A great product, and a website that couldn’t sell it
Rats are a problem nobody wants, and most people reach for poison. Goodnature makes the alternative: the A24, a CO2-powered rat and mouse trap that resets itself up to 24 times, with no poison and no risk to pets, children or wildlife. Goodnature Traps UK is its sole UK distributor.
When they found us through Google in July 2017, the website didn’t reflect any of that. It was a brochure with no shop. Anyone who wanted a trap had to pick up the phone, and every order was taken, keyed in and processed by hand. That’s slow for the customer, time-consuming for the business, and a lost sale every time someone didn’t want to ring.
Search visibility was poor too. Technical problems and unoptimised pages meant almost nothing ranked, not even searches for the products by name. People searching for a humane rat trap were finding other sites.
The business was slow, and the website was part of the reason.
A shop, a rebrand, and nine years of SEO
2018A new website with a proper shop
We rebuilt the site on WordPress and WooCommerce. It suited what they needed, and it’s the platform we know inside out.
- A full online shop built around the A24 rat and mouse trap and the refills customers come back for (CO2 cartridges and lures), plus the A18 for estates controlling grey squirrels
- A setup that works for every type of customer, from a homeowner with rats under the shed to a pest controller or estate buying in bulk
- Delivery rules for the whole UK, including the areas that need different handling
- Google Merchant Center and Google Shopping feeds, plus product reviews and abandoned cart emails to lift the conversion rate
- Every old URL redirected at launch, so nothing already earning traffic was lost
Rankings dipped slightly after launch, as they often do, then recovered and climbed above where they had been.
2022A rebrand to match the parent company
Goodnature’s parent company in New Zealand asked for the UK site to match their global brand. We carried out a website redesign in their colour scheme and style, so UK customers get the same look and feel as the rest of the Goodnature world, while the shop and the search work carried on underneath.
2017–nowSEO, every month
This is where the long-term gains come from. We fixed the technical problems first, then kept working through the site every month:
- Keyword research and targeting across product, category and informational searches
- Product and category copy written to rank and to sell
- Blog content that answers what people search before they buy
- Structured data, WordPress speed optimisation and technical health
- Link building and brand authority
As the official distributor, they need to rank above their own resellers and the marketplaces for Goodnature brand and product searches. They do.
2026AI search
More buyers now ask ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews or Perplexity what the best humane rat trap is, rather than scrolling through search results. In September 2026 we started AI SEO work, optimising the site for those answers:
- FAQ content that answers real buyer questions directly and clearly
- Schema markup so AI tools can read the products, the business and the answers accurately
- Brand and entity work, so AI tools recognise Goodnature Traps UK as the official UK source
ChatGPT was already sending customers who went on to buy before we started any AI-specific work, a by-product of years of WordPress SEO. In September 2026 we started optimising for AI answers directly, and a ChatGPT order arrived within the first two weeks.
From phone orders to page one
Results came quickly. In the first year of the ecommerce SEO campaign, organic visits climbed from a standing start to nearly 4,000 a month, and more than 11,000 over the year.
Rankings
Rankings move all the time, but at their peak in spring 2025, 57 of the 60 keywords we track were in Google’s top three and 59 were on page one. That isn’t just brand searches. It includes the high-volume rat trap searches that bring in new customers, where the competition includes big retailers that Goodnature Traps UK supplies, Amazon and other marketplaces, and major pest control brands.
| Search term | UK searches a month | Peak position |
|---|---|---|
| rat traps | 11,500–30,300 | #6 |
| rat trap | 4,300–6,500 | #3 |
| humane rat traps | 850–1,700 | #2 |
| best rat trap | 500–850 | #2 |
| best rat traps | 200–500 | #2 |
| best rat trap uk | 200–500 | #3 |
| humane rat trap | 200–500 | #1 |
| humane rat traps uk | 100–200 | #1 |
| co2 rat trap | 50–100 | #1 |
| best outdoor rat trap | 10–50 | #1 |
| automatic rat trap | 10–50 | #1 |
Google mobile, UK, 18 March–1 April 2025. Positions fluctuate, so these show what the site has achieved, not a permanent guarantee.
They also rank #1 for every Goodnature product search, including “goodnature a24”, “goodnature rat trap” and “goodnature traps uk”, ahead of their own resellers and the marketplaces. The same work carries over to the A18 grey squirrel trap for estates and forestry, which reached #3 for “squirrel trap”.
What it means for the business
- Online sales: from no online orders at all to up to 140 a week at busy times, with growth every year since the shop launched in 2018
- Search traffic: 1.5 million impressions and 20,000 clicks from Google search in the last 12 months
- Less admin: orders come in online around the clock, and the phone is free for trade enquiries and customer support
- AI search: ChatGPT was already sending buyers before the AI work began, and a ChatGPT order arrived within the first two weeks of it
Nine years on
We’ve worked with Goodnature Traps UK every month since July 2017. For most of that time they were based in Hungerford in Berkshire, just over the Wiltshire border. They moved to North Yorkshire in 2026 and we carried on as normal, because the work was never about being down the road. It’s about knowing the business, the products and the customers well enough to keep finding the next improvement.