SEO for an independent fashion brand - the right tool for the job?
-
I have a client that is a small but growing fashion brand in the UK, they make sunglasses, eyewear and swim suits. They are priced as a high-end brand, so around £200 for a pair of sunglasses.
They have asked me about 'sorting out their SEO', but I am struggling to think of viable keywords we could target that don't contain the name of their brand. The SERPS for anything that would be along the lines of 'buy sunglasses / buy swimsuits' etc are dominated by very big players - big department stores etc, so with their small budget I'm sure would be impossible to crack.
My thoughts are that apart from sorting out their on-page SEO (crawlable, sitemap etc) and making sure they rank for their branded terms, that putting money into trying to rank for generic terms around buying swimwear/sunglasses would not be viable. A better route for traffic generation would be through a more content marketing / social media approach to get people sharing their content (e.g. fashion industry commentary) and leading them back to their brand from there.
What do others think? Am I missing a trick on the SEO front?
thanks
-
I think there are some great answers here - the social / content / PR suggestions are all solid.
I think there may be merit in looking to see if there are long tail queries which you can capture, however I'd encourage you think about how relevant those terms might be. For example 'womens designer sunglasses' (arguably not truly long tail, but let's go with it for now) sounds like it's pretty relevant, however it's still pretty competitive and I'd argue that your client's site isn't a great result for that search term given that they only sell their own brand of sunglasses. As such whilst that term might look appealing I'd suggest that even if you did manage to rank for it, it might not convert as well as you'd hope.
In terms of managing your client's expectations I'd look to explain things to them in those terms - their site is a great result for branded searches, and the best way to make more money is likely to be by increasing branded searches. How do you do that? It's a marketing play - likely incorporating PR, social, online and offline marketing activity.
I hope this helps,
Hannah
-
No doubt it is difficult to come up with keywords for a growing fashion brand, it is certainly worth spending some effort to work on long tail keywords. Despite the growth of social media and content marketing, search engines still bring in the bulk of the traffic for most sites and it would not be wise to neglect optimising your site on search engines.
Focus on creating keywords based on your client's USP - what's so special about their products? Is it the design, the material or the quality? You don't have to come up with the most unique keywords, but you can still snatch a portion of the traffic for "branded black sunglasses" or "polka dot cotton dresses" (just examples).
That being said, you should still invest some effort on social media and content marketing. One suggestion I have for a fashion brand is to work on Pinterest. Given the high traffic and the female-dominated user base, it would be a good place to promote your brand and engage with potential customers. Develop a holistic approach by pinning quality photos of a selection of your products, other interesting photos, and perhaps run a contest.
Hope that helps!
-
Mike and Tim have some great suggestions. I wanted to add to it that part of the social campaign you create can include a blog (as Mike suggested). Some content you create for the social campaign may be best put on the blog and then pushed out the social sites. Other content may be best distributed straight to the social sites (image memes, quotes, instagrams, etc.) but can also probably be used for content on the blog as well. Blogging is a great way to put out new, unique content which can help to build authority for the site and you may be able to target keywords on that content as well.
Also, keep in mind that a lot of SEO, especially for smaller or newer sites, is about targeting longtail keywords that are less competitive. Sure, you may not be able to rank for "buy sunglasses" today, but you may be able to rank well for "designer sunglasses for women". It doesn't get as many searches, but it gets some. You build up incrementally.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com -
i would use twitter, use the hash tag about the site and the products, find out if people have used the product and start to get a buz about it. look out for any celebrities who may have used the product and then tweet them, see if they answer.
Talking from a PR background, if you can get a buz about your products and your site then life will become easier.
-
Assuming they're trendy, I agree on the Social Media front. Trendy fashion items should have a good likelihood to be shared via facebook, twitter, instagram, pinterest and tumblr.
As for the generic terms to attempt ranking for, I'd say use them in a blog campaign to at least create some content devoted to those terms. Get enough people following and liking via social could lead them to linking your blog content in various places which could eventually boost rankings from having a strong, natural backlink profile. And who knows, something could go viral.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Brand name not ranking in Google
Hi Moz'ers, Could you help me with something I cannot seem to figure out by myself. In June 2017 my company started a rebranding campaign. We've changed our brand name and launched a new website: https://spotler.com. Everything is going fine, but if you Google our brand name "Spotler" our website doesn't show up. How can it be? Our domain authority is 38. It would be wonderful if you could help me. Let me know if you need more information. Best, Simone
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Spotler0 -
Is Snip.ly bad for SEO?
Hi, I'm using the software snip.ly, which allows me to add call to action into content I publish through social media. It's really powerful but I'm wondering how it can affect my SEO? Snip.ly now appears into my link report and its spam score is only 2, which is good. However I'm afraid that in the long term, it can be bad: links are created manually by the webmarketer Topics of this website are infinite the ancor is the same Your thoughts?..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 2MSens0 -
SEO direction - help needed
Hi, I've been working on a site for about 5 years. We built the traffic up to about 8k visitors/day. Although now it's dropped down over the past 2 years to about 2k visitors a day. New traffic source is mainly from SEO longtail. The whole time we have been working to improve the site. What's the best way to get some help from experts on the right direction to get traffic back up or to at least tell me the site will never work 🙂 Thanks in advance. M
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | relientmark0 -
SEO Experts: Where did you start?
Hi all! I'm beginning to travel down the road of becoming an SEO expert! I've attended the latest few webinars on Moz, and have started watching the White Board Fridays. However I'm wondering, for the current SEO Experts, how did you get to where you are today? I.e. What books did you read? Did you pay for classes or just learn everything from Moz? Where is a good place to get an SEO Expert Certification/Is it necessary? How long did it take you to become an expert? (Stuff like that) I suppose I'm looking to make a list for myself, organizing what I should learn first, and then create a timeline moving forward. Thanks for your help Mozzers! - Briana B.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JCWhelan13 -
Joomla SEO
With so many articles on the web talking about how difficult Joomla is to work with in regards to SEO, I'm curious as to what techniques / changes you guys make when using Joomla with your SEO / inbound practices? Any extensions that you love? An extensions that you hate?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DougHoltOnline0 -
International SEO and Server Hosting
I am quite new to international SEO. I have a customer who wants to use the same website content on various domains targeting different countries. Such as; xxxx.hk - same content targeting Hong Kong xxxx.co.uk - same content targeting UK xxxx.de - same content targeting Germany I found that it could be possible with the Google suggested hreflang without any duplicate content problem. Is that true? Could someone explain this for me. Another question; if above is true do we need to make other adjustments as well. Such as; Any adjustments in Google Webmaster Tools (for each domain) Server location, does that really make a difference? Can we host each of the domains on the same server or should we seperate them and host each one on the country it is targeting ? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stradiji0 -
Disavow tool removed all our links from webmaster tools
We recently used the Google Disavow tool to remove 200 bad links but Google has nearly removed all our links from webmaster tools from over 2000+ we only have 150 now! Has anyone had the same problem? Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webdesigncwd0 -
SEO for eCommerce?
I'm working on a game plan for the on-page optimization for a growing e-commerce site (https://www.boutine.com) and I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with similar projects. Specifically, how to get the most SEO value out of product and category pages. Thanks in advance! -Adam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | boutine0