While the digital landscape has changed intensely over the past few years, SEO still remains an effective and important marketing strategy. Google (2013) define SEO as the process of maximising the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine. SEO has become widely adopted as an online marketing strategy because of its effectiveness. According to Cecilio (2015) the fashion industry has switched its focus to online rather than having a store front in recent times. Due to this switch SEO has never been more effective for building brand awareness and placing the brand ahead of its competitors. According to Green (2003) search engines are playing a key role in how businesses advertise themselves online. This has been done through various ways; Paid Search, Cost Per Click (CPC) and Search Engine Optimisation.
While there are many benefits to SEO, we will take a look at 5 key benefits:
- SEO delivers a continuous flow of free and targeted traffic- It was estimated that 2.2 trillion searches were made on Google in 2013. SEO helps to tap into this massive targeted traffic. The higher the position retailers are on the search engine results page the more impressions and clicks they will receive, leading to more traffic on their website.
- Cost effectiveness – SEO is an affordable and productive inbound marketing technique that produces highly qualified results relative to other sorts of marketing techniques. It is estimated that SEO is 61% cheaper than outbound strategies such as cold-calling.
- Return on Investment- You will be able to attain quantifiable and trackable results such as volume of traffic and conversations.
- Enhanced site usability- SEO currently works towards making the site highly navigable. SEO comprises of revamping the webpage’s design and links to make pages inside the site easier navigate. This makes it easier for users to navigate through your site to find information.
- Brand awareness- Higher ranking in search engines not only brings more traffic but also increases brand exposure which will increase brand awareness. This will make the brand more trustworthy as the page has a high ranking on the search engine.
While there are many more benefits to SEO, there are also some disadvantages to using SEO. Fashion retailers must be fully aware of the advantages of SEO as well as the disadvantages of SEO to truly utilise SEO effectively. Some of the disadvantages include:
- SEO will take time- It takes time for a website to rank on certain search terms. Some key words are competitive, which means that there are other brands that are competing to rank on the same key words
- SEO has no guarantee for results- Having your website on the first page of results is a major goal as 75% of search users will most likely never scroll past the first page. There is no guarantee that your website will be on the first page. Further to this being at the top of the first page will allow for more traffic to your website.
- Market is not static- Fashion retailers do not own their ranking on search engines neither do they own the traffic that is a result of it. Everything is fluid and progressively evolving. Different fashion retailers are continually attempting to take your traffic and sales. Therefore, defending the position of their ranking is extremely important. Without a plan to defend their rankings they cannot expect to see continuing upwards trends.
Fashion retailers are always looking for ways to increase their online presence to attract a larger audience and gain more market share. SEO is an effective way in which this can be achieved. According to a study of Forrester, released in 2006, more than 93% of traffic on a brands website comes through search engines. Thus, it is extremely important for fashion retailers to, not only improve their visibility on search engines, but maintain it too. While there are a number of disadvantages to SEO, which can be hard to overcome, the benefits of SEO are more dominate and therefore make SEO a great marketing tool for fashion retailers to use if used correctly and effectively. With over 2.2 trillion searches made on Google in 2013 alone, having a high ranking on search engines will tremendously increase brand awareness for fashion retailers.
References:
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 01 Jan. 2018].
Green, D.C. (2003) Search engine marketing: Why it benefits us all. Business Information Review, 20(4), pp.195-202.
Titangrowth.com. (2018). Top 5 Benefits of SEO. [online] <https://www.titangrowth.com/NewsArticles/5-seo-benefits.html > [Accessed 04 Jan. 2018].
Digital Marketing Philippines. (2018). The Pros and Cons of Using SEO for Your Business. [online] <http://digitalmarketingphilippines.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-using-seo-for-your-business> [Accessed 7 Jan. 2018].
Machin, E. (2016) 5 SEO benefits. [Online] < https://www.titan-seo.com/NewsArticles/5-seo-benefits.html > [Accessed 07 Jan. 2018]
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