Why Boohoo beats the rest - and what we can learn from them

We spend billions each year online, and an increasing share of that spend is on clothing. Therefore, it stands to reason that if you’re selling clothes, you’re selling them online, and you have to be there or thereabouts (i.e. top 3) in Google.

So we can learn a lot from how the top retailers are formulating their digital strategies.

Whether you’re selling concrete slabs, nuts and bolts, or accounting services, you need to take notice of what the most competitive industries are doing in order to stay above the competition – because the same rules apply. Emulate them, and you’ll stand out.

Boohoo.com – number 1 in the UK for “women’s clothing”

There are over 40,000 searches for “women’s clothing” each month in the UK. Boohoo.com tops the rankings, taking approximately 15% of that traffic (6,000 visitors), and probably converting at around 15% of that traffic (900 sales). That’s just for one keyword, so you can imagine how successful boohoo.com has become if you extend that out to a wider set of keywords.

One look at the home page implies that it’s not content that counts here, it’s how users interact with it. The home page is a shop window – images increase ‘stickiness’, and the mega drop-down allows users to quickly filter themselves into each department. It’s probably that boohoo.com have considered conversion rates when deciding upon which departments get the most exposure on the home page, and that they monitor analytics on an almost hourly basis in order to optimise the user experience.

The SEO basics are all there. For example, on “maxi dresses” (70,000+ searches in the UK), boohoo.com ranks number 1 – keywords are in the URL, the breadcrumb, the H1, and in each product. It’s pretty clear that this page is about maxi dresses, and they’ve got lots of them.

Filter down to each product, and the user experience basics are all there, too – it’s not just a product and “buy now”. There’s a catwalk video, there’s a range of options, some style notes and how to look after the dress. There’s also a size guide. The call to action is clear, but not intrusive, and there are share options such as Facebook and “Tell a Friend”. You can even write a review.

Here’s what really separates the top retailers from the rest: internal links.

Have a look at this page and in the style notes section, you will find links to the “high heels” page as well as bracelets and belts.

Internal links – using the right indicative text – help distribute ‘authority’ around the website, informing search engine robots of other pages, and informing them what they are about. Using them on product pages is fine, but it’s in the blog where they really come to life.

Here’s their blog: http://blog.boohoo.com - it’s a case study on how to blog AND leverage social media. It’s so good, I’m going to have to use bullet points:

• They’re chasing the long-tail with internal links – in other words, low-volume, low-competition keywords that convert like mad because they are so precise
• It was designed on tumblr and integrated into the boohoo site, allowing for internal links (as opposed to external)
• The categories are vague enough to be clickable by any reader, increasing engagement
• There is a wide range of social options (Youtube, G+, Twitter, Pinterest)
• It is highly image-led, increasing ‘stickiness’ – and very suitable for this Pinterest age.

Ultimately, though, it’s all about that first bullet point. It doesn’t take much to rank well for long-tail terms, because there’s not much competition. Internal links can do almost all the work for you, so long as they’re in context, and the anchor text is relevant.

Off-site – backlinks and anchor text

Let’s look at what Boohoo.com have achieved off-site – in other words, the sites that are linking to them, influencing their search engine positions.

The majority of sites are linking to boohoo.com using brand terms – boohoo, boohoo.com, www.boohoo.com, boo hoo – etcetera. There are hundreds, if not thousands of domains pointing towards boohoo.

It’s not just the home page, either – you have links pointing towards deep pages using what appears to be natural anchor text such as “this”, “here” or even the full page title itself.

There are some examples of exact anchor text match – in other words, using the keyword you want to rank for (e.g. dresses, shorts, boots). In the new world of SEO, exact anchor text match is a dangerous world (it has been for a while, actually), as it was always far too easy to “game the system”. Boohoo.com is safe in that regard, with a large proportion of backlinks using brand only – it looks natural.

Looking at the sites which link to boohoo.com, you discover an inordinate number of fashion bloggers. Some of them are more influential than others, some of them are more interesting than others – but they are all pointing links towards boohoo. Mahayanna points 1,338 links towards Boohoo, while fashioncopywriter.co.uk points 136 links. There are nearly 23,000 links to the website, from over 2,000 domains, and every single one of them I have seen looks “natural” – in other words, it doesn’t look like boohoo.com placed the link themselves.

I’m not a retailer, what does it mean for my digital strategy?

Boohoo.com is by no means the largest clothes retailer online, but it’s getting there. By making some rudimentary assumptions about traffic, conversion rate and average cost per sale, boohoo.com make approximately £450,000 turnover from their number one positions alone – that’s about 22,000 sales from nearly 150,000 visits. Monthly.

So, the return can be measured, tracked, analysed and improved upon. That counts for everyone. Boohoo will tell you a cost per visitor – in my rudimentary calculations, that’s about £3. Can you do that?

Their digital strategy is one for any business to adapt and follow:

• Understand your customers- say what they say- give them what they’re looking for- react to the way they behave (use your analytics!)
• Use your home page as a shop window- make it easy to navigate- promote your best-converting products/services- react and improve (use your analytics!)
• Have a keyword strategy- use them in headers, page titles, content- react to trends, and why not create them?
• Provide a little more- boohoo provide style guides & videos – what more can you provide?- always go the extra mile, don’t just say you do something and hope people will contact you- provide reasons for sharing – and methods for sharing
• Link, link, link- write blog posts regularly and link to deep pages on your site- allow other bloggers to write on your blog- link between product pages – it means the search engine robots see more of your pages
• Get out there and mingle- work with bloggers in your industry, influence them, provide content, give them something with the ultimate aim of getting a backlink (for rankings and traffic)- find influential people and schmooze – maybe interview them? Boohoo and other retailers use celebrities to hang their clothes on. You can always find an industry expert and let some of their celebrity rub off on you.- get social… very social
• Be an analytics nerd- Have metrics that you understand, and that you can influence- Have metrics that mean something to your business strategy- Use conversion data to influence user behaviour

Retailers know their SEO – they know the benefits and the return – and they provide the best possible case study. Whatever you do, if you try to emulate their digital strategy, you’ll see long-term success.