B2B Ecommerce SEO Case Study · SEO + AI Search · BigCommerce
The 30-second summary
A category-first SEO program for Penn Tool Co, a family-owned supplier with close to 1 million SKUs: $1.9M+ in added organic sales in 10 months, organic revenue up 69% (and up 44% in the last four months alone), ChatGPT revenue up 12x, and twice as many top-3 Google rankings.
Client: Penn Tool Co (penntoolco.com), a family-owned industrial tool and machinery supplier based in Maplewood, New Jersey, doing over $30M a year in sales, with close to 1 million SKUs on BigCommerce. Engagement began January 1, 2026. Every number below comes from Penn Tool's own Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console, plus Ahrefs for keyword rankings. Growth compares January 1 to October 21, 2026 with the same dates in 2025.
✓| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Organic search revenue (GA4, Jan 1 to Oct 21, YoY) | +69% |
| Google organic revenue | +52% |
| Bing organic revenue | +176% |
| ChatGPT revenue | 12x |
| Organic conversions | 24,209 to 34,077 (+41%) |
| Searches ranking in Google's top 3 | 997 to 2,112 (+112%) |
| Google ranking for "lathe" (39,000 searches a month) | #41 to #1 |
| Average Google position | 20.4 to 10.2 (page 2 to page 1) |
Penn Tool did not find us through an ad or a cold email. Before we ever worked together, our founder Austin Coker posted a public teardown of one Penn Tool page on LinkedIn: the Electromagnetic Drill Presses collection.
We ran it through our SEO Revenue Calculator and put the number out in public: $173,812 a month in potential revenue hiding behind one under-optimized category page, more than $1.7M a year from search alone. At the time, that page ranked for 1 organic keyword and got 1 visit a month. Then we tagged Michael Elson and spelled out exactly how to unlock it:
That post got Michael’s attention, and it is how this engagement started. We kicked off on January 1, 2026 and ran that same playbook across 40 category pages.
We said one page was worth $1.7M a year. Ten months in, the full program had added $1.9M+ in organic sales. We do not pitch with promises. We do the math in public, tag the owner, and then go deliver it. Every strategy we publish is real, and Penn Tool is the proof.
Penn Tool Co supplies machine shops, toolrooms, manufacturers and hobby machinists. The catalog runs from dial indicators and calipers up to full-size lathes and milling machines, with names machinists know: Mitutoyo, Starrett, Interapid, Kennedy, Gerstner, SPI and more.
Paid search was already working. Penn Tool runs Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and Shopping, and makes real money from them. But big-ticket categories like lathes and milling machines are some of the most expensive clicks in the industry, and organic search was not carrying its share.
With close to 1 million SKUs, optimizing products one at a time does not scale. Category pages do. One strong category page can rank for hundreds of searches and send buyers straight into the right products. So we built the whole program around them:
| Workstream | What we delivered | Volume |
|---|---|---|
| Research and planning | Keyword research, technical audit, 6-month content and backlink calendars | January 2026 |
| Category content | Existing category pages rewritten, plus 2 new ones (analog and digital micrometers) | 36 live by Sep, 4 more in Oct |
| Technical SEO | 2 full audits, duplicate page redirects, missing H1s and meta descriptions, internal and navigation redirects, broken backlinks, toxic backlink review | 9 audits and fixes |
| Schema markup | Homepage plus priority category pages | 15 pages |
| Backlinks | Guest posts and link insertions on industry sites: 18 to the homepage, the rest to lathe, milling, caliper and other category pages | 62 placements |
| Reporting | Monthly report on what was done and what moved | Every month since Feb 2026 |
Revenue from organic search in Google Analytics 4, same dates year over year:
| Organic search (GA4, Jan 1 to Oct 21, 2026 vs 2025) | Result |
|---|---|
| Revenue | +69% |
| Conversions | 24,209 to 34,077 (+41%) |
| Revenue per visit | +73% |
That is $1.9M+ in added organic sales in 10 months, on a $30M-a-year business, in a channel Penn Tool does not pay per click for. Organic search now drives $5.9M a year in sales. Organic conversions grew 41%, and each organic visit is now worth 73% more.
By source:
| Organic source | Revenue growth |
|---|---|
| +52% | |
| Bing | +176% |
| Google Business Profile, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and others | +80% |
Bing grew 176%. It uses its own index and rewards the same things Google does (strong category content and real backlinks), so the work paid off twice. Bing is also one of the indexes behind ChatGPT's web search, which matters for the next section.
And it is still accelerating. For the most recent stretch, July 1 to October 25, organic search revenue grew 44% year over year.
The same work, category content plus brand mentions on industry sites, is what ChatGPT, Claude and Google's AI answers use to decide which store to recommend. When someone asks an AI where to buy a metal lathe, it runs its own searches and recommends the stores it keeps seeing.
| ChatGPT (GA4, Jan 1 to Oct 21, 2026 vs 2025) | Result |
|---|---|
| Revenue | 12x (+1,106%) |
| Conversions (key events) | 340 to 1,633 (+380%) |
| Visits (sessions) | 8,766 to 21,007 (+140%) |
| Revenue per visit | 5x (+401%) |
These are only the visits GA4 can tag. Most AI assistants do not pass a referrer, so a large share of AI-driven buyers lands in "direct" instead. Penn Tool's direct revenue also grew 72%. We do not count any of that as ours, but it means the tracked ChatGPT number is the floor for AI revenue, not the ceiling.
We also track Penn Tool in 95 Insights, our AI visibility tracker, which runs the same unbranded buying prompts every week across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews. Since tracking began in late August 2026, Penn Tool went from appearing in 29% of AI answers to 38% (63 of 168 answers in the latest run), with zero negative mentions.
We asked ChatGPT the same buying questions machinists ask when they are ready to spend money. Penn Tool came back as the #1 recommendation for all ten below, including big-ticket categories like machine shop lathes, milling machines and cherry picker lifts:
| Prompt asked in ChatGPT | Penn Tool position |
|---|---|
| Where's the best place to buy a machine shop lathe online | #1 |
| Where's the best place to buy a milling machine online | #1 |
| Where's the best place to buy a personnel cherry picker lift online | #1 |
| Best place to buy a Vertex rotary table | #1 |
| Where to buy a Phase II rotary table for milling | #1 |
| Where to buy Phase II rotary tables | #1 |
| Where to buy SPI micrometers | #1 |
| Where to buy SPI precision instruments | #1 |
| Where to buy Interapid indicators | #1 |
| Where to buy Interapid test indicators | #1 |
The number of Google searches where Penn Tool ranks in positions 1 to 3 more than doubled, from 997 in December 2025 to 2,112 in October 2026 (Ahrefs, US). Searches ranking anywhere on page 1 grew 31%.
| Month | Top 3 | Positions 4 to 10 | Page 1 total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 2025 (baseline) | 997 | 4,151 | 5,148 |
| Jan 2026 | 1,089 | 4,657 | 5,746 |
| Feb 2026 | 1,104 | 4,828 | 5,932 |
| Mar 2026 | 1,266 | 5,328 | 6,594 |
| Apr 2026 | 1,222 | 5,325 | 6,547 |
| May 2026 | 1,772 | 5,527 | 7,299 |
| Jun 2026 | 2,395 | 5,532 | 7,927 |
| Jul 2026 | 2,262 | 4,824 | 7,086 |
| Aug 2026 | 2,268 | 4,999 | 7,267 |
| Sep 2026 | 2,035 | 5,177 | 7,212 |
| Oct 2026 | 2,112 | 4,612 | 6,724 |
In Search Console, Penn Tool's average Google position went from 20.4 to 10.2 (July 1 to October 25, 2025 vs the same dates in 2026). That moved the average result from page 2 to the top of page 1.
Category terms Penn Tool now ranks #1 to #3 for on Google, with US monthly search volume. Position just before the engagement started (December 2025) vs October 2026, from Ahrefs.
| Search term | US searches / month | Position, Dec 2025 | Position, Oct 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| cherry picker | 30,000 | Not in top 100 | #1 |
| magnetic drill presses | 5,500 | Not in top 100 | #1 |
| measuring tools | 4,000 | #49 | #1 |
| metal cutting tools | 2,400 | #15 | #1 |
| micrometer caliper | 2,100 | #18 | #1 |
| precision measuring tools | 1,600 | Not in top 100 | #1 |
| machinist tools | 1,600 | #4 | #1 |
| measurement tools | 1,300 | #28 | #1 |
| telescoping gauge | 1,300 | #13 | #1 |
| cherry picker machine | 900 | #88 | #3 |
| v block | 900 | #38 | #1 |
| precision tools | 700 | #39 | #1 |
| engraver tool | 700 | #43 | #1 |
| machine tool | 600 | #14 | #1 |
| milling machine accessories | 450 | Not in top 100 | #1 |
| etching machine | 450 | #35 | #1 |
| best calipers | 400 | #15 | #1 |
| micrometer tool | 400 | #19 | #1 |
| caliper gauge | 300 | #27 | #2 |
| surface gauge | 300 | #84 | #1 |
The biggest single win came in November: Penn Tool now ranks #1 on Google for "lathe" itself, a search made 39,000 times a month, up from #41 in January. "Engraving pen" (16,000 searches a month) went from not ranking to #1, and "magnetic drill presses", the exact page we broke down in public before Penn Tool hired us, went from not ranking to #1. The Ahrefs reports below show the movement from January 1 to November 10, 2026.
Want results like Penn Tool’s? Book a 30-minute strategy call and we will run the same revenue math on your store.
The engagement began January 1, 2026. Searches where Penn Tool ranks in Google's top 3 grew from 997 in December 2025 to 1,772 by May and 2,395 by June 2026 (Ahrefs, US). By October 21, organic search revenue was up 69% year over year, and the most recent stretch, July 1 to October 25, was up 44%.
We built the program around category pages: 40 category pages rewritten or built, 9 technical SEO audits and fixes, schema markup on 15 pages, 62 backlink placements on manufacturing, machining and industry sites, and a monthly report every month showing what was done and what moved.
The same work that ranks on Google: strong category content plus brand mentions on industry sites. ChatGPT runs its own searches and recommends the stores it keeps seeing. Penn Tool's tracked ChatGPT revenue grew 12x, and ChatGPT ranks Penn Tool #1 for prompts like "Where's the best place to buy a machine shop lathe online."
Yes. Penn Tool has close to 1 million SKUs. Optimizing products one at a time does not scale, so we focused on category pages. One strong category page can rank for hundreds of searches, and that is how Penn Tool reached #1 on Google for terms like "lathe" (39,000 searches a month) and "cherry picker" (30,000).
Yes. Penn Tool runs on BigCommerce, and we work on every major platform: Shopify, WordPress, Webflow, BigCommerce, Magento and custom builds. The only requirement is edit access to content, meta tags, schema, internal links and technical settings.
We called our shot. Before we were hired, our founder posted a public LinkedIn teardown of Penn Tool's Electromagnetic Drill Presses page, showing $173,812 a month in potential revenue and exactly how to unlock it. That post got Michael Elson's attention, and it is how this engagement started.
With the client's own data. Revenue comes from Google Analytics 4 by session source and medium, rankings and impressions from Google Search Console, and keyword positions from Ahrefs. We compare the same calendar dates year over year.
Book a 30-minute call. We will run the same revenue math we ran on Penn Tool on your catalog, show you which pages are leaving the most money on the table, and tell you honestly whether we are a fit.
