Amara’s proactive and reactive SERP strategies earn them 65% revenue uplift

Luxury homeware brand Amara was one of the ‘First to market’ online in UK homeware, and has been operating digitally since 2005.

But it’s only in more recent years that the retailer has turned its attention to the opportunity in organic search.

Amara has managed to retain a competitive edge by developing a shrewd two-pronged proactive / reactive SEO strategy, using daily search intelligence; a move which has seen its organic ‘Home accessories’ revenues skyrocket by 65% in June this year.

What's more, the SEO team at Amara are starting to be recognised for their digital expertise; having been shortlisted for 'Best In-House Team' at the UK Search Awards.

We spoke to Alina Ghost, Amara’s SEO manager, to find out how they got there, formulas for success and tips for growing value…

The challenge

Growing SEO visibility

The UK homeware market is worth £12.5 bn as of this year (2018), and is only set for future growth.

Amara’s number one priority is growing visibility to ensure its place as the go-to premium home retailer within this market.

In the first quarter of 2018, Alina set herself and her team the challenge of growing their most valuable product line ‘Home accessories’ to achieve this.

The solution

Daily organic performance data

The Digital team at Amara monitor their SEO visibility across their most valuable searches on a daily basis, to spot threats to opportunity and preserve performance.

Using daily search alerts, tracking and collaborative insights, Amara was able to develop both a proactive and reactive SEO strategy…

“We use Pi because it’s really proactive. I can take actions from it pretty much straight away.”

Alina Ghost, SEO Manager, Amara

1. Proactive strategy:

Amara constantly tests and assess changes

The Digital team at Amara keep a keen eye on their SEO visibility, and test every time they decide to make a change to the site.

In Q1 of this year, Amara set itself the mammoth task of optimising category and subcategory pages, with new unique copy across the entire site.

The aim was to not only differentiate all category page content enough to boost visibility in search engines, but also to improve customer experience.

Testing the effect of these premeditated changes on the visibility of hundreds of pages, across hundreds of search terms every day, Amara was able to react instantly to any drops in performance and maintain constant visibility; a strategy which undoubtedly contributed to its revenue success, according to Alina.

Data taken from Pi Market Intelligence

2. Reactive strategy:

Amara use search data to support teams across the business

Amara’s presence online affects the operations of teams throughout the business - and vice versa.

The Digital team needed to ensure Amara’s visibility, while supporting the decisions of the Brand, Merchandising and Trading team.

Merchandise and Trading teams: Stock de-indexed

The Digital team faced a big challenge in Q1 of this year, when the Merchandise and Trading teams made a change to stock on the website.

This was a calculated move - The M&T team had been using commercial search data from the Pi Platform to select their most valuable products - but some category pages slipped through the net and were subsequently de-indexed.

Data taken from the Pi Platform

The affected pages showcased some of Amara’s most searched and highly converting products: ‘Cushions’ and ‘Brand + product’ terms.

This had the potential to cause huge revenue loss, had Amara not been able to instantly identify a drop in visibility, and reindex the pages in question using Pi Datametrics.

“Pi is a really effective way of seeing what the issue is, and how we can overcome it to make sure that we get that SEO visibility back up. Brands and designers do really well for Amara, so we need to make sure that we retain that traffic and visibility.”

Alina Ghost, SEO Manager, Amara

Brand teams: Premium messaging affects search visibility

Amara is a luxury brand, and the language used across the site reinforces that message. But premium language doesn’t always match what a customer would enter into a search box.

Alina and her team needed to uphold the brand tone, while also maintaining the language that would lead a potential customer to their site.

Putting Google’s Rankbrain algorithm to the test, Alina’s team worked alongside the Brand team to weave more colloquial, higher volume search terms into the copy across the site.

To avoid undermining their premium positioning, terms like ‘Kids pillow cases’ were incorporated into subtle areas including the footer or product descriptions, while ‘Childrens bed linen’ featured pride of place in the title.

The semantic relationship was recognised by Google, and the category pages in question were awarded a huge visibility uplift across, across both premium and colloquial search terms.

The results

Data taken from Pi Market Intelligence

Amara’s Digital team has driven increased revenue online, continued to promote the value of search to different departments throughout the business and steadily increased their market share in a hugely competitive market.

“Pi is a really great way to show that our efforts equal good value and return on investment.”

Alina Ghost, Amara, SEO Manager

Uplift success

• 65% ‘Home accessories’ revenue uplift in June
• 40% average revenue uplift
• Brand visibility increase across multiple category pages
• Performance improved across multiple departments
• The Amara SEO team shortlisted for 'Best In-House Team' at the UK Search Awards

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