petsmart: transforming into experts in digital marketing strategy

By: Kimberly Ditmer

Transforming “Partners in Pethood” into “Experts in Digital Marketing Strategy”

PetSmart

dogtrainingpictures.com

Pet owners are becoming more concerned with quality

products with rising disposable income.

kmdvm.blogspot.com

Specific search terms are changing within the pet supply industry.

Terms such as “grain-free” are increasing in search demand.

However, PetSmart does not stand out for these

terms.

Even though PetSmart does has a strong brand name compared to

competitors.

Their website is often times listed below competitors within Google and Bing search for even the simplest of

terms.

It’s possible PetSmart hasn’t become “Experts in Digital

Marketing.”

Crawlability A

Relevance C

Popularity A-

Conversion B

The external factors affecting the success of PetSmart’s web strategy

focus on the amount of sites linking to pages within petsmart.com.

http://www.seosiren.com/

This is important for Google to rank a site’s popularity.

1 link from multiple sites is more important than multiple links from 1 site.

www.casinoaffiliateprograms.com

And PetSmart is ranked higher than competitors in terms of popularity,

but not by much.

CompanyWebsite

Linking C-Blocks

Domain Authority

petsmart.com 1607 79

petco.com 1492 77

chewy.com 214 56

drsfostersmith.com 0 1

Why? This strictly deals with the quality of links. PetSmart does not

have enough unique links. Company

Website

Total Backlinks

(Domain)

Total Linking Root Domains

petsmart.com 1,189,46111,553

petco.com 142,649 10,817chewy.com 55,764 1,129drsfostersmith.com 0 0

The difference between total backlinks and total linking root domains illustrates the lack of

uniqueness among links.

Building a strategy to increase the amount of unique links will provide

PetSmart with a competitive advantage in the web space.

# 1

The internal factors affecting PetSmart directly consider the site’s

crawlabilty, conversion, and relevance.

www.theseoagency.net www.mattheweckert.comwww.theideapeople.com

In terms of crawlabilty, PetSmart is indexed differently within Google and

Bing.

A XML site-map might be in order.

The conversion score is mainly affected by the number of call to actions visible on the homepage,

which creates confusion.

#1 #2 #3

But when searching Google, many of the pages for PetSmart do not include a call to action to help the consumer

make a choice.

Strengths

1. PetSmart’s website is visible in terms of crawlability within the search engines with minimal page errors

2. The website has a strong brand within search

3. Effectively uses title tags with keywords to describe the specific page.

4. The website is easy to use with the navigation and logo in expected locations.

Weaknesses

1. PetSmart is not using their website to full potential to ensure a great ranking

2. Too many call to actions/ promotions going on at the same time - making it confusing for customers.

3. Not effectively using call to actions within search to trigger/motivate a searcher to take action and follow through

4. Header tags are the same for each page, and many are not relevant to the specific products on certain pages

Opportunities

1. Search trends for pet supplies are changing (ex. increase in grain-free pet food search trends)

Threats

1. Increasing e-commerce competitors with the convenience factor in mind

2. Minimum number of unique links compared to overall total, meaning they have multiple links from the same sites

3. Authority Domain of direct competitor (Petco) is only a few points shy of PetSmart

Based on this current web strategy, here are the major strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

The first top priority within the web strategy concerns

building links from multiple trustworthy sites.

Trustworthy sites link to other trustworthy

sites.

The second priority includes maximizing keyword optimization for the site to rank higher within organic

search.

www.theideapeople.com

Interesting in learning more? Contact me and lets continue the

conversation.

kaditmer@gmail.com

www.linkedin.com/in/kimberlyditmer

www.facebook.com/public/Kimberly-Ditmer