Stay Fresh, Stay Cool: Why Is It Important to Refresh Content on Category Pages for Fashion E-Commerce?

Identify your best performing categories

While it is important to keep producing new and relevant content for your shop, it's smart to dedicate some time (for a medium size content team each quarter should be feasible) to go back through some of the best performing categories of your shop, compare the performance over a period and, if necessary, refresh that content. 

By going back through existing content and refreshing it, a signal is sent to search engines that changes have been made, meaning the content will appear relevant for related searches.

Going back through older content also gives you the chance to update the information including any new intel on the topic that was initially left out. This is especially valid for keywords and terminology in fashion, which might change faster than other niches. By updating existing content we are able to add value to our categories and, consequently, to our users, as well as delivering that content to organic search results.

This is how we, at ubup, decided to structure the process: 

• Monitor the best performing categories

• Compare and observe competitors

• Ask questions: What is a user looking for? What kind of information does s/he need? What is the best way to serve this information? 

• Don't be afraid to test, try and risk - adding new features (images, links?) 

• Measure success

Run a content audit for fashion categories

Content organic performance is dynamic, which means that no organic ranking is guaranteed and that unfortunately, a good performance does not last forever. Running a quarterly review of the categories performance can highlight not only potential improvements but also missed opportunities and potential conversion rate blockers. A very simple solution is to run a comparison with Google Analytics, creating dedicated segments for the activity. Again, once every quarter can be a good time-frame to monitor improvements or decreases in the performance and take the right actions in your content audit. It is always useful to monitor shakes in the search results and check what the competitors might have been doing in the meantime:

• Do they have more products? 

• New content? 

• A newer/better categorisation?

Or might find out that your shop has: 

• Broken internal links (maybe you don't sell a brand or a category anymore?)

• You are missing out on keywords (do your categories need a new keyword analysis?)

• Content is being cannibalised by other categories

• A category with fewer products that is therefore less relevant

• Or simply sandals do not sell as well as boots in winter, and there are fewer searches due to seasonality :-)

• Context and correlation play an important role, think smart! 

Create a roadmap for your content refreshment 

It's easier to spot weaknesses/bugs/errors but it's much harder to correct them or to improve what is not working, especially if the changes are not scalable and every error has to be handled singularly. 

That is why it is important for each content team to set priorities and act based on the KPI that is most relevant to your business. So, setting a feasible roadmap for your team becomes as important as spotting the weaknesses of your shop. 

An ideal content update roadmap should not miss the following points:

• URLs

• KPIs (revenue, visits, orders)

• Rankings

• Dates where updates and changes are marked (this will be useful also when reporting to other stakeholders)

Monitor and compare your competitors

Setting a benchmark and adding at least two other main competitors is a key step when monitoring the direction of your business. In the end we are all competing for the same goal and there can be always something useful to learn from the competition. Monitor their results and compare them with yours: observing the way their strategy evolves can improve your performance as well. A tab in your report should always be dedicated to the competition. 

Learn by doing

There is no perfect way to approach a category's re-optimisation process. Refreshing the content of your categories does not mean only updating some paragraphs or adding a couple of keywords. Sometimes we might find out that the products in that category are wrongly sorted; or maybe what is working in the fashion vertical does not work in the travel vertical for example. Adding an image sometimes might work better than adding a new paragraph or optimising for more keywords. In some cases this exercise might even lead to a complete new CRO analysis. But one thing is for sure: never take your performance for granted! 

About ubup: 

ubup stands for ?used but precious?, and ? true to this message ? offers clothing that is used but just as precious as ever. With more than 900,000 second-hand fashion items and accessories from over 1,500 brands: customers can choose their new favourite clothing items from different categories such as men's, women's or kids, making the shop a true fashion paradise.

Text: Davide Pettenuzzo, SEO team lead, ubup
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