In our eye wear retailors report, we found that one brand stood out from the rest when it comes to online visibility. That brand was Specsavers. They had an online visibility score of 21,542, which is huge when compared to the rest of the industry. Admittedly, Specsavers is a huge brand with a lot of leverage when it comes to marketing. However, we’ve seen large brands struggle on the SERPs, even when they have a lot of money backing them.  

Nonetheless, Specsavers was still drawing in a lot of traffic and visibility, which piqued our curiosity. What were they doing to get so much authority? Were they using specific techniques in their content marketing and category structure?  

We took a closer look into Specsavers’ online marketing and SEO strategy, discovering practical tips that similar brands can use to improve their own website. Want too to see these practical tips? Continue reading below… 

Deep Categories to Build Authority 

Making sure your categories hold enough authority to rank is incredibly important. Too many websites leave their categories shallow and lacking in ranking power, especially ecommerce stores. However, Specsavers have done a fantastic job at thickening their categories to make sure they’re telling Google exactly what they’re about.  

One way their achieving this is by making sure lengthy buying guides are hanging off the main categories opposed to a boring, generic category like ‘blog’ or ‘news’.  

We recommend this to every brand that comes to us as it’s an effective way to bolster out topical relevancy for any category you’re working on.  

Additionally, it also helps to bring in useful backlinks which you can use alongside internal backlinks to filter authority to relevant parts of your site, such as product pages.  

URL Structure to Reduce Confusion 

Category and URL structure is an important aspect of any site. Without a pristine structure, Google will have a hard time reading what your site is about and may fail to even index certain pages. It is for this reason we bang on about getting this right. Fortunately, for Specsavers, they’ve got this bit perfect.  

Their site follows a simple site structure with an easy-to-follow URL path, helping Google to navigate and understand the site better.  

Categories divide into more categories which divide into more categories, and all this segmentation can be easily seen within the URL structure.  

For example, if you want to look at multifocal contact lens, the structure of the URL would follow as: 

/contact-lenses/multifocal 

This short, simple URL is exactly what Google wants to see when crawling a website. If you’re satisfying it with URL such as this, you’re bound to start climbing the SERPs just as Specsavers has.  

Buying Guides to Answer Consumers’ Urgent Questions 

As previously mentioned, Specsavers is using buying guides to thicken their category structure. However, they’re also using these assets to answer all the questions users may have before they buy their new glasses.  

It comes to no surprise that buying glasses is a difficult task. They’re as much as a fashion piece as they are a prescription item. You want to make sure people are getting the right ones for them, so they not only help their eyes but also look stylish whilst doing so.  

Specsavers have produced huge guides around topics such as choosing glasses for your face shape and how to choose the right frames. These all work together to provide consumers with all the information they need to make an educated purchase.  

With more information provided before the purchase, there is a smaller chance of the customer returning the item as well.  

At Salience, we call this content ‘consideration content’ because it’s the kind of article that is read just before the purchase. If you want people choosing your brand over others, you want to position yourself as the authority and expert, so people feel more comfortable walking through your doors opposed to your competition.  

Eye Disorders 

As well as extensive buying guides, Specsavers also has a huge inventory of eye disorders which gives you all the information you need about a suspecting eye problem.  

This large database of expert curated content attracts a lot of backlinks and solidifies their authority in the eye wear industry. Each of the conditions has an expert talking about it with options to call in for an eye exam/appointment.  

These articles act as a double-barrelled shotgun: they help to present Specsavers as an authority, but they also filter people into making an appointment. If someone is worried about an eye problem, they’ll search up the condition and find Specsavers information centre. From here, they’ll read more about it and potentially book an appointment to learn more/fix the problem.  

Specsavers rank for over 19,000 keywords as a result of this section on their site and any reputable brand with access to expert knowledge can produce the same.   

FAQs for the Important Stuff 

Often, consumer will have a ton of questions about your brand and your product. This not only includes questions about your range but may also include questions about delivery and usability. It’s important to answer these questions as well as the general ones.  

With eye care, they’ll be a lot of questions related to using things like contacts and glasses, how long it takes to get used to them and questions related to general day-to-day use. Specsavers have done a great job at answering as many questions related to general use as possible.  

Not only do they have a dedicated section just for contacts, but they also have a huge extensive library of questions related to health, delivery, prescription, and more. If you’re looking to empower your customers and free-up support, having a huge FAQ section could be your answer.  

Additionally, if you research your questions and find the ones with the highest search volume, you can capture extra traffic simultaneously.  

The Perfect About Us Page  

With E-A-T entering the scene and shaking the health industry, some brands have learnt to adapt while others have crashed and burned. In layman’s terms, E-A-T stands for expertise, authority, and trust, and was included in a new algorithm launched by Google a year ago.  

It made sure health, financial, and any other site which dealt with related issues, was tightened up and regulated better to ensure misinformation wasn’t being spread. As a result of this, health sites had to tighten their ships and adhere to Google’s new regulations.  

One such regulation was to do with the About Us page on sites. It had to be filled out fully with links to authoritative sites. Specsavers has managed to create an About Us section which screams expertise and authority, leading to the high visibility it’s experiencing in 2019/2020. 

They have a breakdown of their history, tons of articles on corporate responsibility, their partnerships with the NHS, and more. All this screams authority, letting you know they’re a brand to be trusted.  

This all indicates quality to Google, giving them the signals they need to rank the website higher.  

If you’ve got awards or are affiliated with authoritative bodies, tell the world about it on your site. Not only will customers find this reassuring but Google will too.  

A Note on Backlinks 

Specsavers is a funny one when it comes to backlinks. They’re a huge brand and because of this they pick up a lot of backlinks in the press and because of their international eye test appointments.  

They push out a lot of offline marketing campaigns that have been their bread and butter for many years. They’re great at staying at top of the mind and the tip of tongue. However, a lot of the backlinks they accumulate come from their eye disorders library which we mentioned earlier.  

Many of the links from medical publications are regarding specific diseases. They don’t really have any large content assets or collaborations which can be seen with other industries we’ve reviewed. Specsavers seem to pick up backlinks naturally.  

However, what we can learn here is that through creating large library of practical information, such as eye disorders, content and backlinks can be picked up naturally without outreach. Of course, outreach would give this asset a notable boost. Despite this, Specsavers is doing well, nonetheless.  

Summing it all up… 

Specsavers is a huge brand which is known around the world. They have incredibly popular eye testing facilities and have the most authoritative site in the eye retailer industry.  

However, despite the review above, we are only scratching the surface. We don’t have access to their analytics or Search Console, so there is more behind the scenes which we’re missing. However, with the information above, brands can still start to make some micro improvements to their visibility. 

Interested to see how we’d help and improve your eye wear brand to match the visibility of Specsavers? Get in touch today for a free call.