David vs Goliath: The rise of sustainable fashion against fast fashion giants
Slides from BrightonSEO October 2022.
This talk covered the rise of sustainable brands against fast fashion giants. Opening with a brief intro into the David vs Goliath principle and how that can be aligned to online retail today.
This talk was a comparison of the ecommerce space, specifically fast fashion and its impact socially, environmentally and lastly online.
Providing SEO "stones" to use against the Goliath of your industry.
21. Target Goliath’s weaknesses
Speed
1
Large sites suffer from
slow site speed
Indexation
More products than
crawl budget
2
Content
Too many pages to
create unique content for
3 Maintenance
Auditing sites is tricky
without big teams & tools
4
22. #1 Goliath are subject to more errors
Source: Screaming Frog
35%
36%
14%
15%
Broken links in sitemap
=
=
URLs not in sitemap
=
URLs in sitemap
=
81%
11%
8%
23. Keep your sitemap updated
Set a process to manage OOS products
Don’t forget orphan pages
24. #2 Google can’t find Goliath’s content
%
of
URLs
0%
40%
30%
10%
20%
Greater
click depth
=
lower
crawlability
Clicks from homepage to URL
=
=
Source: Screaming Frog
25. Keep the main navigation simple
Use category pages to link to products
Review internal links
28. #4 Goliath is slower than you think
Source: PageSpeed Insights
* Origin data - Mobile
2.1 s
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) 4.1 s
First Input Delay (FID) 172 ms
25 ms
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) 0.26
0
PASS
FAIL
32. If you need help
defeating Goliath,
let’s talk!
Notes de l'éditeur
Hello BrightonSEO. It’s so great to see you all! My name is Monet and I’m very excited to talk to you about the rise of sustainable fashion against fast fashion giants. But first, let me tell you a little bit about my agency.
We’re Tug, Performance Digital since 2006. We focus on an intelligent combination of media, technology, and creative to deliver fantastic results for our clients.
We have offices in London, Berlin, New York, Toronto, Sydney and Singapore with over 100 experts globally with local expertise in all these key regions. We manage over 200 million dollars in media for our clients and we’re continuing to grow!
Today i’ll be speaking about…
For those of you who don’t know, In modern usage, the phrase "David and Goliath" has taken on a secular meaning, denoting an underdog situation, a contest where a smaller, weaker opponent faces a much bigger, stronger adversary; if successful, the underdog may win in an unusual or surprising way.
Goliath challenges to single combat
David volunteers with nothing more than a handful of stones
And in the end David was victorious
Principle!!!
In both, the sentiment is teaching courage, commitment, and resilience.
Fast fashion, for example, is heavily influenced by
the styles and trends seen every season on catwalks and presentations from around the world. Recreating styles and designs by luxury designers, fast fashion brands create at an alarming rate, with some releasing new products every week.
Huge online presence driving nearly half a million est. monthly sessions alone. These are the big hitters
But let’s not forget they’re at the top for a reason. They have the resources to build aggressive marketing strategies that David may not be able to fund as start-up/or smaller brands
And not in a good way . Some brands you may recognise, and these are some of the biggest contributors to global emissions and human rights law breaches in their unethical practices. But we want to focus on their impact within ecommerce
Real problem for consumers is navigating retailers to understand who is and who really isn’t sustainable starting to think about social and environmental impact, how you package products
https://www.insider.com/toxic-chemicals-in-shein-and-other-fast-fashion-clothing-2022-8
https://www.newsweek.com/woman-says-shein-product-urgent-care-chemical-poisoning-1740810
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/aug/27/revealed-uk-fast-fashion-staff-deprived-of-pay-and-benefits-by-jobs-agency
And not in a good way . Some brands you may recognise, and these are some of the biggest contributors to global emissions and human rights law breaches in their unethical practices. But we want to focus on their impact within ecommerce clothing is responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions.
https://www.insider.com/toxic-chemicals-in-shein-and-other-fast-fashion-clothing-2022-8
https://www.newsweek.com/woman-says-shein-product-urgent-care-chemical-poisoning-1740810
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/aug/27/revealed-uk-fast-fashion-staff-deprived-of-pay-and-benefits-by-jobs-agency
And not in a good way . Some brands you may recognise, and these are some of the biggest contributors to global emissions and human rights law breaches in their unethical practices. But we want to focus on their impact within ecommerce
https://www.insider.com/toxic-chemicals-in-shein-and-other-fast-fashion-clothing-2022-8
https://www.newsweek.com/woman-says-shein-product-urgent-care-chemical-poisoning-1740810
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/aug/27/revealed-uk-fast-fashion-staff-deprived-of-pay-and-benefits-by-jobs-agency
This incomparable churn is unsustainable socially, but also digitally too…
Although online sales are set to increase in 2022, people are wising up to the malpractices of fast fashion brands
But you know, inflation
This incomparable churn is unsustainable socially, but also digitally too…
which the company says will help empower users to reduce the impact of overconsumption, textile waste, and global carbon emissions created by the fashion industry.
This incomparable churn is unsustainable socially, but also digitally too…
which the company says will help empower users to reduce the impact of overconsumption, textile waste, and global carbon emissions created by the fashion industry.
Since 2020 there have been 20 Google updates - This timeline captures
Since April 22 update rankings have dropped for many ecomms - helpful content to weed out content created for search engines
Publishing high quality product reviews on your ecommerce or product review site can help shoppers learn more about a product before purchase. For example, reviews can guide shoppers between competing products, helping shoppers pick the best make or model for their needs and budget.
We as as SEO’s need to be adaptable and remember the Google experience is ALWAYS user first and Google is going to do everything in its power to ensure we know this!
So, it finally looks like the algorithm updates could work in our favour IF we identify traditional Goliath
Legacy websites that often paper over the cracks when trying to find solutions to problems they have with a growing site
Big problems solved with temporary fixes that cause other issues down the line
62K crawled 3.5% of all urls - orphan page little authority 3662 urls
A downside of fast fashion/large ecommerce sites is always chasing trends, which leads to endless product launches (urls) and pages falling between the cracks creating low click depth and risking the crawlability of
Conducting keyword research to understand what your audience is looking for
Deindex unnecessary pages
Remove discontinued pages - to avoid soft 404s
Regularly review pages to avoid duplicates - especially to find duplicate product description pages
Be transparent with customers on your sustainability journey
Maybe crawl sitemap Product review
Helpful content update
Google has been penalising large ecomms and publishing sites with its latest updates for trying to target too much and producing thin content as a result.
Take advantage of this by finding your niche and embracing it. Create content specific to this, with the main intention of helping users.
Knowing what you want to rank for - based on your product offering, will allow you to refine your keyword targeting while putting your consumer at the forefront.
Conducting keyword research to understand what your audience is looking for
Deindex unnecessary pages
Remove discontinued pages - to avoid soft 404s
Regularly review pages to avoid duplicates - especially to find duplicate product description pages
Be transparent with customers on your sustainability journey
Faster the site higher the conversion rate
The most important would be to have a clean and simple website so that shoppers can navigate through easily. The next point would be to have clear CTAs (call to action) so that the shopper knows exactly what to do
Revenue
Users are likely to avoid shopping with you if your site is slow Google has proven this
Less content weighing your site down
Legacy CMS’s
Wordpress plugin for lazy loading - L&Y on wordpress