Words by Natalie Took, PR executive at Salience, a marketing agency which recently released its latest report on the jewellery and watch trade.
Being seen online is so important nowadays. It’s not enough to have a solid bricks and mortar presence. You must also catch potential customers’ eyes online.
There are many ways to succeed online, including SEO strategy, social media and page speed. At Salience we produce an annual report that looks at how well specialists are doing online. Our report for Jewellery and Watch Retailers between 2018 – 2019 has recently been released and it looks like the market has lost its shine.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE JEWELLERY AND WATCH MARKET?
One of the main metrics we look at is visibility. To do this we compare how visible all the brands are for a number of keywords that they are likely to be competing over. This metric allows us to rank the top jewellery and watch retailers. We do this in order of how visible they are online. It also allows us to see have the ranking has changed compared to the previous year’s results.
This year, the market has lost -6% of it’s visibility. Not a good start. It seems that broader companies, and not just specialists, are starting to rank for many of the keywords. For instance, if you search for keywords related to sports watches, the only specialist retailer that tends to appear in the first page of the search results is Pocket Watch. Many of those ranking are not jewellery and watch specialists.
BEAVERBROOKS HAS THE SHINE
One brand that has done really well in the past year is Beaverbrooks. This brand has seen a visibility increase of 33%. Whilst this might not sound like the largest increase (some have seen increases of over 100% further down the rankings) but it has had a huge effect. Because of this increase (and other brands losses), Beaverbrooks has jumped from sixth place all the way to second place.
They rank really well for colour related keywords, such as “gold watch”. However, as they have little content on their category pages and so they could lose this spot in the next year. However, if they polish their SEO strategy, they could be in the running for taking the top spot from H Samuel.
PANDORA HAS DULLED
On the other hand, Pandora has not had a good year. This brand has lost 38% of their visibility, which has resulted in a drop to fifth place from second.
However, Pandora are doing really well on social media. They have a huge amount of brand searches and a good owned social score. It seems all their efforts are here, rather than SEO.
WHAT DOES THIS YEAR HOLD FOR THE JEWELLERY AND WATCH MARKET?
In all honesty, we can not say for definite. Last year was pretty rough with regular algorithm updates making the SERPs get tangled. It’s unlikely that this year will be any different.
So what should the jewellery and watch market do to improve their online shine? Like anything, online strategy requires constant maintenance. You must regularly polish it to keep it at it’s best. Although we never know what the next update will do, nor when it will hit, we can make some assumptions based on recent updates.
Firstly, good quality content is important. You need to show that you have the authority to give advice, that you are trustworthy and have expertise. It is also important that you have a fast page speed; people tend to be impatient and won’t hang around waiting for a website to load. Another thing to check is that your website is mobile-first, as many people will now browse on their phone rather than a computer. Lastly, having some good quality backlinks will help to prove you’re an authoritative source.
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