luxury retail fashion publishing strategy: worth the effort? kirsty hulse

Luxury RetailFashion Publisher Strategy

Worth the effort?October 2015

Retailers are becoming publishers and publishers are becoming retailers

And it seems to be working

27% brand growth 2012 vs 2014

Jan 2011 Jan 2012 Jan 2013 Jan 2014

Google Trends data, UK, Jan 2010 - 2015

Our question:Is a publisher approach good for organic performance?

First, some distinctions

A publisher approach is where; a brand leads with content, links to editorial content from main homepage banners and publishes content not directly related to product

Mr Porter publishes lifestyle content & The Edit take primary homepage position

Flannels & The Outnet link to product pages

Farfetch has strong editorial, but always with a fashion focus

Does a publisher approach improve SEO performance?

Farfetch has the most ranking content and

ranking keywords.

Linkdex Visibility Data

Linkdex Visibility Data

Flannels has nearly 8% of all it’s content ranking on the 2nd

page or higher

Ranking content vs indexed pages

Is this driven by a publisher approach improving engagement?

98% of net-a-porter’s social shares are to product/category pages

Linkdex Visibility Data44 magazine editions vs sum social interaction for the top 44 performing product pages

These are some of the favourites

Net-a-Porter don’t make it easy to share product or magazine

Email?!

4% of Net-a-Porter’s referring domains point to /magazine and 2% specifically reference The Edit or Magazine in the anchor text

Mr Porter’s product pages generate 49% more social shares

than journal content

Linkdex Visibility Data270 indexed jourmal pages vs 270 top product pages

An average article on GQ will get 127 Facebook shares, Mr Porter gets 90.

That’s really good.

September content

6% of Mr Porter’s top 10,000 referring domains point to journal content

Linkdex Visibility Data

Our question:Does a publisher approach improve SEO and social performance?

? Perhaps.

I did find something else interesting...

14% of Mr Porter’s ranking pages are journal pages

Linkdex Visibility Data

Ranking Pages

ChinosDinner Jackets Tom Ford

Those journal pages are ranking for transactional queries

6,702 estimated monthly traffic with commercial intent sent to non commercial content

There is some transactional opportunity, but is this really what users want?

Product Page

Users have to either search or navigate

through to product page

Conversion

£££

Keywords

A consumer searches a keyword with commercial

intent

Keywords

A consumer searches a keyword with commercial

intent

Content Page

A Mr Porter long form content page is ranking

Product Page

Users have to either search or navigate

through to product page

Conversion

£££

Things to Consider

○ Could Mr Porter be losing sales through editorial? Or is the traditional Ecom journey dead?

○ Do Net-a-Porter need more digitally focused editorial?

○ Is building a brand enough for SEO performance?