Global sports retailer ASICS has been working with ecommerce SEO agency Re:signal since 2018 to improve its organic search traffic based on the previous years’ performance. In 2023, the company set new key performance indicators (KPIs) to reflect changes in the search landscape and overall business goals, with the aim of improving informational (non-branded) traffic and revenue from all organic sources across 11 European markets. With a comprehensive SEO strategy, including optimising existing content, creating new content and optimising category pages, ASICS increased its organic revenue by 24.5% year on year (YoY) against 2022 figures.

The following targets were set by ASICS for traffic and revenue.

• Traffic:
  • ASICS Advice (blog): 32.3% increase in organic sessions on 2022
  • Category pages (PLPs): 18.9% increase in organic sessions on 2022
• Revenue:
  • All organic revenue: 19.6% increase on 2022

Targeting an audience of both new and experienced runners looking for clothing and shoes, a strategy to optimise content across the entire user journey was put in place. This focused on capturing organic searches with information-seeking intent and commercial intent.

The informational content strategy took part in two stages: optimising existing content, and creating new content. The primary focus was to enlarge and improve ASICS’ informational hub by building existing content around “Running Advice” and “ASICS Advice” in eight languages localised to 11 markets: the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Ireland, Belgium and Austria. Around 240 articles were produced in the 12-month campaign, and content was optimised in line with Google’s E-E-A-T principles (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness).

Optimisation of the content involved analysing click and impressions performance metrics, assessing search engine results page (SERP) features and deciding to keep, combine or remove articles. This workflow was tailored for each country to accommodate diverse content needs and factor in search intent for each market.

The commercial content strategy covered different activities including on-page content optimisation on product listing pages (PLPs) at scale across eight languages, A/B testing category copy for PLPs and internal linking to support the highest value category pages. Through this strategy, existing categories were optimised and 24 new categories were launched with custom, localised content across the 11 European markets. The process involved category gap analysis to uncover gaps in ASICS’ PLP structure, keyword research for each potential new PLP and creating merchandise lists for each category.

Optimising the commercial pages also involved creating content for PLPs with no on-page copy. Keyphrase research helped identify search demand per market, which was then used to draft new copy with the help of native language speakers in each market.

A strategy to reduce paid spend where organic performance was also achieving number one ranking positions was carried out to ensure synergy between paid and organic search, leading to ASICS reducing spend on terms that already achieved high organic results.

• Traffic:
  • ASICS Advice (blog): 57% increase in organic sessions on 2022 figures, against a 32.3% target.
  • Category pages (PLPs): 20.4% increase in organic sessions on 2022, against a 18.9% target.
• Revenue:
  • All organic revenue increased by 24.5% YoY, against a 19.6% target.