The Holy Grail of Fashion SEO

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1 The Holy Grail of Fashion SEO The secrets behind ASOS dominance of online fashion T E W +44 (0) info@onehydra.com

2 Executive Summary Online fashion has been dominated by one key player for the past few years - ASOS. In order to understand how the e-tailer achieved such phenomenal success we analysed the fashion keyword universe before analysing ASOS website against what Google really wants: accessible and relevant websites that have an excellent and meaningful information architecture, that offer great content and an even better user-experience in a way that compels other websites to link and endorse them. The size of the prize is enormous: The good news for fashion retailers is that ASOS hasn t stolen the Holy Grail of Fashion ; it simply is a good website and has a fantastic integrated online marketing strategy. Its focus is in the right areas and SEO is in its DNA. Over 16.1 million searches per month and a vast keyword set containing 53k high street fashion terms. Consumers start their research journey with the most generic terms such as dresses, before narrowing it down to a particular style or brand search term. Big players are monopolising head terms such as jackets and dresses. If you re not one of the bigger players, you will certainly find a niche in this vast keyword set that is worth claiming and penetrating. There is life after ASOS domination Amazon and ebay actually have more terms ranking in the top 20 as their websites cater for better product searches. ASOS has competitors when it comes to online visibility. Debenhams is edging closer to ASOS (59% and 46% respectively). Google wants only a few things & ASOS serves them right up! From a technical and accessibility point of view, their website is one of the best. ASOS doesn t only create great fashion content, but also lots of it. Simple steps to improve your website success: Pick your battles a clear target strategy is essential Get the basics right technical SEO in your DNA Engage with your customers create lots of great content for your audience

3 The Holy Grail of Fashion SEO If you are searching for the Holy Grail of Fashion SEO, you ll probably look to the big player: ASOS. ASOS is to fashion, what Moneysupermarket is to finance terms, what Amazon is for most generic terms and what Wikipedia is for simply all terms you can possibly think of. So how has ASOS managed to become the most successful fashion e-tailer of our time in just a few short years? To help us understand how it achieved such phenomenal success, it s necessary to understand what really Google wants, which is simply: accessible and relevant websites that have an excellent and meaningful information architecture, that offer great content and an even better user-experience in a way that compels other websites to link and endorse them. ASOS s advantage is that it is built for Search rather than it being a retrospective change (and shock) to the system. ASOS is and always has been very flexible and evolves with Google when other websites dwell on agile IT, content marketing, social link building and keyword density. But that doesn t mean that you should give up quite the opposite. The example of ASOS should be inspiring and show you how far you can go with the right strategy. In this white paper we explain why every little percentage of the market share is worth fighting for and what you can do to start claiming more.

4 The Fashion Keyword Universe What is the size of the prize? If over 16.1 million searches per month¹ doesn t get you excited as an online marketer, I am not sure what will! The search volumes for fashion keywords are constantly rising and the industry is not only one of the biggest but also the most diverse search landscape out there with new styles, colours and trends every month. In a nutshell, you really have to start looking at the bigger picture. We have created the 30,000ft view of your world using our data integration and analysis software, Figure 1: 53k fashion related search terms categorised and in OneHydra s 30,000ft view (exact match, Google UK, Source: OneHydra) How to look at this tagmap is fairly easy: the bigger the box, the bigger the monthly exact match search volume in Google² UK. It comes as no surprise that over 80% of the demand is for women s clothing-related terms whereas less than 20% is for men s clothing. It is little wonder that men don t shop online (or offline) for clothes because they can never find what they are looking for. It s either hidden in a corner of a retail shop or on the 3rd results page in Google (and whatever it is you wanted you certainly won t bother looking for it there!) ¹Source: OneHydra ²Up to 80% of not gender specific search terms return women s results

5 The investigated keyword set contains over 53k high street fashion terms with a monthly volume of 16.1m searches in the last 30 days (from 1 June June 2014) and it is constantly rising with a massive peak in the festive season (+30% volume increase). Figure 2: Volume for 53k fashion keywords from June 2012 to June 2014 (exact match, Google UK, Source: OneHydra) If you have a similar range of products to ASOS, this is exactly what you should be aiming for. Over 50% of the volumes for women s fashion are attributed to clothing terms (41% dresses, 17% coats & jackets, 10% swim and beachwear, 10% sportswear) whereas 37% are shoes related³. But if you are not one of the bigger players, this keyword set is equally encouraging because you will certainly find a niche that is worth claiming and penetrating. The most significant characteristic of search demand for fashion is that consumers are starting their research journey with the most generic terms such as dresses, before narrowing it down to a particular style or brand search term. Rankings for the big generics is almost a credibility factor in the eyes of the consumer, who is looking for advice or a confirmation of choice. Whereas dresses and shoes were previously sneered at as overrated vanity terms, they are now serious contenders for the top traffic drivers. And this is exactly ASOS s strategy. It simply monopolises these head terms! ³This is excluding [boots] and [boots uk]

6 Does ASOS have any competition at all? After all, the air starts to become thinner at the top of the fashion league but it s not quite time yet for ASOS to dress a little warmer. # Brand Ranking URLs Visibility % 1 ASOS 32,568 59% 2 Debenhams 32,029 46% 3 Next 33,446 38% 4 New Look 21,329 31% 5 House of Fraser 22,476 27% 6 Amazon 43,560 25% 7 BooHoo 10,726 20% 8 River Island 19,310 20% 9 ebay 43,083 18% 10 Very.co.uk 15,443 17% 11 ShopStyle 27,684 17% 12 John Lewis 20,554 17% 13 TopShop 6,320 11% 14 MissGuided 5,968 11% 15 Marks & Spencer 13,421 9% 16 SportsDirect 5,907 9% 17 Matalan 10,591 8% 18 Dorothy Perkins 5,478 8% 19 Polyvore 12,475 7% 20 Lipsy 2,484 6% Figure 3: Leading websites by SEO visibility for 53k fashion keywords (Source: OneHydra) The table in figure 3 shows the visibility score based on the obtained rank for the 53,000 fashion keywords as well as the number of ranking URLs in Google UK. Even though ASOS dominates the SERPs⁴ for ranks, ebay and Amazon actually have more terms ranking in the top 20, as their websites cater better for product searches (whereas the other websites are obviously targeting the previously mentioned vanity terms). ASOS s objective over the past few years has been clear: go out and target the big terms and don t lose time with smaller keywords. ASOS does have competitors when it comes to online visibility but it used to not be so. Debenhams is creeping up on ASOS and whilst arguably it is a different business in terms of organisational set up, Debenhams is edging closer to ASOS now. Is Debenhams a real threat to ASOS though? Not yet, but it shows that there is life after the ASOS domination. ⁴Search Engine Results Pages (here Google UK)

7 What is ASOS doing right? Google wants only a few things & ASOS serves them right up! We know that ASOS is dominating the search landscape and we know that they are brilliant when it comes to links. This is not new, but is that really the only reason? To check, we looked at ASOS s on-page factors and the website s ability to create and interlink great content, to engage with visitors and build up a relationship with them in order to become returning customers. Our first point in the beginning of the white paper was that Google wants accessible and relevant websites that have an excellent and meaningful information architecture. This is exactly what this first part of our analysis of ASOS s UK website looked at including the navigation, canonical tags, facet search behaviour, duplication, language handling, geo-targeting, robots meta tags and much more. The key question is: Has ASOS got the basics right? The answer is yes. From a technical and accessibility point of view, their website is certainly one of the best. We just have to accept that ASOS has a good website. It could be improved further, but with Google s constant changes this is to be expected. This shows that you can increase your market share by getting the basics right and this is one of the key findings from this part of the analysis.

8 Our second point was that Google favours websites that offer great content and user-experience and have lots of endorsements on the web in a way that compels other websites to link. Consequently, we looked at content relevancy, thematic depths and the use of standard content elements such as micro formatting, URLs, metadata etc. The key question is: Is this an example of ASOS s dominance? The answer again is yes, which means it s even more significant than before. ASOS doesn t only create great fashion content but also lots of it. And Google loves that of course, because content has claimed back the throne. The sheer amount of content on the website and the cleverly created thematic depths using fashion news is difficult to replicate quickly and easily. This is one of the main reasons why the fashion industry is reigned by ASOS and maybe rightly so. What does this mean for you if you don t have the ability to create this content? There are obvious options for you: 1. You can engage a digital agency to develop content for you. 2. You can use your own resources or hire experienced bloggers or fashion editors to start creating this content in-house. No matter what route you decide to take, start with one area of the website and always remember that the content is not for Google but for your users and the main objective is to engage with your audience your ranking positions will thank you for it!

9 From ASAA (As Seen At ASOS) to your Website You might not want to be the next ASOS and/or believe in SMART goals but if you want your share of the market, you should. Here are some tips to make your life easier and your website more successful in a few simple steps. Current Status Quo: Your search performance or SEO performance is only as good as your last change. If you can t remember when this was, you should change this NOW. Ideally convince the business of a dedicated SEO release this can easily happen with the right business case. 1) Pick your battles a clear target strategy is essential We stated earlier that ranks for dresses equals credibility in the eyes of the consumer, but if you can t rank for dresses, don t waste time on this term just now. Look at search volumes, your stock, AOV, click-throughs and where you convert best. You can take this data from your Paid Search campaigns on a keyword level. Then look at your ranks and group all attractive keywords into SEO campaigns. Once you have these clearly defined, it will be much easier to focus and you won t get lost in the jungle of 53k keywords. 2) Get the basics right Technical SEO in your DNA Once you know your target terms, look at your site. Can you effectively target them or are they buried in the site? Do they have categories and how are these categories, subcategories, styles, colours and sizes set up? You probably use a facet menu that enables users and hopefully Google to deep-dive into your site. But with this great power, comes great responsibility responsibility to avoid duplication! Your facet menu can be the No.1 culprit for duplication. Ensure that the same URLs are generated regardless of the order of the facet selection.

10 Reduce irrelevant choices such as price or size. Online shoppers know that they can narrow down their search once they are on a website. Serve this with an AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) functionality (since JavaScript can be accessible these days) and don t waste valuable Google bandwidth for nothing. If facet results return more than one page and are identical, tidy them up by using the canonical tag to show Google that there is another version of the page. A firm direction often has a much better result than leaving the decision of where to put this tag to the developers. 3) Engage with your customers The fashion industry is amazingly chatty. The amount of tweets, Instagram pics and Pinterest pins is overwhelming and can put even the most fearless marketer under pressure. But your customers are talking online and so should you be. Content Marketing is vital and compliments your other marketing efforts. On top of this (yes, Social is not a competitive advantage, it s something you need to live and breathe), it is important that you have access to the right influencers. The good news is that ASOS hasn t stolen the Holy Grail of Fashion ; it simply is a good website and has a fantastic integrated online marketing strategy. Its focus is in the right areas and SEO is in its DNA. We can however learn a lot from ASOS. There are no secrets and we can only encourage every fashion website out there to pick the right battles and to go for it. But please, bear in mind what Google really wants. Call: info@onehydra.com +(44) or Pop in: The Varnish Works, 3 Bravingtons Walk, London, N1 9AJ