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- New and returning products from best-selling brands<\/li>\n
- Any new brands launching on site<\/li>\n
- The expected product delivery timeline<\/li>\n
- Opportunities to expand the categories and subcategories used on site<\/li>\n
- Trends for the season and opportunities for optimised clothing edits<\/li>\n
- Successes and opportunities found from last season and last year<\/li>\n
- Forecasts and key revenue drivers<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Knowing all of this before I put together the season\u2019s strategy helps me ensure I\u2019m working in a way that aligns with my client\u2019s own goals. With that in mind, here are some of the most useful tips I\u2019ve picked up while working in SEO for fashion.<\/p>\n
Choose Your Keywords Very Wisely<\/h2>\n
Unfortunately, selling dresses isn\u2019t enough to rank for dresses on Google. With a monthly search volume of 165,000 at the time of writing, a SEMrush Keyword Difficulty score of 89.58% and almost 3.5 billion results on Google to compete with \u2013 in the vast majority of cases, it wouldn\u2019t be a worthwhile use of resources to even try.<\/p>\n
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![\"Keyword](\"\/ae\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/0006_choose-your-keywords-wisely.png\")
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But you can steadily improve the organic visibility of your dresses and bring in a good return on investment whilst building up your site\u2019s ability to rank for more competitive keywords in future. So how do you find the most valuable keywords to rank for?<\/p>\n
Instead of asking what keywords you should go after, it\u2019s better to ask which keywords will help the right people \u2013 those who want to buy your products \u2013 to find them.<\/p>\n
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- If you rank for keywords that aren\u2019t a great match to your site and products you\u2019re going to see high bounce rates and low conversions.<\/li>\n
- And if you only go after keywords with informational intent, you\u2019re going to see better engagement metrics, but still low conversions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Put yourself in the mind of the searcher. It\u2019s easy – chances are you\u2019ve done a bit of online shopping yourself. If you had an image in your mind of the exact products your site offers, but you didn\u2019t know where to find them, what would you type in the search bar? Optimise for that.<\/p>\n
For example, \u2018Gingham wrap dress\u2019 has just 110 searches per month in the UK, but those 110 people know exactly what they\u2019re looking for \u2013 and so they\u2019re more likely to convert than the 33,100 searching for \u2018Wrap dress\u2019.<\/p>\n
Remember that search volume is not everything. If I had the choice between ranking for 1,000 relevant keywords each with a monthly search volume of 10, or 10 relevant keywords each with a monthly search volume of 1,000, I\u2019d go for the first option. Trends change all the time, SERPs can be volatile, and you don\u2019t want all your eggs in one basket.<\/p>\n
Sound like a minefield to keep on top of? A great tip is to keeping organised is to create a keyword map \u2013 my colleague Sophie Brannon recently wrote this blog on creating keyword mapping files<\/a>, which is a fantastic resource for beginners.<\/p>\n
Categorise Products Logically For Users & SEO<\/h2>\n
Whether you offer a small range of products or have an extensive inventory, sorting your products into user-friendly categories and subcategories is incredibly important. If you get this right, it will not only maximise your organic traffic, but increase conversions too.<\/p>\n
Most physical clothing stores won\u2019t have a regimented section for tops, another for knitwear, another for skirts and so on. People like to see how different pieces work together, and so visual merchandisers often create trend-based displays.<\/p>\n
Online, your customers are in a completely different mindset. They usually have at least a good idea of what they\u2019re looking for and they want to be able to find it as quickly and easily as possible. Organising your garments by type is the first step towards a user-friendly fashion e-commerce store.<\/p>\n
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![\"Debenhams](\"\/ae\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/0005_categorise-products-logically-for-users-and-seo.png\")
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Generally, it\u2019s a good idea to create a different category for every type of garment that has a different name. It\u2019s not a good idea to have one category, for example, for dresses and skirts that isn\u2019t good for users or SEO. Sometimes, multi-categories can make sense where the lines are blurred \u2013 think jackets and coats, socks and tights.<\/p>\n
Your categories will likely evolve over time, so it\u2019s important to consider your future needs when setting up categories. You might not have the product offering to warrant subcategorising your jumpers by neckline shape now, but keep it in mind for future.<\/p>\n
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![\"ASOS](\"\/ae\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/0004_categorise-products-logically-for-users-and-seo-02.png\")
<\/p>\nPay Close Attention To Your Site Search<\/h2>\n
Following on well from the last point \u2013 your site search functionality is a gold mine. It\u2019s like having a comments box where customers tell you exactly what you want. It\u2019s a great opportunity to identify gaps in your product offering and respond to customer demand. And the data speaks for itself. Here\u2019s an example from one of my fashion e-Commerce clients.<\/p>\n
Not a lot of their visitors use the search function \u2013 less than five percent. However, those that do use it make up over 18% of the revenue, and their conversion rate is around triple that of visits without site search. In short, people using your search functionality are your most valuable customers.<\/p>\n
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![\"Comparing](\"\/ae\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/0003_pay-close-attention-to-your-site-search.png\")
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But how can you maximise your search data? It\u2019s straightforward. Start tracking your search results data as early as possible. Head to the Search Terms tab on Google Analytics and review everything that your customers type into your search bar. Notice something you don\u2019t offer? There\u2019s an opportunity to offer a new product, knowing the demand is already there.<\/p>\n
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![\"Search](\"\/ae\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/0002_pay-close-attention-to-your-site-search-02.png\")
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Next up, put yourself in your customers\u2019 shoes. Go to your site and type in the most popular search terms. Manually review the products that appear. Are there results a good answer to the query? Are there any items missing? Here, you have the opportunity to improve the products that are being shown to the segment of your website visitors that have the highest proven propensity to purchase.<\/p>\n
Get To Grips With Faceted Navigation<\/h2>\n
Disclaimer: you\u2019ll need a good developer for this one.<\/p>\n
Allowing your visitors to filter and sort products based on product attributes is another way to offer a better user experience to those valuable customers who know what they want \u2013 those furthest along the customer journey, with purchase intent.<\/p>\n
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![\"Filters](\"\/ae\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/0001_get-to-grips-with-faceted-navigation.png\")
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It\u2019s a great idea to give your visitors the option to narrow down their search as much as possible. However, the more combinations of filters available, the more potential combinations of URLs, which can lead to duplicate content, wasted crawl budget and messy analytics, amongst other issues.<\/p>\n
For this reason, you need to ask the developer to ensure filters are applied to the URL in the same order every time (so there\u2019s only one version of each possible URL), and to create rules to no-index any URLs with more than two filters, or with filters that don\u2019t match search intent (such as size ranges).<\/p>\n
All \u2018filter\u2019 URLs should be set up to automatically have a canonical tag pointing to the closest non-filter URL. For example \/shoes\/red\/ would have a canonical tag pointing to \/shoes\/. This will prevent duplicate content issues. If you choose to add unique content to the page about red shoes, because this is a term you decide you want to rank for, the canonical tag should be updated to a self-referencing one.<\/p>\n
Having your site set up in this way will allow you to place optimised content on the most relevant page possible, which in turn makes the page more likely to rank well in the SERPs. What\u2019s more, if organic users land on the page and find products that perfectly match what they\u2019re looking for \u2013 well, they\u2019re more likely to make a purchase.<\/p>\n
Offer The Best User Experience Possible<\/h2>\n
Just as you would make a bricks and mortar shop as welcoming as possible, ensuring your users actually enjoy being on your site is the number one way to encourage purchases. \u00a0There are two main ways you can test the user experience on your site.<\/p>\n
Step 1:<\/strong> Gain the perspective of a user. It can be a little tricky to separate yourself from the site, especially if you\u2019ve put lots of work into making it the way it is. Ask a friend or colleague to browse the site and make a purchase. Ask them the following questions:<\/p>\n
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- What do you think of the brand as a result of your experience on the website?<\/li>\n
- How easy or difficult was it for you to find products to purchase?<\/li>\n
- Was all the information you needed about the products and service (e.g. delivery charges and fees) easy to find?<\/li>\n
- Was the site responsive or slow?<\/li>\n
- Is there any extra features you wish the site had?<\/li>\n
- Did you encounter any frustrations?<\/li>\n
- How was the checkout process?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Step 2:<\/strong> Check Google\u2019s Lighthouse Performance score. Here\u2019s how<\/p>\n
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- Open the site in an incognito tab.<\/li>\n
- On Windows, press F12 to open the developer console. On Mac, click \u2018Help\u2019 in the menu bar, then select Developer tools<\/li>\n
- At the very top, click >> and select Lighthouse<\/li>\n
- Click generate report.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
You can choose to run the report on mobile or desktop \u2013 I recommend mobile because Google will index your site as the mobile version. You can also check in Google Analytics to see what ratio of your visitors use mobile or desktop (Audience > Mobile > Overview).<\/p>\n
This will show you a performance score out of 100. It uses a traffic light colour coding system, and is easy to follow. I will say here that I have checked the Lighthouse report of a dozen large fashion sites on page one for competitive keywords, and the highest Performance score I found was 11.<\/p>\n
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![\"Page](\"\/ae\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/0000_check-googles-lighthouse-performance-score.png\")
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You can choose to look at this as it being okay to have poor performance, because the entire industry does, or you can look at it as an opportunity to get ahead of your competitors with the rollout of Core Web Vitals coming up very soon.<\/p>\n
Two quick-win opportunities to improve your site from a user experience and site performance perspective are:<\/p>\n
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- Optimise all of your images \u2013 you can do this without losing any of the image quality. A great free tool is seopix.io<\/li>\n
- Consider whether your site really needs dynamic elements such as carousel banners and popups, which add a lot of JavaScript to the page, and can sometimes be frustrating for the user<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n
Book A Meeting Today<\/span><\/h2>\n
Book My Meeting Now!<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Summary<\/h2>\n
While I\u2019ve written this piece specifically about my experience in fashion SEO, most of the issues and solutions are common across many e-Commerce<\/a> sites. Whatever industry you\u2019re in, remember that optimising your site is a marathon, not a sprint. It\u2019s important to strike a balance between quick-win opportunities to show the value of your SEO strategy and nurturing a long-term growth strategy for your online presence.<\/p>\n
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