Fashion retailers with an active blog saw 277% more traffic during lockdown

New analysis of 100 leading fashion ecommerce sites throughout the lockdown has revealed that those with an active blog reaped the benefits, and made the most of the pandemic’s online shopping boom – seeing 277% more traffic on average than those with an outdated blog page.

The research was carried out by digital marketing agency Impression, and topping the study’s rankings was online US shoe retailer Zappos.com, closely followed by Gap.com and Nike.com, all performing well in the key areas. Other retailers to feature in the top 15 included Adidas.com, Forever21.com, Urbanoutfitters.com, Asos.com, Next.co.uk, Hm.com and Zalando.com.

The results were based on 26 factors including their domain rating (DR), number of top 10 organic Google rankings, average monthly traffic, and estimated traffic value to find the specific elements contributing to a fashion brand’s online presence.

The study found multiple factors that were pivotal to the success of Zappos.com in Google’s search rankings, including the amount of authoritative websites linking to the domain, the speed of the site and its accessibility for all visitors. However, the factor to have the biggest impact on the success of all the top sites was an active blog or press page.

Head of search engine optimisation (SEO) at Impression, Petar Jovetic, said: “Our analysis of these 100 sites and 2,600 data points show that blogs had the biggest positive correlation with the amount of organic traffic to a site, which in turn means more potential customers. Those with an active blog page saw 277% more traffic on average than those with an outdated blog page.

“This implies that it pays to invest in a long-tail content strategy and be a part of the industry conversation, despite our findings showing some fashion brands have discontinued their blogs – an ill-advised move that will lead them to inevitably miss out on inbound traffic and, potentially, custom.

“It is important that blogs remain up-to-date and optimal for users and search engines. Due to their timely nature, the content can easily become outdated and the blog itself can be neglected or seen as less important, but it’s clear they are in fact an important source of insight and are an easy way to attract potential customers higher up the marketing funnel, while eventually driving revenue for businesses.”

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