Dune London, the high street footwear retailer, partnered with POLARIS in order for organic search to be independently owned as a channel and represented across all areas of their global business. Learn about how we identified their challenges across technology, resource and ways of working, and how we delivered an organic search strategy that not only achieved a 644% return on investment, but also won best SEO campaign of the year 2025.
We are proud the results we have achieved with Dune London. These results are the outcome of mutual respect, and committed stakeholders on both sides of the equation.
Our Strategy and campaign execution was recognised in 3 categories at the European Search Awards 2025, and crowned Winner as the Best SEO Campaign (Small) across Europe.
Dune London had been partnering with a large digital marketing agency across both paid and organic search but were not happy with the strategy. Results were very slim, and they did not have page 1 exposure for key product categories including womens boots and mens shoes.
The challenge: develop and present an organic search strategy that makes sense to the internal team and stakeholders at Dune London and then manage us to deliver against it.
Dune London were looking for an SEO agency and came to POLARIS focused on the quality of off page activity, as this was what their previous partner had been focusing on. After an SEO audit into the brands performance across the traditional 3 pillars of SEO, we educated the client on the fact that their technology and onpage strategy had considerable opportunity to leverage before offpage / digital PR was even considered.
With this fresh approach in mind, the performance marketing, content, and IT & Web Dev teams were all bought onside through a series of workshops to explain the business case for our recommendations.
We chose to focus on the salesforce commerce platform (SFCC) and how this could be better utilized to provide a better user experience and adhere to search engine guidelines more efficiently.
Steering Technical Development & Integration
One of the key challenges we faced was gaining influence over the client’s technical roadmap. By demonstrating our core value of radical candour, caring personally while challenging directly, we clearly set expectations from the outset.
Over the course of the first 3 months, the development process was evaluated by POLARIS and adjusted to accommodate a more efficient testing and review process from the client and POLARIS teams. We aligned on shared objectives and introduced new, collaborative ways of working to ensure technical implementation supported long-term SEO success. In essence, we owned the technical SEO roadmap and acted at the lead stakeholder for the business.
Aligning with the Communications Team on Digital PR
The in-house PR team initially had a more traditional approach to communications and were protective over PR output. Digital PR for SEO was unfamiliar territory.
Through a series of collaborative sessions, we clarified the distinction between brand-focused PR and SEO-led Digital PR, helping to secure buy-in and foster productive collaboration.
Educating the Editorial Team on Search Intent
Editorial content was being produced without a clear focus on user intent, which limited its visibility and impact. We worked closely with the editorial team to introduce data-led content planning — aligning topics with real user search behaviours.
This shift led to significantly improved organic visibility, with content now driving measurable traffic from search.
Programmatic SEO
Operating an enterprise level website with a vast product catalogue, the POLARIS team directed the development team on how to implement rule-based SEO tactics to optimise category and product pages sitewide.
This programmatic SEO approach meant that optimisation was carried out at platform level, increasing efficiency and time to impact the serps.
Our campaign, “Stepping up Search” was nominated in 3 categories at the European Search Awards 2025. Our approach to the partnership was recognised and crowned as winners of the Best SEO Campaign across Europe 2025.
“The educational approach clearly paid off, as evidenced by the impressive results. In a mature and challenging market, their strategy was genuinely clever, addressing the three essential SEO pillars while simultaneously educating stakeholders. The partnership with the dev tech agency was an absolute stroke of brilliance, forming a seamless, strategic alliance that drove success.”
– Judging Panel, European Search Awards.
“We are extremely impressed with POLARIS, from their attention to detail and focus on the Dune London business, to their knowledge and rigor in approaching technical elements. They have delivered a best-in-class SEO strategy that supports our global business growth and we are delighted with the results. " Sally Ritchie, Head of Performance Marketing
“Our partnership with Dune London demonstrates our capability to integrate effectively into a large business to drive about change. When values align, anything is possible."Amo SokhiManaging Director
Get in touch to setup a discovery call.
