Tamarind Intelligence: International SEO Strategy

Project Description:
Tamarind builds intelligence products for the tobacco, cannabis, and e-cigarette industries — subscription-based reports and analysis used by professionals who need to understand these markets in depth. When they came to us, they had three separate WordPress sites: Tobacco Intelligence, Cann Intelligence, and ECig Intelligence. Same platform underneath, but each one had gone its own way over time. Our job was to sort out the SEO for all three without pretending they were the same site.

Objectives and Challenges:
Working across Tobacco Intelligence, Cann Intelligence, and ECig Intelligence at the same time meant keeping three separate strategies moving in parallel. A few things made this more complex than a typical SEO project.

All three sites target a global, English-speaking audience — but "global" isn't one strategy. Different regions search differently, so we built keyword approaches and landing pages tailored to specific markets rather than applying a single template across the board.

Because the content touches on tobacco, cannabis, and nicotine products, Google classifies these as YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) pages — meaning the bar for quality and credibility is higher than average. We applied E-E-A-T principles throughout: clear authorship, sourced content, and a site structure that signals expertise rather than just keyword density.

One specific challenge was the gated content. Tamarind sells premium reports behind a paywall, which creates a crawlability problem — Google can't index what it can't read. We implemented Schema markup to let Google understand the structure and value of that content without us having to open the gate. It's a technical fix that's easy to overlook and makes a real difference.

We also weren't the ones building the sites, so everything had to go through the developers. That coordination matters more than people expect — an SEO recommendation that doesn't get implemented correctly is the same as no recommendation at all.

Implemented Strategies:
Metadata, URL structure, and indexation were reviewed and cleaned up across all three sites. We mapped keyword strategies per region, created localised landing pages, and made sure each site's on-page signals were aligned with how Google evaluates content in these sectors.

Beyond standard SEO, we set up Hotjar heatmaps and advanced tracking to understand how users were actually moving through the sites. Conversion isn't just a traffic problem — knowing where people drop off or hesitate tells you where the content or UX is letting them down.

Results:
All three sites improved their organic visibility in target markets. Traffic grew, and — more importantly — the quality of that traffic improved: more users matching the profile of potential subscribers rather than casual visitors. The analytics setup gave Tamarind a clearer dashboard for ongoing decisions, not just a one-time snapshot.

Takeaway:
Regulated sectors aren't the obstacle they might seem for SEO — they're actually an opportunity to stand out if you do the compliance work properly. Most competitors don't bother. We did, and Tamarind's rankings reflect that.