Short answer
RaftLabs ran a one-month growth marketing pilot for Proline Cosmetics, a 3,500-product e-commerce store in Greece with almost no organic traffic. Opening four new B2B discovery channels and fixing the site's URL, metadata, sitemap, and AI-crawler faults lifted the average Google position from 44.9 to 24.6 and drew 10 buyer enquiries from 6 countries within one month.
Engagement
The Proline Cosmetics engagement
- Client
- Proline Cosmetics, prolinecosmetics.gr
- Sector
- Professional nail and hair cosmetics in Greece
- Delivery
- One-month growth pilot, 16 August to 17 September 2026
- Team
- One engineer and one SEO and content lead
- Scope
- Four new B2B discovery channels, URL and metadata restructuring, product content cleanup across 3,500 products, sitemap repair, and AI crawler access
- Status
- Pilot complete; a replatform to Shopify has been proposed and estimated
Proline Cosmetics manufactures professional nail and hair products and sells them from an e-commerce store in Greece. The store carried about 3,500 products. In the year before the engagement, it took roughly five orders.
The store was not broken. It was invisible. Search for a product Proline sells, from a Greek IP address, and the site did not appear. Google had very little reason to rank it: product URLs carried a legacy .html suffix, almost no product had SEO metadata configured, the Greek sitemap was corrupted with pages from a separate Bulgarian storefront, and a large share of the Greek catalogue displayed Bulgarian text. Every AI crawler was blocked, so no AI assistant could recommend the brand either.
RaftLabs ran a one-month growth marketing pilot with a two-person team. Four new B2B discovery channels went live within the first two to four weeks, while we fixed the platform's structural faults and rewrote product content in batches behind the scenes. Average Google position moved from 44.9 to 24.6, and ten genuine buyer enquiries arrived from six countries by the pilot's close.
before & after
From an invisible catalogue to a findable supplier
- Roughly five orders in the preceding year from a 3,500-product catalogue
- Product URLs ended in
.html, a legacy pattern that weakened the site structure - Almost no product page had a configured title, description, or metadata
- Much of the Greek storefront displayed Bulgarian-language content
- The Greek sitemap was corrupted and listed pages from the Bulgarian store
- Every AI crawler was blocked, so no AI assistant could cite or recommend Proline
- No Google Merchant Center, no Google Business Profile, no B2B supplier listings
- Ten buyer enquiries from Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, and Ecuador
- Google Merchant Center, Google Business Profile, Europages, and Ensun live from scratch
- Clean URLs across the catalogue, with redirects preserving any existing equity
- SEO metadata written and imported for products in batches of 500
- Greek storefront content corrected so product pages read in the language of their market
- A valid Greek sitemap scoped to the Greek store alone
- AI crawlers allowed, which doubled Proline's appearances in Google AI answers
The technical faults we fixed behind the growth numbers
- 01
The Greek store was selling in the wrong language
Within the first week we found the problem the client had not reported, because nobody had looked. Proline ran three storefronts from one e-commerce instance: Greek, Bulgarian, and English. The platform lets the same product appear across storefronts, and per-store content settings had been left inherited rather than set. The result was that a large share of the Greek catalogue, out of roughly 3,500 products, displayed Bulgarian text to Greek shoppers.
This mattered more than the missing metadata. Google cannot rank a Greek product page that reads in Bulgarian, and a Greek buyer who lands on one does not trust the brand. Fixing it meant exporting the full catalogue, correcting content store by store, and reimporting in batches of 500 so a bad batch stayed small and recoverable.
- 02
Nobody at RaftLabs had shipped this platform before
We are a React, Node, and AWS team. The client's platform is a decade-old PHP stack with deep configuration surface, and no one internally had production experience with it. There was no colleague to ask whether a given change was the right one.
We handled this with a discipline rather than a shortcut. The client's production database was cloned to a staging environment first. Every change followed the same loop: the SEO lead specified the outcome, the engineer researched how the platform expresses it, applied it on staging, confirmed the rendered result, then repeated it on production. Where staging could not answer a question, we brought in an external platform specialist rather than guessing on a live store. We did not attempt anything we could not verify.
- 03
Bulk import and export failed on staging but worked in production
Editing 3,500 products by hand was never viable, so bulk export and import was the whole content plan. On staging, both failed, and we could not determine why within the time available.
Rather than burn the pilot on a staging bug, we raised it with the client. Their own development team resolved the export issue on production inside a day. We then ran the content work directly against production in controlled 500-product batches, with the staging environment still carrying every structural change first. That split, structural changes proven on staging and content changes batched on production, kept the risk contained without stalling the engagement.
- 04
The sitemap was pointing Google at the wrong store
The Greek store's
sitemap.xmlwas corrupted and included URLs belonging to the Bulgarian storefront. We did not expect this, and it undermined everything else: we could correct 3,500 product pages and still hand Google a map of the wrong country's catalogue.Regenerating a store-scoped sitemap was straightforward once found. Finding it was the work. It is the kind of failure that produces no error anywhere in the admin interface and no visible symptom on the site.
- 05
Every AI crawler was blocked
Proline's robots configuration disallowed the AI crawlers. No AI assistant could read the catalogue, so none could recommend the brand to a buyer asking which Greek supplier stocks a particular gel or base coat. For a supplier whose buyers increasingly start with an AI assistant instead of a search box, that is a closed door.
Opening it was a one-line change and the highest-leverage decision in the pilot. Appearances in Google's AI answers in Greece went from 11 in the month before to 23 in the month after, a 109% increase.
the build
What we built alongside the fixes
Structural SEO work takes weeks to show in Google. A one-month pilot needed channels that could produce demand faster, so within the first two to four weeks we opened four the brand had never used. All four were created from zero during the engagement.
Europages, which is where the buyers actually were
Europages is a B2B supplier directory used across Europe. We built and optimised Proline's profile there in August. Profile impressions went from zero to 421 in the first half of September, a 114% increase over the prior period, and the profile generated 10 genuine buyer enquiries from six countries. These included a 500kg full-portfolio request from a German distributor, a 100-unit reseller order from Belgium, and catalogue and pricing requests from Portugal, France, Spain, and Ecuador.
This was the outcome nobody predicted. The pilot was scoped around organic search for the Greek consumer store. The demand that arrived was B2B and cross-border.
Google Merchant Center, built from scratch
The catalogue had never been submitted to Google Shopping. We created the account in August and fed the corrected product data into it. From a zero baseline, the store recorded 36 clicks and roughly 1,000 product views by mid-September, with click volume rising 24% between the first and second measurement periods.
A Google Business Profile for the manufacturer
Proline had no local presence in Google at all. A new profile went live in August and recorded 31 interactions and 52 views by mid-September, again from a zero baseline.
Ensun, an AI-driven sourcing platform
Ensun surfaces suppliers to buyers who are sourcing through AI-assisted search. We created the listing on 3 September. In the two weeks that followed, 141 potential buyers viewed it.
Proof
What moved in one month, and what supports each number
All figures cover 16 August to 17 September 2026 and come from client-owned analytics accounts. One month is a short window for SEO, and these are early indicators rather than a settled trend.
| Result | What changed | Period or context | Evidence and limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| B2B buyer enquiries | 10 genuine enquiries from 6 countries | Europages profile, live from August | Europages enquiry records; includes a 500kg German distributor request and a 100-unit Belgian reseller order |
| New channels from zero | 36 Merchant Center clicks, 31 Business Profile interactions, 141 Ensun listing views | Accounts created during the pilot, so every number is incremental | Client Google Merchant Center, Google Business Profile, and Ensun analytics |
| Average Google position | 44.9 improved to 24.6 | Two-week windows before the pilot and at its close | Client Google Search Console data; a 45% improvement over the full period |
| Search Console, Greece | Clicks up 50%, click-through rate up 123% | 30 days before versus 30 days after the pilot started | Clicks 16 to 24; CTR 1.37% to 3.05%. Impressions fell 33%, driven by generic queries that produced no clicks |
| Google AI answers | 11 appearances improved to 23 | Month before versus month after AI crawlers were allowed | Google AI visibility data for Greece; a 109% increase |
| Keyword rankings | Number one for the brand and two product lines | At the close of the pilot | Position 1 for proline cosmetics, secretly gel, and secretly rubber base; clarissa moved from 18 to 5 |
Timeline
What happened during and after the pilot
- 01Week 1
Diagnosis on a production clone
A staging environment was built from the production database. The audit found the Bulgarian-language content on Greek product pages, the missing metadata, the .html URL pattern, the corrupted sitemap, and the blocked AI crawlers. - 02Weeks 1 to 4
Structural fixes and content rewrite
URL structure, metadata, sitemap, and crawler access were corrected. Product content was exported, rewritten, and reimported in batches of 500 after the client's team unblocked bulk export. - 03Weeks 2 to 4
Four discovery channels opened
Google Merchant Center, Google Business Profile, Europages, and Ensun were created from scratch within the pilot's first two to four weeks and populated with the corrected catalogue data. - 04By mid-September
Export demand arrived ahead of search
Ten B2B enquiries came in through Europages from six countries while organic search was still climbing. Average Google position had improved 45%. - 05Next
A replatform proposed, not yet approved
We recommended moving to Shopify and provided a detailed estimate. The current platform's configuration depth is real, but it requires specialist attention Proline does not have in-house. The decision sits with the client.
The lesson
If your e-commerce store gets no traffic, check what it is telling crawlers before you rebuild it
Proline's owner reasonably assumed the store needed more marketing. It needed new discovery channels, yes, but it also needed the basics configured first. Three of the five problems we found, the corrupted sitemap, the blocked AI crawlers, and the wrong-language product content, produce no error message, no admin warning, and no visible symptom to anyone browsing the site. They are only visible if you go looking.
If you run an ageing e-commerce store with disappointing organic traffic, audit four things before you consider a replatform. Check that your sitemap contains only the pages for the store it belongs to. Check your robots rules against the current AI crawler user agents, because the assistants your buyers use cannot recommend what they cannot read. Check that store-scope values are set rather than inherited if you run more than one storefront. And check whether your products have metadata at all. These are configuration problems, not platform problems, and they are cheap to fix relative to what they cost while unfixed.
Where to go next
What we would recommend next
These are opportunities beyond the delivered pilot scope, not work that was included.
- Next 01
Treat Europages as a channel, not a listing
Ten enquiries in one month from a profile nobody was actively working suggests the B2B directory channel deserves a dedicated effort with response workflows and tracked conversion.
- Next 02
Build out Greek-language long-tail coverage
Greek-language terms such as cat eye ημιμόνιμο and 3d gel nail art carry 100 to 1,000 monthly searches each and Proline has only just started appearing for them.
- Next 03
Decide on the platform position deliberately
The current platform offers genuine depth: per-store product scoping, granular URL control, and strong multi-level caching. It also demands specialist attention. Either resource it properly or replatform. Drifting is the expensive option.
- Next 04
Add application content to product pages
We tried to add a how-to-use section to product pages and could not make it work within the pilot. It remains the strongest content opportunity for a professional cosmetics catalogue, and it is straightforward on a modern stack.
Evidence and limitations
Reviewed 23 September 2026
- Performance figures: every number covers 16 August to 17 September 2026 and comes from client-owned analytics accounts. They are compiled in a RaftLabs progress report dated 16 September 2026 and have not been independently audited.
- One month is a short window. SEO and channel results compound over quarters. These figures are early indicators of direction, not a settled outcome.
- Baselines of zero are real. The Merchant Center, Business Profile, Europages, and Ensun accounts did not exist before August 2026, so those figures are incremental rather than improvements on a prior number.
- Pre-engagement order volume is the client's own account, reported to the project team. It is not drawn from an audited sales system.
- No client testimonial has been recorded for this engagement, so this page carries none.
Questions e-commerce owners ask about work like this
One month, from 16 August to 17 September 2026. The four B2B discovery channels went live within the first two to four weeks; the same window covered the technical audit, the structural platform fixes, and a content rewrite across roughly 3,500 products. A pilot of that length is enough to open new channels and prove direction. It is not long enough for SEO to reach its full effect.
Two people. One SEO and content lead set the strategy and built out the Merchant Center, Business Profile, Europages, and Ensun channels, and wrote the product content. One engineer handled everything inside the platform, from URL structure and metadata to the batched product export and import. A senior engineer did the initial staging setup from the production database.
Yes. The specific fixes were shaped by our client's particular platform, but the underlying problems are platform-agnostic: a sitemap scoped to the wrong catalogue, robots rules blocking AI crawlers, product content inherited from the wrong locale, and missing metadata. We have found versions of all four on Shopify, WooCommerce, and custom builds.
Impressions dropped 33% while clicks rose 50% and click-through rate rose 123%. The lost impressions came mainly from broad generic queries that had never produced a click. Ranking improved on brand and product searches, which are the queries that convert. Fewer, better-qualified impressions is the right trade for a supplier.
No. We are a React, Node, and AWS team, and we said so. We handled the gap with process: a staging environment cloned from production, every change verified there before touching the live store, and an external platform specialist brought in for the problems staging could not answer. One planned feature, a how-to-use section on product pages, we could not deliver and chose to stop rather than keep spending the client's month on it.
Check the sitemap and robots configuration in the first hour rather than the first week. Both were corrupted, both were invisible from the admin interface, and both undermined the value of every other fix until they were found. On any store with disappointing organic traffic, those two files are now the first thing we open.
The pilot is complete. We recommended moving to Shopify and provided a detailed estimate, since the current platform's depth requires specialist attention Proline does not have in-house. That decision sits with the client and has not been made.
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