Luxury fashion non-branded visibility up 10% for a brand that relied on its name
A luxury women’s fashion brand relied on branded search for its qualified traffic, and platform limits slowed every change. A site audit and niche keyword research led to briefs for metadata, category page content, and product variation canonical fixes, so the site could compete for the searches shoppers make before they know the brand.
- Visibility
- Searchmetrics SEO Visibility, Nov 11, 2022 vs Nov 10, 2023
- Keywords
- Searchmetrics winner keywords with brand terms excluded, Oct 21, 2022 vs Aug 4, 2023
- Source
- Searchmetrics SEO Visibility, with Google update markers
- Dates
- Nov 11, 2022 – Nov 10, 2023
- Full size
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The challenge
Qualified traffic depended on shoppers already searching the brand name
This luxury women’s fashion brand relied on branded search for its qualified traffic. There was no niche keyword strategy for shoppers who didn’t know the name yet, like people searching for designer sweaters or silk blouses.
Competitors with bigger budgets and larger SEO teams could move faster, and a changing SERP raised the bar for visibility. And the site ran on Salesforce Commerce Cloud, where platform limitations meant SEO changes needed custom solutions and long sprint cycles.
Strict brand requirements shaped the work, too. Visibility and rankings at scale were never the goal; the goal was growing reach for a select set of keywords tied to the brand’s most popular products.
The approach
Competing beyond the brand name, within the platform’s limits
-
1
Metadata and heading tag optimization
Audited the site and researched non-branded terms tied to the brand’s most popular products, then briefed title tag, meta description, and heading tag updates to target them.
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2
Net new content briefs for category pages
Researched and briefed new content for category pages so they could compete for broad non-branded searches like “designer sweaters” and “womens designer pants.”
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3
Canonical logic for product variations
Audited how product variations were canonicalized and briefed updated canonical logic, so variations stopped creating duplicate pages that competed with each other, working within the platform’s sprint cycles.
- Example
- New category page copy for designer women’s sweaters, with internal links to related categories
- Written by
- The client’s team, from the brief
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The results
Category pages started ranking for what shoppers search before they know the brand
Within strict brand guidelines, the aim was focused reach rather than mass visibility, and the targeted keywords moved. Non-branded SEO visibility grew about 10% over the year, through several Google updates. Category pages for popular products climbed for competitive searches, and several ranked for the first time.
Non-branded keywords that moved
A sample of the 59 non-branded keywords that improved or newly ranked, with brand terms excluded:
| Keyword | Oct 2022 | Aug 2023 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| silk white blouses | 48 | 21 | +27 |
| designer sweaters | 34 | 19 | +15 |
| womens suede sneakers | 39 | 25 | +14 |
| silk shirts for women | 35 | 28 | +7 |
| womens designer shirts | Not ranking | 16 | New |
| womens designer pants | Not ranking | 18 | New |
| silk button down shirt | Not ranking | 19 | New |
| womens designer shorts | Not ranking | 20 | New |
| womens leather slip on sneakers | Not ranking | 21 | New |
- Source
- Searchmetrics, Oct 21, 2022 vs Aug 4, 2023
- October positions
- Calculated from Searchmetrics’ position trend
- Source
- Searchmetrics winner keywords, brand terms excluded
- Full size
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