In recent times, the fashion industry has switched its focus to online rather than having a store front (Cecilio, 2015); for larger well-known brands, online has been a new market in which they have been able to develop to reach a larger target audience. With the recent switch in focus to e-commerce market; SEO has never been more important for a brand to be able to position themselves in front of the competition. Search engines are playing an increasingly key role in how businesses advertise themselves online through several sources; Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Paid Search and Cost Per Click (CPC) (Green, 2003).

SEO provides a widespread of benefits to well-known brands in the fashion industry when approaching their advertising strategy; these are 5 key benefits for businesses:

  1. Increased amount of traffic – the higher the ranking of the page on the search engine the more traffic a website receives as more people are likely to select the highest ranking. Machin (2016) states that top position results will receive majority of the clicks to their pages than further down results.
  2. Brand awareness – As a higher rank in the search results brings more traffic to the website (Titan SEO, 2016); a higher rank will translate to a higher exposure rate which will increase the brands awareness to consumers. People will feel more trustworthy to a brand that has been found in the first page of results from the keyword they have searched which in-turn increase the brands awareness.
  3. Cost effective – SEO is a very cost-effective strategy that allow the business to spend money on advertising directly to the consumers that are looking directly for their products and/or services (Slettengren, 2016).
  4. Site usability – The usability of the website for the business will improve as SEO allows the user to navigate the site without any issues as it will take the user directly to the product/service which they want to see. In the fashion business, the brand must categorise based on their collection they have to make it easier to be found with the SEO (West, 2013).
  5. The competition is doing it – SEO is a rising tool that businesses are using in the marketing strategies to be able to compete within the market. Businesses are best off utilising the use of SEO as it will gain a competitive advantage to be ranked higher than their competitors when a consumer enters a keyword.

Unfortunately, with every approach to implementing a new strategy, SEO is not immune to any risks that may occur. Every business that aims to use SEO must consider the risks which they offer to be well prepared for any interruption that may occur during their strategy. Well-known brands within the fashion industry such as Adidas, Nike, Puma and many others all compete; SEO gives them a chance to have an advantage but comes with several risks:

  1. Search engines & the market are not static – This is a medium to long-term risk that can occur as businesses forget they need to defend their position of their rank on search engine results. As the fashion industry is forever changing and evolving with the times, brands must keep up with these changes by keeping their rank highest to keep the traffic coming to their site (Lyngbo, 2013).
  2. Traditional SEO may not be enough alone – SEO may not be enough alone to be kept the highest rank on search engine or by bringing in more traffic to the site. Social media has also been thrown into the mix as customer’s reviews has had a huge impact on the amount of traffic that a site sees no matter what their SEO rank is (Lyngbo, 2013).

This table shows the amount of users that have been using the internet over a 10 year period and shows how the internet has become a massive tool to be able to communicate and target a much larger target market. Sourced from Statista (2016).

The fashion industry has been using the internet to increase their potential market share and attract a larger audience as 3.5 billion people us the internet across the world (Statista, 2016), this is a much larger market that well-known brand can market themselves to reach everyone. The benefits of SEO out way the risks that the business can experience when using SEO as a strategy, as in recent years the e-commerce has become one of the most important platforms that these brands need to utilize and SEO can provide the chance for brands to do this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

References:

  1. Green, D.C. (2003) Search engine marketing: Why it benefits us all. Business Information Review, 20(4), pp.195-202.
  2. Machin, E. (2016) 5 SEO benefits. [Online] < https://www.titan-seo.com/NewsArticles/5-seo-benefits.html > [Accessed 25 February 2017]
  3. Slettengren, N. (2016) Five reasons SEO will have a profound impat on your business for years to come. [Online] < https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2016/07/08/five-reasons-seo-will-have-a-profound-impact-on-your-business-for-years-to-come/#2c3f2b931f0f > [Accessed 25 February 2017]
  4. West, T. (2013) SEO for fashion ecommerce websites. [Online] < https://www.koozai.com/blog/search-marketing/seo-for-fashion-ecommerce-websites/ > [Accessed 25 February 2017]
  5. Cecilio, D. (2015) E-commerce is changing the fashion industry – its time to catch up. [Online] < https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2015/feb/06/how-mobile-ecommerce-changing-fashion-industry > [Accessed 25 February 2017]
  6. Lyngbo, T. (2013) 6 SEO Challenges Every Business owner & marketer must contend with in 2014. [Online] < http://searchengineland.com/6-challenges-every-business-owner-marketer-must-know-about-seo-in-2014-170386 > [Accessed 26 February 2017]
  7. Statista (2016) Number of internet users worldwide from 2005 to 2016. [Online] < https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-internet-users-worldwide/ > [Accessed 26 February 2017]