Summary

New Look operates across 570 stores globally and online. Partnering with digital agency MediaVision the company wanted to drive growth and increase revenue by improving non-branded search visibility and organic traffic. To be able to optimise the site against thousands of keyword terms at scale, a series of data analysis tools were built.

This enabled New Look to monitor market and product trends four times faster than previously. By identifying search terms as they started to peak, the company could quickly adjust category search terms and push products most likely to convert to sales across its ecommerce site.

Ongoing search analysis was tracked against paid search activity to divert spend to keywords not performing well organically. This granular and methodical tracking and optimisation approach supported a 50% growth in non-branded traffic and increase in revenue.

Objectives & aims

MediaVision was challenged to help New Look improve non-branded search rankings and traffic.

Implementation, execution & tactics

The campaign began with an analysis of 11,000 target phrases to uncover those with a volume of more than 5,000 monthly searches. Teams monitored these daily to identify trends, to identify which ones to optimise and when, in order to increase New Look’s search visibility. As the company has over 2,100 product categories, MediaVision developed a series of data analysis software tools so that monitoring and optimisation could take place at scale: Tools included:

• Digital Demand Tracker (DDT): combined monthly data from Google AdWords with weekly data from Google Trends across 8,000 keywords. This highlighted key market trends as they began, enabling New Look to make onsite changes in advance.

Alongside onsite insights, the DDT identified trends and data for news stories which helped acquire highquality backlinks to the New Look website. Authoritative backlinks helped websites rank more highly for organic search. Stories featured in the press included Met Gala shopping trends, Squid Game products and dog-owner matching outfits in high-profile publications such as OK! and Washington Post.

• Category Optimisation Tool: crawled over 1,500 categories across the New Look site to identify categories which needed boosting in terms of product search visibility. This data was fed to internal merchandisers, who in turn bulked up categories, allowing MediaVision to increase internal link volumes and improve findability. TheCategory Optimisation Tool was also used in conjunction with the DDT to capture market trends through existing categories or by building out new ones.

• Product Position Tool: To increase landing page conversion rates from organic search, the Product Position Tool helped identify popular keywords for New Look products with large volumes of stock, enabling them to be made more prominent on the website.

• Total Search analysis: This tool performed ongoing cross-referencing of paid search terms with high-performing organic ones, to avoid cannibalisation. This enabled spend to be diverted to areas where New Look needed to improve rankings.

Results

• 98% improvement in SEO visibility across 11,000 phrases
• 380% improvement in top 3 positions
• 58% growth in non-brand traffic
• 50% growth in non-brand revenue

Awards

• UK Digital Growth Awards 2021
  Winner: Best Use of Data