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What I Learned Working in Fast Fashion SEO During a Takeover

Fast Fashion & SEO

Fast Fashion & SEO “Fast fashion is a term used to describe the clothing industry's business model of replicating recent catwalk trends and high-fashion designs, mass- producing them at a low cost, and bringing them to retail stores quickly, while demand is at its highest.”

Fast Fashion & SEO URL Type https://www.quizclothing.co.uk/clothes/dresses/ Fast Fashion https://www.next.co.uk/shop/gender-women-category-dresses-0 High Street https://www.riverisland.com/c/women/dresses High Street https://www.asos.com/women/dresses/cat/?cid=8799 Hybrid https://www.prettylittlething.com/clothing/dresses.html Fast Fashion https://www.boohoo.com/womens/dresses Fast Fashion https://femmeluxe.co.uk/dresses Fast Fashion https://www.silkfred.com/womens/clothing/dresses Fast Fashion https://www.johnlewis.com/browse/women/womens-dresses/_/N-flw High Street https://www2.hm.com/en_gb/ladies/shop-by-product/dresses.html Fast Fashion https://www.matalan.co.uk/womens/dresses Fast Fashion https://www.marksandspencer.com/l/women/dresses High Street https://www.nastygal.com/gb/womens/dresses Fast Fashion https://www.newlook.com/uk/womens/clothing/dresses/c/uk-womens-clothing-dresses Fast Fashion https://www.very.co.uk/women/dresses/e/b/1655.end Online Department https://direct.asda.com/george/women/dresses/D1M1G20C1,default,sc.html Supermarket https://www.neverfullydressed.co.uk/collections/dresses Boutique https://www.little-mistress.com/dresses-c101 Boutique https://www.houseoffraser.co.uk/women/dresses Online Department https://www.karenmillen.com/womens/dresses Fast Fashion

Fast Fashion & SEO 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 Sustainable Terms sustainable dresses - Search Volume (UK) organic dresses - Search Volume (UK) recycled dresses - Search Volume (UK) vintage dresses - Search Volume (UK) second hand dresses - Search Volume (UK)

Fast Fashion & SEO 0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000 140000 Popular Organic Dress Terms dresses - Search Volume (UK) maxi dress - Search Volume (UK) party dress - Search Volume (UK) bodycon dress - Search Volume (UK)

Volatile SERPs - Dresses 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 https://www.quizclothing.co.uk/clothes/dresses/ https://www.next.co.uk/shop/gender-women-category-dresses-0 https://www.riverisland.com/c/women/dresses https://www.asos.com/women/dresses/cat/?cid=8799 https://www.prettylittlething.com/clothing/dresses.html https://www.boohoo.com/womens/dresses https://femmeluxe.co.uk/dresses https://www.silkfred.com/womens/clothing/dresses https://www.johnlewis.com/browse/women/womens-dresses/_/N-flw https://www2.hm.com/en_gb/ladies/shop-by-product/dresses.html

Volatile SERPs – Wedding Guest Dresses 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 https://www.asos.com/women/dresses/dresses-for-weddings/cat/?cid=13934 https://www.silkfred.com/collection/wedding-guest-dresses https://www.coastfashion.com/womens/dresses/wedding-guest-dresses https://www.chichiclothing.com/collections/wedding-guests https://www.johnlewis.com/browse/women/womens-dresses/wedding-guest/_/N-flwZ1z0ropu https://www.prettylittlething.com/clothing/dresses/wedding-guest-dresses.html https://www.boohoo.com/womens/dresses/wedding-guest-dresses https://www.quizclothing.co.uk/shop-by-occasion/wedding-guest/ https://www.axparis.com/collections/wedding-guest-dresses https://www.next.co.uk/shop/gender-women-category-dresses/use-weddingguest

Authority Still > E-A-T

Missguided & Governance

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 13.07.2015 31.08.2015 12.10.2015 23.11.2015 04.01.2016 15.02.2016 28.03.2016 09.05.2016 20.06.2016 01.08.2016 12.09.2016 31.10.2016 12.12.2016 23.01.2017 06.03.2017 17.04.2017 29.05.2017 17.07.2017 28.08.2017 09.10.2017 20.11.2017 01.01.2018 12.02.2018 26.03.2018 07.05.2018 25.06.2018 06.08.2018 17.09.2018 29.10.2018 10.12.2018 21.01.2019 04.03.2019 15.04.2019 27.05.2019 08.07.2019 19.08.2019 07.10.2019 18.11.2019 30.12.2019 10.02.2020 30.03.2020 11.05.2020 22.06.2020 10.08.2020 21.09.2020 02.11.2020 14.12.2020 25.01.2021 08.03.2021 19.04.2021 31.05.2021 12.07.2021 23.08.2021 04.10.2021 15.11.2021 27.12.2021 07.02.2022 21.03.2022 02.05.2022 13.06.2022 25.07.2022 05.09.2022 17.10.2022 Missguided – Organic Visibility A Decline of Epic Proportions Missguided’s fall from the one of fast fashion’s top organic players and the absolute authority in dresses, was largely due to the impact of Google’s Core updates, and a lack of SEO governance within the business.

Daily Analysis & Reporting Marketing Trade E-Comm Buying UX & CRO Investors CEO

Demand or Organic Visibility? • Year on year pretty much redundant due to COVID and the economy, but 2019 the best guide • Organic reporting day on day or or even week on week has serious flaws from an SEO perspective

Tech SEO Challenges SearchPilot ODN Tech Stack Other Channels Backlog Archaic Magento Resource/Ability

Keyword & Content Mapping • A process for identifying a peak in demand, in time for buying to find the stock and then populate a PLP likely to compete with the established sites, is hard • Again, year on year fairly useless as a barometer of demand • Content needs to be keyword rich then go through brand guidelines, trade team, UX and CRO • Then there is the battle with e-comm, UX and CRO around how much content can actually be exposed on mobile PDP/PLP 0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000 Festival Outfits – UK Trends (5 Yr)

Menu / Navigation

Impact of Menus on Visibility 0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 Knitwear 0 0.001 0.002 0.003 0.004 0.005 0.006 Festival Shop Even with strong a strong internal linking strategy, the impact on visibility of a PLP when in the menu is huge Although these are clearly seasonal items, these fluctuations were directly impacted by the presence on the navigation

UX, CRO & Conversion Rate If traffic is struggling, attention inevitably turns to CvR, which almost always ends up badly for SEO • Aggressive promos • Whittled down menus • Sale pages cannibalising existing categories • Aggressive Pop Ups • Negative impact can be avoided with collaboration These strategies tend to intensify when there is investor pressure, potential sales being negotiated and the threat of administration looming

Factors such as stock impacted performance outside of Core Updates, which is still the case But as Core updates continued to hurt visibility, SEO teams had little ability to arrest the decline and external issues such as supply started to take its toll Their legacy and vanity ”dresses” ranking is perhaps the best example 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 Missguided - Dresses Ranking Crucial Ranking Decline - Dresses * Indicative of how sophisticated Google now is when it comes to ranking these terms in real time, and not just based on classic ranking factors

• Out of Stock process for any e-commerce website is crucial • Automatic NoIndexing of any OOS PDP meant that visibility was hard to regain • Product descriptions and SEO content also disappears when a PDP becomes OOS • This contributed to 30% of the organic traffic drop suffered by the brand since 2020 Core updates Out of Stock – Crucial Impact

Investors, Administration & Takeover

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 Missguided Organic Visibility - 2022 Tumultuous Year New investors, pre- Christmas Administrators Takeover

Collaboration Impossible • Despite all manner of migration checklists and roadmaps, with no collaboration possible with new development teams, it was pretty futile

Quick & Dirty Replatform Outlet for fresh content Advanced structured data Liaison between Heads of SEO and developers or staging site A year’s worth of colour PLP work 6 legacy international territories auto redirected

Huge Loss of Equity & Authority

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