Competitor Page Rank Analysis: A Case Study

The Top Shelf position is the holy grail of ecommerce: 65% of sales are generated by the first 8 search results, or ‘Top Shelf,’ on a retailer’s website.  Drop out of the Top Shelf and you’re losing out; drop off of page one, and sales slow to a trickle.  

Understanding your product and category, and what customers search for when they’re looking for your product on a retailer’s website, are the pillars of any keyword strategy, but another important datapoint to consider is your competitors’ keyword strategy.  While you can’t eavesdrop on their marketing meetings, you can gain insights and ideas by tracking how your competitors’ keywords are performing on retailer sites.

A key feature in the Upshelf dashboard is tracking daily product page rank on retailer websites for both your own and your competitor’s products, and giving you clear, easy-to-understand visuals to see how your products are performing vs. competitor products. 

Monitoring this data over time is invaluable to understand how changes to product detail pages affects your owned products page rank, but an often-overlooked resource is the detailed data about how your competitors are performing.

Competitor Page Rank Case Study:  Product X

X Brand have been using the Upshelf dashboard for 6 months, and undertake a quarterly review of their keyword strategy.  

Their flagship product, Product X, is ranking well for the tracked keywords of ‘A,’ ‘B,’ and ‘C,’ landing on Page One 100% of all searches for those terms on retailer websites, and in the Top Shelf for two of those keywords in 80% of all searches.

However, their strongest competitor product, Competitor Y, has consistently outperformed Product X in both Q1 and Q2 across all keywords. Taking a deeper look into the data, they find the following:

• On Retailer 1’s website for all tracked locations in a specific geographical Region, the Product Detail Page for Product X is outdated
• Competitor Y includes the keyword ‘B’ in their product title, even though it’s not included in the product title on packaging or in other instances
• Taking a look at the product detail page for Competitor Y on several retailer sites, they find the keyword density for ‘A’ is much higher in Competitor Y’s product description than it is in the Product Y description
• The X Brand team also notices frequent use of another keyword, ‘D,’ which they aren’t currently tracking

   

From this information, the X Brand team decided to take the following actions:

• Work with their partners at Retailer 1 to ensure that Product Description Pages are current and correct in all regions
• Examine their product titles and descriptions to consider changes based on their analysis of the Competitor Y keyword density and including the keyword in the product title
• Track the additional keyword that Competitor Y is using on their Product Detail Page, to gather data on how well competitor products are performing for page rank with that keyword, and assess whether or not to add it to an update in the future

With the Upshelf dashboard, the X Brand team will have accurate, daily data direct from their most important retailers, giving timely feedback on the impacts of all changes and updates, which they can use to take quick action as information emerges, or to analyse over longer periods of time. 

Tracking both your owned and competitor keyword performance gives you the inside edge to increase page rank, and increase sales.

Take the guesswork out of your keyword strategy, and start improving your page rank today; Upshelf offers quick onboarding, and intuitive interface, and supportive, knowledgeable support staff. 

Get in touch to get started today!