Which are the most searched fashion brands on Google and why?

In the battle for market share between the world’s biggest fashion retailers, online visibility is central to success. But what does it take to hit the coveted top spot on Google’s search engine results pages and who’s getting it right? That’s what UK agency MediaVision set out to discover with their Fashion Search Performance Report, a first of its kind analysis of fashion brands leading the way online.

The Battle for Online Visibility

Today’s online shopping environment is especially competitive, and with paid advertising becoming increasingly expensive year on year, more brands are relying on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)as a new customer acquisition channel. As well as being a cost-effective promotional tactic, brands are achieving better organic results on the SERPs using SEO in conjunction with digital PR, social media, content marketing and conversion rate optimisation.

This is crucial because ranking visibility is pivotal to a brand’s bottom line. In fact, it’s estimated that every 1% increase in non-brand rankings can increase annual revenue by an additional £80,000. Having first-hand experience working with fashion clients of our own, we know the challenges brands face trying to improve this visibility. This report shows the big department stores are consistently winning, however it also shows that brands that invest well in SEO are achieving great results and gaining market share.

Brands Leading the Way

To identify fashion brands leading the race to the top of Google’s organic search results, we analysed more than 2,000 phrases in women and men’s fashion then examined a number of different metrics to uncover the top eight best performing brands overall. Here’s a snippet of the leaderboards.

Top 10 women's brands

Top 10 men's brands

The top eight performing brands across men’s and women’s fashion

1. Asos
2. House of Fraser
3. Debenhams
4. John Lewis
5. eBay
6. Next
7. Amazon
8. Marks & Spencer

Department stores generally tend to have higher ranking percentages because of their large product lists and budget for extensive advertising and marketing tactics, but what’s even more interesting is that independent brands are surpassing them. Studying the results, we saw Asos crushing it in almost all categories coming in at number one ahead of House of Fraser, Debenhams, John Lewis, eBay and even Amazon.

Here’s a few things the top eight brands have in common:

• - Each consistently performs in keyword rankings across women and men’s fashion phrases.
• - All the most crucial onsite elements for users and search engines are in place.
• - Their product ranges are vast, enabling them to leverage the authority of other brands.
• - Each has an internationalisation strategy in place which enables rankings across territories.

Competing in Online Fashion Retail

For fashion brands to be able to compete in the challenging and crowded online landscape, a few key SEO elements need to be in place both on and off their websites. These elements, combined with strategic marketing tactics like digital PR, social media and content, have the ability to not only increase brand awareness, but to improve reach and traffic. This has a huge influence on ranking visibility and ultimately, revenue.

Four Important Elements for Success

1. Information Architecture (IA)

This is an onsite element that refers to a way a site is organised, labelled and prioritised. If a site is easy to use, logically laid out and a pleasure to navigate, users will love it and so will search engines when they crawl it to index its information.

Who does it well?

Asos does a sterling job of ensuring that its vast number of static pages are all set up with unique, targeted keywords and page content. Their granular filtering options also allow for a large number of landing page variations, allowing them to capitalise on their use of secondary and long tail keywords. At a close second, Debenhams generates static pages for each of their filter options, giving them an opportunity to increase their rankings for specific search phrases.

2. Titling and Tagging

This is another onsite element that’s crucial for success. It refers to the meta data a site implements on its backend which enables a search engine to accurately read and interpret its content. Titling and tagging has a strong influence on search engine rankings.

Who does it well?

Again, both Asos and Debenhams are leaders in this category, using meta data and targeted keywords throughout their sites on all top-level category and static sub-category pages. This enables them to rank higher on Search Engine Results Pages for a wider range of targeted search phrases and keywords.

3. Backlink Profile

This is an offsite element and probably one of the most influential factors when it comes to search engine rankings. The more high quality websites that link back to yours the better, as it raises your profile and authority in Google’s eyes and leads to better ranking visibility. The strength of a backlink is judged by the domain authority of the site it comes from. For example, a link from a site with a domain authority of 90 would be more valuable than a link from a domain authority of 20.

Who does it well?

The percentage of high quality links and mentions from other websites to Asos is high and includes sites like DailyMail, BuzzFeed, BusinessInsider and Mashable, for example. Even better, is that a lot of these sites mention Asos organically, which raises its profile even more.

4. Promotional Exposure

One of the best ways for a brand to increase its online presence is by building relationships with others to gain press hits, mentions and links from high authority domains, ultimately making their backlink profile more powerful.

Who does it well?

Despite having no physical stores Asos takes the lead in this too. Maintaining a consistent presence in online and offline media is one of the secrets to this brand’s success, enabling it to target a massive variety of audiences and ensuring it gets seen in multiple spaces online at once. This has a significant impact on brand presence and ultimately contributes positively to ranking visibility.

Find out More

See the full list of top ranking sites across women and men’s fashion in the Fashion Search Performance Report, and discover what they could be doing to raise their profiles even more.