Presentation on issues around SEO for retailers, originally presented by Martin DInham of Guava at Internet Retailing Exhibition, March 21st 2011

1. Making Natural Search Pay for RetailersMartin DinhamMarch 23rd, 2011

2. Guava 12 years market leading search marketing experience Built by acquisition- Guava UK June 2007- Neutralize October 2007 Full-service Digital Marketing Agency Part of the Netbooster Group – Europe's largest online marketing agency Global capacity, multi territory a specialism 400 staff across Europe

3. Working with:

4. SEO / Retail Challenges - internal Large, complex website platforms Large complex IT departments ! Content – volume, catalogue linkage User demands, eg Multi Faceted Navigation “Me too” product sets

5. Multi faceted navigation There was the potential to create 8.15915283 × 1047 pages if the CMS was left to its own devices!

6. SEO / Retail challenges - external Competition Differentiation Persistent versus Dynamic keyphrase sets Seasonality

7. Competition

8. Seasonality

9. SEO solutions – site level Need automation / tools Integration with IT updates Balancing of BAU versus more strategic objectives Careful prioritisation of solution implementations Tight project management

10. SEO solutions – content Needs to be collaborative / knowledge transfer based- product manager / trading team involvement critical Leverage your assets, reviews, “how to” guides etc Differentiation from the competition

12. Social Media and Retail Source: GroupM Search 2011

13. Social Media and Retail User reviews – 30% Facebook – 17% Twitter – 9%

15. Linking Measurement of links as a vote revolutionised search engine technology (PageRank) Influences good rankings on most search engines “Your site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating.” Source : Google Webmaster Central

16. SEO solutions - linkbuilding Contentious subject area- JC Penney- Overstock

18. John Lewis http://www.loveandoliveoil.com/ http://www.thefashionablehousewife.com/ http://www.whosthemummy.co.uk/ http://www.amothersramblings.com/ http://www.livingwithwhite.com/

19. Asda

21. SEO solutions - linkbuilding Scale of targets, again you need more than manual approach Balancing effectiveness with risk So, this and market competitiveness means more creativity is required Leverage your assets Content – off site distribution Other marketing activity, eg competitions Other relationships, eg suppliers

22. Other channels Look at changes in Google SERPS, this is only going to continue Also Google acquisitions, Beatthatquote, but also Boutiques.com – long term significance ? Other assets- Local- Video- Shopping

25. Size of the prize.. So, its complex But, the gains are there…

26. The size of the prize… HIGH STREET RETAILER (6 months);- Non brand traffic UP 93%- Non brand revenue UP 620% MAJOR GENERAL RETAILER (12 months)- Non brand traffic UP 17%- Non brand revenue UP 20%

27. Testimonial "We have been delighted with the quality and management of SEO & link building work that Guava has delivered for Homebase. We are impressed with the proven ROI from this work, and the support of Guava to help identify this through analytics and drive double digit natural search growth through visitors and revenue" Multi-Channel Proposition Manager, Homebase

28. Martin Dinham Martin.dinham@guava.com 0870 063 0707