The jewellery industry is one of the most challenging markets within the UK with a whole host of brands competing for market share online. In the UK, the organic SERPs in the jewellery industry are dominated by these 4 brands – hsamuel.co.uk, goldsmiths.co.uk, tiffany.co.uk, ernestjones.co.uk. Not only does hsamuel.co.uk have the highest SEO visibility, but they also rank no.1 for the term ‘jewellery.’ Below is the Searchmetrics SEO visibility trend graph over the last 2 years at the time of writing this post comparing the top 4 online jewellery/watch specialists by organic visibility.
Other top jewellery and watch brands include beaverbrooks.co.uk, fhinds.co.uk, pandora.net,
watchshop.com, accessorize.com, swarovski.com, warrenjames.co.uk and claires.com.
The biggest challenge for multi-brand jewellery retailers is how do you stand out in the jewellery sector compared to your competition when selling largely the same jewellery brands.
The objective of this Jewellery SEO guide is to;
- Drive traffic and increase revenue from your online jewellery store.
- Improve rankings in SERPs for target keywords to drive relevant traffic.
- Increase the number of enquiries and increase footfall to your physical store via local SEO.
Before you read this jewellery SEO guide, think about which variation are you aiming to improve visibility for. Is it “jewelry” / “jewellery”? Confused :-)? Both “jewelry” and “jewellery” are correct. If your target market is the UK, optimise for jewellery (British English) keyword variations. If your target market is the USA, optimise for jewelry (American English) keyword variations. But you could use both interchangeably as they don’t differ in meaning. For the purpose of this guide, I’ll be referring to the spelling ‘jewellery’ since I am based in the UK.
Jewellery SERP Landscape
When it comes to SEO in the jewellery industry, there’s much more to it than just optimising the traditional blue links in the SERPs. When you perform searches for terms containing jewellery products, the most common SERP features that show up are;
- Adwords top & bottom and Shopping ads.
- Local pack
- Featured snippet
- Site links
- People also ask
- Knowledge panel
- Image results / Video results / Image pack / Video carousel
- Featured video
With the constant changes in the SERP landscape, Jewellers and Jewellery Brands need to step up their marketing game in order to stand out from the rest across the variety of SERP features to reach and capture their target audience. Read along to follow how to improve the jewellery business SEO.
Jewellery Keywords – Top 50
Keyword research is the backbone of an SEO strategy. Investing time in thorough keyword research will help identify the jewellery keywords the brand needs to optimise and be visible for. The most popular product offerings in the Jewellery e-commerce business are eye-catching engagement rings, wedding and eternity rings, necklaces, bracelets, earrings and pendants made of diamonds and other precious gemstones. I have listed below the top 50 most popular non-branded keywords in the Jewellery industry.
| Keyword | Avg. monthly searches |
|---|---|
| engagement rings | 246000 |
| watches | 201000 |
| watch | 201000 |
| mens watches | 201000 |
| jewellery | 165000 |
| watches for men | 165000 |
| rings | 135000 |
| men’s watches | 110000 |
| earrings | 90500 |
| wedding rings | 90500 |
| women’s watches | 90500 |
| diamond | 90500 |
| necklace | 74000 |
| gold | 74000 |
| watches for women | 60500 |
| mens rings | 60500 |
| bracelet | 49500 |
| chain | 49500 |
| eternity ring | 49500 |
| gold chain | 49500 |
| promise rings | 49500 |
| necklaces | 40500 |
| mens bracelets | 40500 |
| diamond rings | 40500 |
| key ring | 33100 |
| bracelets | 27100 |
| rose gold | 27100 |
| diamond earrings | 27100 |
| pearl | 27100 |
| silver | 27100 |
| bracelets for women | 22200 |
| gold necklace | 22200 |
| diamonds | 22200 |
| gold ring | 22200 |
| pearl necklace | 22200 |
| silver bracelet | 22200 |
| silver necklace | 22200 |
| rings for women | 18100 |
| silver rings | 18100 |
| necklaces for women | 18100 |
| charms | 18100 |
| bangles | 14800 |
| choker | 14800 |
| mens wedding bands | 9900 |
| pendant | 9900 |
| pendant necklace | 6600 |
| jewellery set | 5400 |
| crystal necklace | 5400 |
| necklace and earring set | 4400 |
| evil eye necklace | 4400 |
SEO Strategy for Jewellery Stores
Given jewellery is one of the most competitive markets, it will take a really good jewellery SEO strategy to steal market share from the Big 4. Let’s look at the SEO best practices that jewellery website owners can action for their sites;
Optimise your Page titles and Meta descriptions
Notice the SERP below you will be presented with when you search for “engagement rings”. All the page titles use the head term “engagement rings” which clearly tells Google (and users) what the page is about.
The meta descriptions that appear below the title also target your primary and secondary keywords. Writing a meaningful meta description is important to explain to your potential customers, what your page is about. They are not a ranking factor, however, they affect your CTR. As with the title tags, there is no specific number of characters for an optimal meta description length. It is recommended to keep your descriptions under 160 characters.
Optimise Page Content
The content of your page needs to relate to your page title and your keywords. Optimise your page heading tags and on-page copy to target keywords. Check out the examples below with both sites placing their category copy at the top of the page. Ensure the category content is reviewed based on seasonality and updated to make it relevant. A well-structured category page would also include internal links to sub-categories or other related categories via their copy.
It is not uncommon to see luxury brands place category copy at the bottom of the page below the products grid.
Optimise Site URLs to include target keywords
Using keywords within your URL not only makes the URL clear and human-readable but is also a minor ranking factor. For all the top 10 URLs ranking for the term ‘engagement rings’ on Google, use the head term within the URL to reflect the content of the brand categories.
Setup a Jewellery Blog
The vast majority of jewellery customers spend hours researching a jewellery purchase before they walk into a jewellery store or purchase jewellery online. The key to your blog is to convert these researchers into online buyers. Luxury brands can do this by creating a blog to build a brand persona and giving their potential customers better access to new and relevant content to help them with the decision to purchase your jewellery. Use your blog content to showcase your products and target long-tail keywords (low-hanging fruit) to drive incremental organic traffic to the site.
Jewellery blog content ideas;
- Create ever-green buying guides. Example: H.Samuel Jewellers and Ernest Jones create in-depth buying guides for their core products and link to them from the footer.
- Luxury Gift posts ideas around key calendar events such as Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day etc to target gift search queries.
- Product styling and inspiration posts.
- Latest collection/product launches posts. These trend posts usually gain backlinks from publications or bloggers.
- How-to articles and other answer-based informative posts to showcase your industry expertise. Here’s a quick snapshot using the SEMRush keyword magic tool to view the questions people ask on Google related to engagement rings.
Consistently producing good quality content to answer user intent relevant to your Jewellery products and services and updating it regularly will improve your blog visibility.
Local SEO for Jewellery Stores
It goes without saying that your Jewellery store needs to be optimised for local searches as a part of your SEO strategy. Local SEO helps you to target customers searching within specific geolocation. If you manage to rank locally, your jewellery business would be occupying the prime spots within the Google SERP i.e. the top 3 search results within the local pack/knowledge panel.
I have listed the top 5 non-brand jewellery local searches made on Google UK. To get listed on Google’s local page or maps for these search queries, first and foremost, you need to set up a Google My Business account. Setting up an account is fairly straightforward. I have written a Local SEO guide to optimise your Google Business Profile to rank higher for local map searches as well as general search results. Also, optimise your Jewellery location landing pages for local keywords to improve their rankings.
| Local Keywords | Avg. monthly searches |
|---|---|
| jewellery shops | 27100 |
| jewellers near me | 18100 |
| jewellery stores | 18100 |
| jewellery shop near me | 9900 |
| jewellery stores near me | 2400 |
List your store on maps and local citation directories. Some important ones to list include Google Maps, Bing Places, Apple Maps, Facebook, Yell, Yelp, Thomson Local etc. Ensure that your NAP and Opening Hours always remain consistent on all platforms, especially on your website, maps and directory listings. And encourage customers to leave a review of your brand.
Link Building Strategy
In this section, I’ll show you a few examples of link-building tactics used by popular Jewellery websites to gain authoritative backlinks. The link-building strategy needs to be on getting quality and relevant inbound links to improve your site’s authority & SEO visibility. If you have well-written informative guides, innovative products, interesting features or new product launches, people will want to link to them.
My recommendation would be to work closely with your digital PR team to raise brand awareness to drive sales for your brand. Your PR team will already have longstanding media relationships with the UK national, broadcast, regional and trade press – both print and online. So leverage them to structure your PR activity around an ‘Always-on’ press activity to reach key target media, outlets and gift guides. Your brand can also benefit from creating high-impact creative campaigns.
- Lifestyle magazine sites that typically cover fashion, beauty, health and entertainment. The new collection often gets picked up by press sites or magazines. The coverage on these sites typically includes product placement that will tie into popular times for buying jewellery such as Christmas & New Year, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s day etc. Key gifting occasions such as 18th and 21st birthdays, weddings and giving birth are popular when consumers are looking for this sort of product placement coverage for their collection.
- https://www.elle.com/uk/fashion/what-to-wear/articles/g31918/best-watches-to-buy-this-season/
- https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/fashion/a37540/different-engagement-ring-shapes-cuts/
- https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/fashion/shopping/christmas-gifts-for-him-77052
- https://www.esquire.com/uk/style/g22819347/best-mens-signet-rings/
- https://www.hitched.co.uk/wedding-planning/organising-and-planning/the-complete-wedding-anniversary-guide/
- https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/bazaar-brides/a20757742/meghan-markle-feminism-royal-wedding/
- https://www.parents.com/pregnancy/my-life/preparing-for-baby/amazing-push-gifts/
- https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/where-the-vogue-editors-are-spending-christmas
- https://bridalmusings.com/63814/ultimate-guide-gemstones-diamond-alternatives-engagement-rings/
- https://fashionmagazine.com/style/jewellery/bold-earrings-for-your-next-video-conference-call/
- https://www.designboom.com/competition/crystal-vision/
- https://www.elizabethannedesigns.com/blog/2013/01/30/pink-babys-breath-wedding/
- Fashion/trend websites
- https://www.fashionbeans.com/article/mans-guide-to-wearing-rings/
- https://www.teenvogue.com/story/issa-rae-april-2020
- https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/shopping-raven-smith-xmas/
- https://www.wonderslist.com/top-10-fashion-brands-of-the-world/
- https://www.whowhatwear.co.uk/average-engagement-ring-size
- Jewellery sites: Placing expert comments from your Jewellery brand’s spokesperson in national newspapers and online jewellery sites will get good exposure for your target audience.
- http://www.jewelrywise.com/
- https://www.engagementringbible.com/engagement-traditions-and-origin/
- http://www.thejewelleryeditor.com/jewellery/article/history-of-pearls-pearl-jewellery-rings-earrings-necklaces/
- http://engagementrings.life/
- http://www.thejewelleryeditor.com/jewellery/article/the-history-of-tiffany-tiffanys/
- Press releases or Newspaper site mentions Communicating key business updates to the media such as sales increases, indicating new trends, new product offerings, new store openings, business announcements & key milestones newsjacking is a good way to increase brand awareness and get coverage.
- https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/8726968/h-samuel-is-selling-disney-engagement-rings-and-theyre-inspired-by-frozen-cinderella-and-beauty-and-the-beast/
- https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/oct/28/luxury-goods-group-lvmh-in-tiffany-takeover-talks
- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/jewellery/best-weddings-rings-how-choose-perfect-band-platinum-gold-traditional/
- https://theconversation.com/what-is-kawaii-and-why-did-the-world-fall-for-the-cult-of-cute-67187
- Event Sponsors
- https://www.kitzalpbike.at/
- https://www.worldsummitawards.org/wsa-global-congress-2020-vienna/
- https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/louis-kahn-the-power-of-architecture
- Travel Magazine sites
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/07/travel/places-to-visit.html
- https://www.jenreviews.com/best-things-to-do-in-austria/
- https://www.cntraveller.com/gallery/worlds-most-influential-women-travellers
- https://www.visitlondon.com/things-to-do/shopping/top-shopping-destinations
- And several fashion bloggers’ sites such as http://www.emilylavenders.com/, http://www.splashofteal.com/ have already mentioned jewellery brands.
Use tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs to look at your competitor backlinks and see if you can get links on them. Tools like the Link Intersect tool on Ahrefs can be useful to compare your link profile versus the competition.
Look for competitor backlinks with a strong DA to add to your link outreach list. Studies have shown a positive correlation between DA and website rankings.
Technical Site Audit
Performing regular technical SEO audits can give you actionable insights on the non-compliant issues of your site that would need resolving. Technical SEO fixes can have a significant positive impact on your SEO performance. The tools I recommend to include in your arsenal are ScreamingFrog and any of these larger tech SEO enterprise tools such as Botify / Deepcrawl / Sitebulb / OnCrawl. You could even check the new and improved crawl stats for your site within the search console to find issues.
Page Speed & Mobile Friendly
Ensure your website is mobile-friendly, fast, and secure. Also, ensure you prioritise page speed improvements on your SEO roadmap as Page speed isn’t just good for customers, but it helps improve SEO rankings too as faster pages are easier for search engines to crawl. Let’s use the visual comparison page speed test using webpagetest.org to check which of the top 4 Jewellery retailers has the fastest page speed.
Set up Google Analytics & Search Console
You are probably aware by now that the impact of SEO changes doesn’t happen overnight. You will start seeing positive results in a couple of weeks if done right. Setting up a Google search console & analytics can be useful to inspect your site health, crawl errors, review indexation, sitemap errors, organic performance etc.
Non-SEO Tips (Bonus)
- Ensure you use high-quality studio images of your jewellery throughout the site – Homepage, PDP, PLP and blog posts.
- Include multiple angles of your jewellery photos on your product description pages.
- Show the jewellery product in a 360-degree spin to give your customers a near-buying experience from a big shopping centre.
FURTHER READING
Why Luxury Brands Need an SEO Strategy
No time to deal with Jewellery business SEO? I provide Jewellery website SEO services. Contact me today to discuss how I could help.