Situation
Hat World Corporation operates more than 550 stores under the LIDS, HATWORLD, HATZONE and CAPCONNECTION brands and is considered a retail leader in fashion athletic headwear. One of Hat World’s websites, lids.com™, sells hats ranging from team baseball hats and visors to winter knit hats. Additionally, the site sells sports apparel and accessories and also offers custom embroidery options. Hat World is a subsidiary of Genesco Inc.
The ultimate goal for lids.com was to increase revenue from natural search engine optimization and pay-per-click campaigns. To reach this goal, the team at lids.com needed to increase website traffic from both natural and paid listings by more effectively managing each effort. Additionally, the marketers for lids.com were looking to increase website conversions as well as dominate the online marketplace. Hat World contracted with iProspect to help achieve their goals.
Challenges
One of the biggest challenges the client faced was that their PPC campaign, that initially targeted 500 keywords, was being managed manually. This took up a lot of time on the part of lids.com marketers who lacked the bandwidth to carry out the campaign successfully. Furthermore, their PPC campaign focused on Overture only as time hadn’t allowed for participation within the Google AdWords program where many competitors had already become experienced and gained visibility on top, targeted keywords. These factors led to a PPC spend that was producing a negative ROI.
The ever-changing content of the 10,000+ page website was the second challenge for the client. Pages were not optimized for search engines, there was not enough copy surrounding various products, keywords were not being properly targeted on various product pages, and content was not effectively targeting site visitors.
Solution
At the outset, iProspect recommended the client discontinue the manual management of their PPC campaign and implement a professional PPC advertising management program that combined strategy with iProspect’s state-of-the-art bid management tool, iSEBA®. The strategy included participation within the Google AdWords program, optimized PPC ad copy, and an increased targeted keyword universe which included 13,000 search terms.
To optimize the ever-changing content on the thousands of pages of lids.com, iProspect utilized proven techniques by creating dynamically generated site optimization tags. As stock diminished and as new products were added to the lids.com inventory, these templates were utilized to automatically send data to search engine spiders for indexing. Furthermore, iProspect worked with the client to develop content surrounding key targeted search terms on various pages of the website. The team at iProspect continues to work closely with lids.com marketers to optimize the website as products continuously change.
Finally, in conjunction with the optimization of the content for search engines, the Website Conversion Enhancement team at iProspect worked with the client to modify and develop new page content that would influence site visitors to take action – to purchase hats and other merchandise on the website.
Once the site had been fully optimized, iProspect submitted the pages to the major search properties.
Results
After 24 months, overall online visibility across the major search properties, as a result of natural search engine optimization techniques for lids.com, increased by 536%.
At the same time, the number of position one rankings across all major search properties increased by 913%.
After 24 months, Lids.com achieved a position one and a position two ranking on the highly competitive keyword phrase, “baseball caps,” in Google, the number one search engine according to market share.
And at the same time, rankings in Yahoo!, the second search engine according to market share, increased by 906%.
After 22 months, revenue generated from organic and paid inclusion search increased by 136%.
After one year and 10 months, the PPC campaign generated a 354% increase in return on ad spending.
The increase in the number of managed PPC targeted keywords, as well as a better selection of keywords, resulted in a 73% decrease in total cost per order.
After one year and 10 months, sales conversion rates for the lids.com pay per click advertising campaign increased by 115%.
Lids.com outranks all of its competitors. Specifically, lids.com outranks its closest competitor by 116% on non-branded keyword phrases.
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