Fashion SEO and Organic Successes: A Case Study

There’s a client of ours that’s been with us for quite a while now; well over a year. It’s also a client that operates in a considerably competitive market. 

While this particular client is not laboring under the restrictions of some of our other clients that cannot leverage paid search or social marketing to their advantage, there were unique hurdles to clear here. 

Here’s how we did it and what the aftereffects were. 

The Client and Industry

This client is one that specializes in selling high-end, luxury fashion items – notably, dresses to be used for memorable occasions like high school homecoming, cotillion, and promenade dances. 

They are expensive, unique, and subject to the whims and vagaries of the fashion market. What’s popular one season might experience an even more meteoric rise the next – or it might fall out of common parlance like a byword. 

While there might be plenty of search volume associated with a particular keyword or fashion trend, what’s in this month might be wiped off the map next – which presents unique challenges for eCommerce SEO.

The thing about SEO is that it usually takes a long time, a year or more, to start generating appreciable results. The problem there is how to identify keywords and search terms that will be popular – or are more likely to be popular – in a year’s time?

That is – how do we find the evergreen keywords? In an industry like this, there are precious few. 

Despite the lack of technical challenges in this industry, the unique circumstances surrounding the industry made it particularly difficult to settle on a coherent fashion SEO strategy. 

The two keys to success here were keyword research and the copy.

Special Considerations 

The strategy we ultimately settled on was one that was custom tailored for this client and its unique considerations. 

Namely, we bifurcated our strategy to create two main larger groups of target keywords. One large group consisted of high-volume, short-tail keywords that should in theory be evergreen – even in the fashion industry. 

The other was much more closely targeted and aligned with specific fashion trends and even fads. This approach enabled us to create a unique cultivated approach that would leverage the long-term benefits of SEO in multiple ways, despite the inherent risks associated with shifting consumer preferences. 

Here’s why. 

The one cohort of search terms and keywords was sufficiently broad that, even if and when trends shift, it will still bring them visibility for those general clusters, expressly because of their nonspecificity. 

For instance – take the keywords “prom dresses” and “evening gowns.” These two keywords are non-targeted according to trend, only according to event. This enabled us to build authority for this client for those event-related keywords without getting too specific. 

They’re also general enough that they offer us the flexibility to use those keywords in much more specific pieces that actually do follow the current trends. 

Presumably, “prom dresses” and “evening gowns” will still be in demand in five or even ten years, even when the trends shift – and this approach has enabled us to position this client with perfect precision. 

The other prong of this strategy was one that focused on much more targeted search terms – like “red prom dresses” and “Cinderella prom dresses.” It’s a lot riskier and the volume associated with these keywords could shift dramatically from month to month, but it’s a winning approach nonetheless. 

Let’s say we hit the mark and red prom dresses are popular this year (or next year). By leveraging content focusing on those keywords, the client will be perfectly positioned, and get the visibility and traffic right when they need it. 

Now let’s say that keyword flops this year and for the next few. At some point, red prom dresses will be back in – and at that point, the client will have all the authority they need, plus historical content, to compete for it.

So it’s basically a win-win, even though it’s a very long-term strategy that isn’t guaranteed to bear fruit in the short term. Either way, it worked, as substantiated by increases in organic metrics. 

The Role of Targeted and Optimized Content 

Secondary to the bifurcated keyword strategy aforementioned was the role of high-quality, engaging content in this campaign. 

Our copywriters had to take some time to get familiar with the client’s vertical and then compare notes with the copy being published by other industry competitors, especially those with high organic rankings for the desired target keywords.

From there they could back-form a content strategy that would outperform the best work of their competitors, outpacing their visibility in the search engines. 

Without giving away any secrets about the topics and trends they covered in the content stream for this campaign, suffice it to say that standard “SEO” copy would not cut it. 

This copy had to be more akin to content marketing copy that was specifically optimized not only for the user experience but also according to SEO best practices. 

Addressing popular trends in prom styles and fashion, as well as trends in dress design, as they became ascendant, was the only way to generate authority, and therefore visibility, for this client. 

Which is precisely what our copywriters did – and in time, the results showed. 

The Results 

Probably the best indicator of success for this client has been the positive movements in some of their target keywords, as you can see below. 

Many of their target keywords, as you can see, are in the page one, spot one position, which is largely the cumulative result over the better part of the last two years.

Google Search Console also tells a compelling tale. While we can’t see back all the way to the beginning of the campaign (GSC only lets you look back 16 months), you can see that there has been positive growth in both impressions and clicks over that time period, particularly in the latter few months. 

This is even more considerable when you weigh the reason for it; this is a seasonal spike directly associated with the prom-related keywords we’ve made targets for this campaign. The spike is not aberrant; it is by design. 

All of this is to suggest that, in a word, our industry-specific fashion SEO services are highly effective when paired with a unique strategy that is tailored to meet the needs of the client in question.

Industry-Focused SEO Services That Perform 

These are the sorts of results that data-driven, strategic eCommerce SEO services deliver for clients, even though in extremely competitive industries. If you’re operating in the fashion industry and are wondering how SEO services can benefit your business, get in touch with our SEO experts for more information.