We’ve looked at analysis from search specialists Pi Datametrics which focuses on retailer search performance and site structure.
Back-to-school searches are valuable and predictable
Back-to-school search terms are enjoying like-for-like annual growth.
Pi Datametrics has ranked these terms over the course of a year by comparing search volume, competition and cost-per-click data. The product of these three metrics is a sign of ‘organic value’ of the keyword.
Essentially, the higher this organic value, the more in-demand rankings are for this term.
All these search terms peak in August; for example the average monthly search total for ‘school bags’ in 2015 was 22,000, but the figure for August 2015 was 135,000.
This peak is predictable, as is a subsequent smaller peak in January and a discernable one in April, too.
So, the challenge for retailers is how to prepare for these peaks but also to capitalise year-round on what are consistently popular search terms.
The value of ranking for these terms is amplified by consumer tendency for multiple purchases, often buying uniform, shoes and bags together.
So who is winning in the rankings?
Debenhams – top performer for ‘school shoes’
Pi Datametrics analysed rankings from July 2014 to July 2015 for the term ‘school shoes’ and found Debenhams to have the highest average ranking over this period.
As you can see from the screenshot below, Debenhams has a non gender-specific landing page titled “Kids’ school shoes”, with gender and brand filters within.
John Lewis – top performer for ‘school uniform’
A similar story explains John Lewis’ consistently high rankings for the term ‘school uniform’.
Though it has boys and girls pages, these sit beneath a broader ‘school uniform’ landing page.
JD Sports – top performer for ‘school bags’
And finally, as Ian Fleming once wrote, ‘Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action’.
JD Sports wins out with school bags through its brand-filtered “kids’ school bags” landing page.
Back-to-school hub pages are rarer things
But what about the term ‘back to school’ itself? Well, it’s a much less valuable term, but still a useful one.
If we look at a chart showing retailer rankings for this term, you can see company pages jumping up and down the results all year.
At point one on the chart, many retailers hit the rankings just in time for start of the new school year, but drop off again six months later.
Pi Datametrics speculates this could be down to refocusing on other campaigns or changing footer links, for example.
Clothing and homeware retailer Next happens to be the brand that ranks consistently highest for the term ‘back to school’.
This is surely in part down to its ‘back to school’ hub page.
This hub page, shown below, links to many relevant category pages, so is a tidy way of garnering some extra traffic for many different product sets.
In conclusion
As always with SEO, it comes down to understanding your search terms and planning year-round.
A hub page and landing pages that align with top search terms are a must for back-to-school retailers.
For more detail including US sites entering the UK rankings, as well as charts showing the performance of more popular retailers, download the Pi Datametrics Back-to-School Report.
Comments