Fashion SEO: 5 Strategies for Ranking Higher and Captivating Customers

• Author By Miva    |
• Posted on
• • February 6, 2020

• Ecommerce 101

The fashion industry is unique in that it is in a constant state of change. Apparel retailers are subject to changing trends, shifting consumer needs, and fierce competition between fashion giants and up-and-coming brands. 

For your fashion ecommerce business to stand out from the competition, you will need to improve your online visibility. A sound, user-focused SEO strategy is key to elevating your position on search engines and can enhance your fashion site’s user experience.  

In this article, we discuss five things you need to do to improve your fashion SEO and user experience, from tightening up your technical SEO to leveraging proven tactics to reach and engage savvy shoppers. 

1. Stay On Trend With SEO Keywords for Fashion 

In ecommerce, the best practice for SEO is to prioritize long-tail keywords over short-tail keywords. However, to keep up with the pace of the fashion industry, fashion sellers need to take this a step further by aligning their keywords with market trends.  

By combining keywords with what’s currently trending, your site captures both clear search intent and in-the-moment buzz. Being agile with your site and providing fresh content to take advantage of these trends is key to improving your visibility and catching customer attention. 

Use Google Trends to identify keywords that are currently trending or will be trending. Proper research will help determine keywords that will drive traffic to your site. 

2. Pay Attention To Your Product Categories

As a fashion merchant, you may be selling multiple variations of certain apparel and accessory items. If your site supports dedicated pages for each and every product variation, you could be inadvertently competing against yourself for keyword rankings. 

Avoid cannibalizing your SEO by grouping your fashion items into distinct, searchable categories. Build your product categories into your website navigation, link the pages to each other, and implement unique product descriptions, copy, and keyword data.  

3. Put Quality Content Front and Center 

Fashion is all about making an impression. Ecommerce takes this a step further, striving to turn impressions into conversions. Having top billing in the search results isn’t worth much if your site doesn’t convince visitors to take the next step towards making a purchase. This is where your site content comes into play. High-quality, relevant content is one of the best ways to keep prospective customers invested and moving forward.  

Fortunately, the fashion industry offers limitless avenues for engaging content. High-quality images, compelling videos, and useful blogs and trend reports can all help boost your brand authority and impress your ideal customers. 

Great content also makes your site more likely to receive valuable links from industry blogs and other fashion-related sites. This, combined with an improved user experience from high-quality content, directly impacts your ranking on search engines. 

4. Invest in Social Media 

Social media is key to ecommerce success in the fashion industry…but it’s not just about the likes and shares. While your social media profile is not a direct ranking factor, a strong social presence can increase opportunities for you to create shareable content and build brand awareness with your target market. 

As people learn more about your brand on social media, they are more likely to look for you on search engines. The increased traffic helps to build credibility for your brand and allows Google to associate you with more related searches. 

Social media is also a great place to collect customer product reviews and testimonials that you can showcase on your website and then link it back to social media, providing another way to build your credibility. 

5. Stay on the Lookout for Ways to Improve Your Fashion SEO 

SEO is not a set-it-and-forget-it deal. It’s important to regularly use your analytics and website tools to track how users are interacting with your website and discover things that need improvement. Consider using tools like Google Analytics’ UTM trackers to monitor where users are coming from and heat map generators to see how shoppers interact with your website. 

Making regular, data-driven enhancements to your user experience helps boost conversion rates and increases the time visitors spend on your page. This increase in time on page (and decrease in bounce rate) signals to search engines that your site should rank higher. 

Gaining Visibility for Your Online Brand 

While your online fashion site may already be carrying the latest trends, a solid SEO strategy and user experience will help keep your business in style. 

To gain traction and visibility, you will need trend-driven keywords, intuitive site navigation, distinct product categories, and high-quality content to showcase your brand and improve the user experience. These will influence your website’s ranking, generating traffic to your brand and helping you to keep up with the blazing speed of the industry.