Background
Harvey Nichols was one of the first major accounts I worked on at Mode Digital. We were appointed in September 2011 to increase Harvey Nichols’ organic search traffic and conversions. Whilst working on the account, we were also appointed to conduct a number of separate side projects outside of our original campaign remit.
I was the account lead and primary point of contact from September 2011 to May 2015.
Objectives
- Establish key performance indicators (KPIs)
- Conduct comprehensive keyword research and competitor analysis to define target keywords
- Establish new reporting structure with clear insight around SEO and the organic search space
- Increase Year on Year organic search traffic (excluding variations of trademark terms e.g Harvey Nichols) by 25%
- Increase revenue from organic search channel
- Produce and conduct internal SEO training across various internal departments to influence the company’s organic search performance.
Harvey Nichols Main Website
I was tasked with producing an SEO strategy to increase organic search traffic and conversions across generic terms and Harvey Nichols’ primary clothing brands. The Year on Year overall site traffic target was set at 30%, exclusive of Harvey Nichols trademark terms.
Additional projects included:
The Beauty Bazaar Campaign – I was tasked with promoting and covering as much positive HN Beauty Bazaar press on page one of Google for the term “Beauty Bazaar”. Achieve a top 3 position on Google for the term “Beauty Bazaar” with the new Beauty Bazaar page which was not ranking in the top 5 pages of Google prior to commencing the campaign.
Christmas Hampers Campaign – My team and I were tasked with increasing targeted traffic and sales for food hamper related terms via organic search, and to assist with developing the new Christmas Hampers landing page.
The Challenges
Prior to commencing the campaign, Harvey Nichols was experiencing major internal structure challenges and changes. There were legacy issues with a 3rd party web development agency which resulted in the company actively seeking to utilise it’s own internal web development resource more.
This had a huge impact on the technical recommendations that we made and the time in which they could be implemented. It was clear early on, that we had to invest our time and resource on the areas of SEO that we had greater control over; Content and Blogger Outreach.
Solution
- We produced a technical SEO audit using the criticality index method. We managed to push through and implement the most critical recommendations produced within the technical audit.
- Collaborating with the internal teams at Harvey Nichols, we influenced and supported powerful Content Marketing strategies.
- We devised an extremely effective blogger outreach campaign, which delivered excellent coverage across a range of Harvey Nichols’s brands.
- All of the above was measured and clearly communicated back to the Harcey Nichols team, demonstrating ROI.
Results
Overall Site Performance
- Total generic organic traffic increased by 82.26% year on year (2011 vs. 2012)
- Total generic organic traffic increased by 67.22 Year on Year (2012 vs. 2013)
Beauty Bazzar results (One-off Project October – December 2012)
- Position 1 achieved in December 2012
- 8 of the remaining positions were taken by Beauty Bazaar Press and News, which Mode Digital assisted with.
Christmas Hampers (One-off Project 2012)
The campaign was a major success, so much so that the term “Christmas Hampers’” had a 2146.83 % increase on the previous year’s traffic in the same period. In a tough economic climate, revenue also increased by 176.46% compared to the previous year; Harvey Nichols also sold out on some of their Christmas hamper ranges.
- 161.46% increase in traffic
- 176.46% increase in revenue
“Christmas Hampers” was the 7th most popular natural search term to bring traffic to the Harvey Nichols Web site over the December period
- “Christmas Hampers” term had a 2,146.83% increase in traffic compared with the previous year
- “Christmas hamper” term increased 14th to 3rd
- “Christmas hampers” term increased 13th to 4th
- The term “luxury hampers” increased 9th to 2nd