated product pages outranked newer, more relevant ones — the opposite of what the business needed.
Internal Nofollow Madness
Around 90% of internal links were marked nofollow. Google was essentially being told "we don't trust our own content." It was the biggest issue I'd ever seen on a site of this size. Removing those directives was step one — and the impact was immediate.
Faceted Navigation Chaos
Every filter combination on a category page created a new indexed URL. Google was crawling thousands of duplicate pages with no real value. The fix was deindexing those URLs — not blocking them in robots.txt. That distinction matters: Google needs to be able to see a page in order to know it should be ignored. Blocking it entirely means Google keeps trying to guess what's there.
Old Products Outranking New
After just three months of these fixes alone, real results started showing. The site was finally being crawled and understood correctly.
Keyword Research
Cole-Parmer sits in what I'd call quasi-YMYL territory — it serves both product content (e-commerce) and informational content (blogs, research papers, regulatory documents). That meant keyword strategy had to be more nuanced than a straight product-focused approach.
I used SERP analysis to understand user intent at each stage of the funnel. But I wasn't just hunting for high-volume terms. I was looking for pages with high impressions and click-through rates but low conversions — because those pages needed better, more targeted content to actually close the loop.
On-Page SEO
With the technical foundation repaired, I moved into on-page work. I added schema markup for both products and long-form content. I created comprehensive SOPs for product page metadata — so the team could scale without me personally reviewing every page. I built an internal linking playbook for writers that made link placement a default habit, not an afterthought.
Working with the UX team, we redesigned category page templates to surface value proposition content higher on the page. Heat mapping confirmed users were actually engaging with those sections — they weren't just decoration.
Results
Revenue Growth — Year One Impact
- Organic sessions: +300% year over year
- Conversions: +56%
- Conversion rate: +5.6% (up from 1.2%)
- Revenue: $2.5M to $10M+ in year one
"The rapid impact of fixing nofollow directives and deindexing faceted URLs was beyond expectations. Those technical fixes were the foundation everything else was built on."
The Key Lesson
The biggest wins weren't glamorous. They were unglamorous technical corrections that most people overlook because they don't show up in content calendars or creative briefs. Fixing nofollow directives and deindexing faceted URLs had an outsized impact — and it happened fast because the underlying content and products were already good. We just needed to let Google see them properly.
Wrapping Up
Getting Cole-Parmer from $2.5M to $10M was the highlight of my career so far. It showed that with technical know-how, clear thinking, and cross-team collaboration, you can make eye-popping improvements even in complex technical industries.
The real prize wasn't the numbers themselves — it was building systems that kept producing results long after I moved on. SOPs, templates, internal linking playbooks, schema frameworks. The kind of infrastructure that outlasts any single campaign.
If you're running an e-commerce site and your organic traffic feels stuck, I'd bet there are technical issues at the foundation. They're not always obvious. But they're almost always fixable.