Disclaimer: I keep the names of the websites I work on confidential to respect the partners. The case study include step-by-step on how we work on a project, if you want to see result, please head to “The Results” section.
The context
A Vietnam-based women’s apparel manufacturer with genuine OEM capability and international certifications – but virtually no digital presence. Before engagement: 60% of site traffic was direct (people already knew the brand), 35% came from branded searches, and 0% came from the US market they were actively trying to reach. AI search visibility was zero. The website existed, but it wasn’t working.
The diagnosis
- Security problem: a plugin had been compromised, and hidden gambling content was injected into the pages.
- Product pages had almost no content, the homepage barely explained what the business did, and their factory (which operates under a different name) was mentioned only once on the site. Google couldn’t figure out the relationship between the two entities. Neither could a first-time visitor.
- Other digital assets: Their Instagram was actually active and decent, but it had no connection to the website and wasn’t helping build any authority.
- No form tracking: No informational content. No alt text.
- Lead-gen: The submission form only appeared in the Contact page
What We Did
Sorted the security issue first, then worked through the fundamentals:
- Rewrote the homepage to actually describe the business: what they make, how they operate, their certifications (ISO, BSCI, sustainability), and a short video intro
- Built a proper factory page that explained the connection between the factory and the parent group, and created a Google Business Profile for it
- Stopped targeting broad keywords like “apparel manufacturer” — too competitive for a site starting from scratch. Instead, they focused on two specific angles: Vietnam-sourcing queries (relevant given China+1 trends) and women’s apparel, which matched their actual capability
- Published three informational articles targeting rankable queries, then added 1–2 topics per month to keep crawl activity consistent
- Coordinated with their social team so Instagram captions started reinforcing the same entity signals as the website
- For AI visibility: tracked which listicle posts were already showing up in AI answers for our target prompts, then paid for mentions on those specific pages. No big PR spend.
- The submission form appeared in footer, on the homepage and other service pages
The Results
Direct Metrics
Offsetting Metrics
Jul 2025 – Apr 2026:
- 6,068 organic sessions | 120 leads
- 743 AI-referred sessions | 22 leads
- Organic search went from ~5% of the traffic mix to 48%
- AI search visibility: 55% across 20 tracked prompts
Key takeaways
- Clarify the business’s information: Most manufacturers have more to say than their website shows. Filling in the gaps: certifications, operations, entity relationships, etc., is the lowest-effort, highest-return work you can do.
- Focus on niche content first: When you’re starting from zero, competing on broad terms is a waste. Find the specific audience already looking for what you do best. Win there. Then expand.
- AI visibility wasn’t a separate strategy: It came from being the clearest answer to a specific question, which is what the whole engagement was built around.