Search Engine Optimization within The Fashion Industry
Search Engine Optimization within The Fashion Industry | Louise Grant
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Google trends was created as a response to the emergence of big data and the advances in big data analytics (Choi and Varian 2012). It acts as a valuable tool for fashion consumer analytics, helping to refine popular keyword search results for a particular website. Gucci was reported as the favorite fashion brand for Google search in 2017 followed by Louise Vuitton coming in at number two (Bobila 2017). These insights are useful for luxury fashion brands as it shows how effective online marketing and website traffic can be in terms of increasing consumer engagement.
Big data analytics expands the opportunities for new frameworks that are reliable and valid which can be used to develop strategies for traffic optimization (Drivas et al., 2020). However, as big data in the fashion industry holds a remarkable insight to buyer behavior and consumer intent, decisions that are made whilst creating these cost- effective fashion products are made through evidence collected from big data. (Acharya et al., 2018).
At Group Fashion Agency, we provide our clients with advice on how to increase traffics onto their website so that it can appear more visible in search engines. By optimising content and using keyword research, our clients marketing campaign page will rank higher in these search results. As a marketing agency we aim to improve the visibility of our clients marketing channels to compete with the high standard of competition in the fashion industry.
Berman and Katona (2013) discuss how consumers that use search engines will have the option for organic or sponsored links. The links deemed as organic are related to their relevance within the search query, whereas links that are sponsored as usually paid adverts through competitive auctions. Retailers will invest a significant amount into their websites quality and brand awareness to increase organic clicks both directly and indirectly.
PrettyLittleThing that launched in 2012, has now become the UK's largest searched online fashion brand since 2019 as a result of immense brand growth. With a strong SEO strategy and a constant reminder of their fashion products, the website remains consistent with promoting brand awareness each year. Hogarth (2019) discusses how the fashion brand's achievements are the combination of many platforms and search strategies with organic search as a major one of these.
Keywords: #SEO, #searchengineoptimization, #data, #fashion, #fashionindustry, #bigdata
References
A. Tomič and M. Šupín. 2019. Increasing traffic of woodworking company using digital marketing methods. Acta facultatis xylologiae zvolen, vol. 61, no. 2, pp. 153-161. (Accessed 01/02/21).
Acharya, A., Singh, S., Pereira, V. and Singh, P., (2018) Big data, knowledge co-creation and decision making in fashion industry. International Journal of Information Management, 42, pp.90-101.
BBC (2019). ASOS Profits Plunge 87% After Difficult Year [Online Article]. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47877688 [Accessed 31st January 2021]
Berman, R. and Katona, Z., (2013) The Role of Search Engine Optimization in Search Marketing. Marketing Science, 32(4), pp.644-651.
Bieth, Alex. 2019. Mino case study: Zalando (Berlin). (Online). Available: https://www.seoberlino.com/en/seo-services/case-study-zalando (Last accessed: 01/02/21).
Bobila, Maria. (2017) Chinese Retail giant Alibaba Launches ‘Big Data Anti-Counterfeiting Alliance’ with Louis Vuitton, Swarovski and More. Available
online: https://fashionista.com/2017/01/alibaba-anti-counterfeit-alliance (accessed on 3 February 2019).
Choi, Hyunyoung, and Hal Varian. (2012) Predicting the present with Google Trends. Economic Record 88: 2–9.
Cooper-Fiske, C. (2019). ASOS Hit by 87% Profit Fall [Online Article].
Davis, H., (2006) Search engine optimization. " O'Reilly Media, Inc."
Drivas, I., Sakas, D., Giannakopoulos, G. and Kyriaki-Manessi, D., (2020) Big Data Analytics for Search Engine Optimization. Big Data and Cognitive Computing, 4(2), p.5.
E. D. Ochoa. 2012. An analysis of the application of selected search engine optimization (SEO) techniques and their effectiveness on Google's search ranking algorithm," California State University, Northridge, 2012. Google, "Link schemes," Google.com, (Online). Available: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en. (Accessed 01/02/21).
Hastreiter, Nick. (2016) 4 Ways Big Data Is Going to Revolutionize the Fashion Industry. Availableonline: https://www.futureofeverything.io/4-ways-big-data-is-going-to-revolutionize-the-fashion-industry-2/
Hogarth, E., 2019. PrettyLittleThing has grown 238% between 2015-2019. [Blog] The rapid growth of PrettyLittleThing in search,. https://www.retailsector.co.uk/45272-asos-hit-by-87-profit-fall/ [Accessed 31st January 2021]
Kruger, J. (2012). GET FOUND! SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION DEMYSTIFIED. GPSolo, 29(3), 50-53.
Roberts, N. (2019). How ASOS got their Site Migrations So Wrong [Online Article]. Available at: https://www.venndigital.co.uk/blog/how-asos-got-their-site-migrations-so-wrong-205104/ [Accessed 31st January 2021]
Robertson, C. (2020). How to Stay at the Forefront of SEO Trends. [Online Article].
Available at: https://www.warc.com/content/paywall/article/how-to-stay-at-the-forefront-of-seo-trends/132000 [Accessed 31st January 2021]
ASOS & SEO Strategy | Ruth Kelly
ReplyDeleteStrong SEO strategy is crucial for fashion brands in the digital age. With intense competition for the top spots, fashion brands can’t afford to lose ground to competitors. In 2019, fashion giant ASOS saw a reduction in their pre-tax profits by 87% compared to the same period in 2018 (BBC, 2019). ASOS stated the plunge in profit was partially due to marketing changes which led to a fall in website traffic and search engine rankings (Cooper-Fiske, 2019).
Roberts (2019) defines site migration work as ‘any event whereby a website undergoes substantial changes in areas that can significantly affect search engine visibility – typically changes to the site’s location, platform, structure, content, design or UX’. Significant site migration work had been undertaken by ASOS in 2018 such as the implementation of a new navigation system and the launch of 200 new versions of the website for regional users, however, this led to a plunge in website traffic (BBC, 2019).
How did this happen? SEO is seen as having three key pillars which each play a key role in creating strong search engine performance – the technical, the on-page and the off-page (Robertson, 2020). In 2018, it seems ASOS made significant errors with the technical aspect of their SEO strategy, for example, by failing to redirect their older URLs to their newer counterparts when launching their new navigation system, resulting in a loss of previous authority and link equity. (Roberts, 2019).
While SEO and marketing decisions only partially accounted for ASOS’s 87% drop in pre-tax profits, it certainly highlights the importance of a strong SEO strategy for any fashion e-commerce business.
Using Backlinking as an SEO Strategy | Rachel Mullins
ReplyDeleteBacklinking is an off-site optimization that is an excellent strategy for marketing and bringing traffic to a site. Forming a collaboration with bloggers and sites can generate powerful backlinks and some examples can be through guest-blogging or collaborating through video. Backlinks with a high level of Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) are considered to come from quality sites and have a good chance of being perceived positively by google than spammy links. Using links from off-topic sites are not as effective as sites that are related to your own site (Ocha, 2012).
When a link strategy was applied to an already existing website, (Tomič and Šupín, 2019) saw traffic to the website increase by 25.65% after 3 months and the credit was from gradually acquiring 5 backlinks a month. Zalando gets a lot of traffic thanks to brands it has in stock with a search volume of 4 million when compared to Nike with less than half a million (Bieth, 2019).
If a site acquires many backlinks over a short period of time it will likely signal a red flag to Google. If Google suspects the site to be spamming links then it can get punished for violating its terms of service which may result in worsening the site's ranking (Google, 2020). Therefore, backlinking should not be done overnight and instead gradually over a longer period of time.