January 17, 2023
7 minutes
Homeware is a competitive market, across all marketing channels but particularly the organic search landscape. With thousands of brands in furniture and homeware across the world competing for the same or similar keywords, it’s a real challenge to cut through the crowd and get your website to the top of the SERP (search engine results page).
Google sees millions of searches for homeware related search terms each month and according to Statista and Mintel, between 58% and 70% of consumers had purchased homewares online in the last 12 months, meaning an online presence is more important than ever for the homeware industry.
| Furniture and Homeware Keywords | Average Monthly Search Volume |
| Cushions | 49500 |
| Dinner set | 27100 |
| Candles | 49500 |
| Desk | 90500 |
| Dining table | 74000 |
| Sofa | 135000 |
These five strategic and creative ways homeware brands can utilise SEO can help you make your website worthy of those top positions.
Setting up a Google My Business account for your company will positively affect your online search visibility. When people search Google for your brand using related searches, they will often see a mix of paid ads, organic results and ‘Places’. Setting up your store/s on Google My Business will help you to feature in these lists and also in any location-based results, meaning you can only use this tactic if you have a physical store.
So, you’ll not only be targeting those who use search engines to browse and make purchases of homeware products, but you’ll also be targeting that 30-40% of people that opt for in-store shopping.
Every customer has their own buyer journey, which usually consists of the awareness, consideration, decision and retention stages. This is particularly important in the furniture and homeware market as people are often making big purchases such as sofas and tables, as well as appliances, devices and home accessories.
Consumers do a lot more research in this industry than the likes of fashion and beauty, meaning it’s even more important to include content on your website that can reach people in the awareness stage. You’ll also then want to target keywords at the consideration/browsing stage, this is when they know what they want but are looking for the best and right place to buy.
a) Optimising for the ‘awareness’ stage
At this point, consumers will be deciding what type of furniture they need, whether they need anything new, what sort of furniture goes with what decor, and similar sorts of questions. This is where they become aware of the product they need to purchase.
Content types that consumers often come across at this stage are blogs, magazine articles, videos, and answers to questions like ‘how do I find my own interior style’ and ‘what do I need for a new home’. The intent of these types of content is very informational, there to provide answers to the user.
Therefore, if you’re wanting to target consumers at this stage, we recommend starting a blog on your website, or using digital PR to land coverage on trends and themes. This will help you target result pages that feature blogs, but also result pages that show primarily magazine/news articles.
Our client Graham and Green have a blog sitting on their website that answers loads of questions that potential and existing customers might be searching for. One of their most successful blogs, A Guide to Japandi Style, ranks position one for keyword ‘japandi style’ and had over 8,000 users in 2022 alone. They then include relevant products in the blog, but also link to a ‘Shop Japandi Style’ collection page that features all relevant products, a great way to convert the reader.
b) Optimising for the ‘consideration’ stage
At the consideration stage, the consumer will have a solution or answer to the questions they raised in the awareness stage. This means they’ll know what sort of product they want, and will begin to find out where they can buy this product, and who is the best person to buy it from. They’re not ready to buy, but they’re open to it.
The sort of things consumers will be searching for here are ‘what’s more practical, a fabric or leather sofa?’ and ‘best kitchen dinner sets’, questions that show the consumer has an intent to purchase, but still needs more information.
Similarly to the consideration stage, you can also make use of your blog. Answering more specific questions that will help with someone’s decision can put you at the front of the person’s mind when finally making the purchase.
c) Optimising for the ‘decision’ stage
The decision stage is where the consumer knows exactly what they want, have a list of people who can offer them that, and make a final decision.
Searches at this point are a lot more specific, such as ‘grey corner sofa’, ‘dinner set for 4’, ‘8×6 photo frames’. These keywords are a lot more competitive, but they have the highest conversion rate due to their transactional intent, so e-commerce sites often focus on these pages first so that they’re as optimised as they can be, and work well for the customer (e.g. page load speed, product offering, ease of purchase).
To target really specific keywords and help grow your search visibility, we recommend building category and subcategory pages. Category pages are usually your top-level products, e.g. ‘sofas’ and subcategories break down this product collection into more specific types, e.g. ‘grey corner sofas’.
At this stage it’s really important to include anything that will make your brand look better than others the customer might be considering. Implementing Schema across your site to show ratings, testimonials and prices on the search engine results pages (SERPs) can show consumers how good your brand is compared to your competitors who are ranking for the same keywords.
d) Optimising for the ‘retention’ stage
It is said that improving your customer retention by 5% can help improve revenue from 25% to 95% which is huge! So making sure your website provides everything your potential, new and existing customers need to be happy customers is key.
For organic search it’s important to make sure you answer all questions people may be searching about your brand. Use a keyword research tool like Ahrefs or SEMRush to search your brand name and see what comes up. Are people asking about your delivery service? Do they need customer service? Or are they looking to find reviews? Your onsite content can then be optimised to answer these questions, and to make sure they can be easily found.
Email marketing can also be valuable at this stage. For potential customers it’s a great way to nurture a lead into a sale. If you can encourage them to sign up to your email marketing list via your website before they’ve even made a purchase, then you have direct contact with them and can pitch your brand even further. For new and existing customers, email marketing can be used to maintain your relationship with the customer and encourage them back onto your site to buy again. You can use encouragements like exclusive discounts, product upgrades, limited access to sales, etc, to show them they’re a valued customer.
According to Statista, around 60% of all organic search visits are made on mobile, with the highest being 64% in 2020. More people are choosing to browse their phones to find the right products for them meaning it’s now more important than ever to optimise your website for mobile-first. Google now inspects the mobile version of your site first, and uses this as the basis for its SERP decisions.
If your site isn’t optimised for mobile then you may struggle with issues such as slow page load speed, a wonky looking page and a hard to navigate site. This can negatively impact your rankings, so if you ever change something and think it looks right on desktop, check it out on your phone and see if it’s the same.
Digital PR is a tactic that can be highly effective for the furniture and homeware industry. With rotating trends and dedicated blogs and magazines, there’s huge scope for topics to be published alongside that important backlink.
Digital PR focuses on online coverage only and aims to put brands in front of their target audience, whilst also building highly relevant and authoritative backlinks to your website, which in turn helps boost your search visibility.
Home and interior publications are always looking for content, data and expert commentary from reputable brands to publish on their website. Whether you’re an interior designer who can comment on upcoming trends, have internal website search data on the most popular colour to use in your home, or simply want to share some valuable insight into the industry as a whole, you as a homeware brand can build links on relevant websites and tell Google you know what you’re talking about.
The quality and relevancy of backlinks has become a lot more important than the number of backlinks you have, and with so many niche home and interiors sites, why not utilise digital PR to build reputable links to your site and boost your organic performance.
Just like fashion, interior design sees trends come and go, and come back again. Staying on top of these trends is key to being involved in the conversation and ensuring you’re there, waiting in the SERPs, when consumers look for those trends.
You can use trends for content and digital PR. Going back to the awareness stage of the buyer journey, and Graham and Green’s blog on Japandi style, you can see that writing about a trend had huge success for bringing in new traffic. This could then be used for outreach purposes to share with journalists and potentially build links from the likes of Ideal Home, House & Garden and Architectural Digest. This will then tell search engines that you’re the best person to rank for this trend.
Considering these tips in your SEO strategy along with other key ranking factors like original quality content, user intent and site hygiene can have a huge impact on your website’s performance. To find out more about SEO for your furniture or homeware website, browse our SEO services or chat to us today.