If you’re a bike retailer looking to rapidly grow your brand in 2020 and beyond, this could be the most important article you ever read.

We perform large audits on a ton of throughout the year.  We cast our eyes on the online cycling industry in September 2019

You see can see that report here.

However, a year on, we’ve dug deeper and looked into the powerful content Tredz has been producing. The brand has been producing Stella content and buying guides along with a host more to get themselves into a solid ranking position.

They’ve also had a sneaky domain redirect which the untrained eye may have missed.

Below, we breakdown their entire content strategy hopefully everyone can learn a little from what Tredz is producing.

Large Content Hub on Everything Cycling

The first thing I noticed when reviewing their content was the huge content hub they have in regard to cycling.

They have so many articles that detail various aspects of the cycling industry. Everything from product guides to safety tips.

See below the navigation for their content hub ‘help & advice’, nearly every question you’d ask is answered.

A lot of people reading this right now will be asking:

“how does this help with my online marketing?”

But first, let’s jump into the specifics that fuel Tredz content marketing.

 

Buying Guides

The first content style noticed was the buying guide.

These content pieces that are the most prevalent on their content hub menu. For those who don’t know, this is the type of content help’s convert users to customers.

Some customers will be in different stages of the buying cycle when they’re scanning through your site. (that is not a pun, stop looking at me like that)

Some will be ready to buy, whereas others will be on the fence. They’ll need more information and motivation before they become a paying customer.

This is where buying guides come into play.

They are used to offer information to the uninformed customer, hitting them with educational content to help them understand what product is best for them.

Buying guides are great for industries like cycling. People who are new to cycling naturally have lots of questions. Additionally, bikes can be expensive, so having guides to help people get a product within their price range re-assures them that they are making the correct, informed decision.

Identify customers at different stages in the buying process and use content like buying guides to move them along quicker.

‘Intent’ is a word thrown in the SEO industry. As you can see, it’s an important aspect to manage on your website.

 

Product Help and Installation

Producing content that helps the customer before the transaction is crucial. Focusing on content that helps the customer after a purchase is just as important.

After all, you want your customers to be coming back to your site again and again.

Some studies have shown:

 “A 5% increase in customer retention can lead to an increase in profits of between 25-95% per cent.” – source, Small Biztrends

Focusing on new customers isn’t enough. Creating follow-up purchases and developing relationships is the way.

Tredz has achieved this by producing installation content:

After a customer has purchased a product, they have content to push to them to build a relationship and maintain engagement with the site.

They rank well for these articles, even if they don’t activity push the content through newsletters, social etc. a customer is still likely to find their guides via search.

These practical guides enable customers to get their new purchases up and running quicker than ever before. Better yet, they bring them closer to the brand.

 

Informational Content

The real question is:

If you’re focusing on the user intent before and after buying, what about the intent before they even need or want a product?

How do you target an audience that is cold via search?

The answer is informational content. Or awareness content, as we call it here at Salience.

This is the content that doesn’t directly result in purchase’s but gets people familiar with the brand & product.

You have to understand that when someone is getting into the state of mind where they may be wanting to purchase a bike, they’re going to be looking at bike-related informational content.

This content could be about anything from cycling tips to losing weight via cycling. These are the kind of people who may not be looking to buy but are definitely interested in the target topic.

Tredz has been busy making content like this in their “lifestyle” section.

At the very least, you can retarget these visitors and show them targeted ads that funnel them through to the purchase process.

The content can also be used for lead capture.

With a bit of creativity, this content can be an effective way to capture the data of an interested cyclist and begin the buying process early on.

 

Structuring the Content Hub

Although this isn’t the main part of the article, I want to quickly shout about the way this content hub is structured.

The reason is that so many brands try to get this “content marketing thing” right but fail when it comes to site placement.

I’ve seen good content become useless because it’s placed on a hard-to-find subdomain. Along with content that isn’t being indexed because it hasn’t been paginated properly.

It’s rare to see content structured so well.

To show you what I’m talking about, let me show you how Tredz position all content off of one folder – they’re “help and advice” folder.

And when you go deeper into the guides and content, it all stays linked to this category, giving it a tremendous amount of weight in terms of ranking.

You see, Google reads all the content on your site together and makes a judgement as to how comprehensive you are in your given topic.

When you’re making it this easy for Google to crawl your site, understand where and why everything sits where it is, and how your content acts as supportive beams, you make it easier for Google to rank you.

 

How Does this All Translate to a Better SEO Strategy?

At this point, you might be wondering how all this translates into better search visibility.

I mean, aside from all the other benefits detailed above, adding all this supplementary content can have a significant effect on how you rank for your money-making keywords.

These are your keywords like ‘bikes’, ‘electric bike sale’, ‘buy bmx bikes’, etc. – again think of the intent behind these searches, people are looking to buy!

As stated previously, Google is looking for sites that cover a topic comprehensively. They want to give their users the best possible result to solve their problem.

If you’re providing products along with helpful, practical content that helps them, this sends positive signals to Google.

It tells Google you’re a comprehensive site, helping your customer where possible and offering as much support as possible.

If you’re looking to upgrade your online strategy, get started on a thorough content hub now.

[Bonus] The Sneaky Redirect You May Have Missed

When I was analysing Tredz’s site, I noticed something peculiar about their backlink profile.

In fact, I noticed it twice!

Once when reviewing their profile manually and one by accident when I was checking out Cycle Republic’s site….

They’ve redirected the Cycle Republic domain into Tredz. Meaning, going to the Cycle Republic domain brings you straight back to Tredsz

Try it yourself with this link. You’ll find you get redirected to this page:

Clearly, Covid-19 hasn’t been kind to Cycle Republic. According to Ahrefs (the backlink checking tool we use), the redirect was first spotted in June.

This could mean there is an opportunity to go in and steal off Cycle Republics old backlinks.

Although there is a redirect in place, you can guarantee there will be missing products, guides, and other pages which aren’t aligned well.

If you’re a cycling brand, fire up the outreach furnaces and start letting link sites know Cycle Republic is closed and that your site makes a suitable replacement.

It could be a lucrative link building strategy if you execute it right.