Well established brands aren’t so concerned with SEO, but for smaller companies targeting HNWI (High Net Worth Individuals), Google offers a huge arena for potential clients and customers. PWC found that 98% of HNWI access the internet daily and a considerable amount of these will be away from British shores, with Barclays Corporate Bank finding that 39% of international audiences were more inclined to buy a product if it flew the Union Jack.
With SEO, the luxury marketplace is a very different landscape compared to what may be seen as ‘conventional’ SEO. When targeting HNWI, money is rarely going to be a deciding factor in whether or not a sale or transaction is going to be completed. The user is more likely going to have a lot more intent in what they want to buy or enquire about. These businesses are wanting to gain visibility from people looking to satisfy an emotional desire, one that goes beyond our basic needs and offers a significant amount of pleasure to the user.
Whether searching for a holiday or branded (hedonic) products, users aren’t looking to be informed by the message appearing in the search results, they need to be pulled in and sold the experience that the product can offer them. You need to ensure that you are fuelling those desires and making your mark on users intrigue and intent.
SEO is the perfect arena for your business to start focusing on, and below are some key pointers for you to start working on that will help you grow your organic visibility in Google.
1. Choosing A Searchable Focus
We briefly covered the need to satisfy the emotional desire of a user, and with the luxury marketplace, you have to be concise and creative with the way that you use language. But with search engine optimisation, you also have to be realistic to what general keywords users will be searching for in Google.
For example, if you were working in the luxury property market and wanted to differentiate yourself away from your typical estate agents, you may be inclined to label yourself as a ‘luxury property agency’. While for display and other marketing purposes this may be more on-brand and relevant for your business, the simple matter is that people do not search for ‘luxury property agency’.
‘Luxury estate agents’ is much more commonly searched for, and while this categorises the business more alongside your standard marketplace providers, you are keeping in line with what users expect you to be called.
With SEO, your page title and header tags are the most important ranking factors, but they are also each pages main selling point, the headline that appears in Google SERPs (search engine results pages) and one of the first things a user will see when landing on a page. While using luxury language is needed to convey meaning, reserve this to the on-page copy and meta description. Here is where you entice the user and sell them the vision of what your company or brand can offer them.
2. Unified Link Building Strategy
Links continue to be central to any SEO strategy, while also becoming more and more difficult to gain. This is because Google continues to scrutinise sites backlink profiles and websites demand more and more for a link back.
To get things straight right away, paid links are of no benefit to an SEO strategy as they are given the rel=”nofollow” meta tag attribute, meaning the link is telling Google that it should not be considered when judging a sites PageRank (the measurement of the quality and quantity of links). This being said, the coverage and referral traffic these links generate should still be considered as there could be a lot of worth still. SEO marketers can go some way to feedback on these links by monitoring referral traffic in Google Analytics and branded search enquiries in Google Search Console to judge how successful the link is.
Back to the point of the subtitle, having a unified link building strategy is really important for SEO, as link building more and more relies on digital PR activities and outreach to be really successful. A competitor backlink analysis is a great way of beginning to construct a PR campaign, as it gives you an overall picture of any campaigns they have run, as well as how successful they have been, and how many of the links they gain are follow.
It can also highlight websites which currently do not link back to your own. These websites should be seen as prime candidates to reach out to and try and get a link back from, especially if they have a high authority score. By also looking at these high-quality links, you can decipher ways to either try and replace the link with your own, or an alternative story which may be of interest to the website or publication.
3. Unique and Targeted Content
An effective content strategy is integral to any SEO campaign. While the above two points hold significant weight, if you don’t have the content to accompany then there really is little point in trying. Content marketing is where you carefully present your products to Google and its users. While minimalism is often popular for companies, if you want to sell who you are and what you do, without a clear definition that contains the keywords you want to appear for, you will not be benefitting from the traffic and revenue that can be provided through Google.
You should be seeking to educate your customers on what your brand and product can deliver for them. Appeal to their desires and answer their questions, and you will be increasing the likelihood of users converting when landing on the page.
Blogs are the best way to do this, as they allow flexibility to be as niche or broad as you desire. You are able to answer questions and cover broader searches which don’t warrant a dedicated page, and also offers up the opportunity to target featured snippets, which gives users more information in the SERP and places your result above all other search results.
While great as an SEO tool, blogs can also be used cross-channel, being pushed out on social media and occasionally being used as an outreach for links as well. The topics are endless with blogs, and they don’t necessarily have to have a significant search volume either. If you can get a featured snippet and get a blog ranking at the top of the SERP, and one person clicks through and converts into a major sale or enquiry, then the short amount of time it takes to write the blog becomes a major win.
At Ricemedia, we have been getting amazing results for a range of luxury businesses, both in the UK and abroad. Contact our team today to find out how we can help you with your SEO strategy.
