My sister used to tear style cues from Vogue; last night she tapped a Next video and bought the coat in 12 seconds flat.

Why this matters

The UK apparel market will clear £85.85 bn in revenue in 2024.

Every marketing leader should pay attention when a single retailer ( Next ) posts a record £1bn in annual profits and tops our organic-traffic league table.

The lesson is bigger than tech SEO. It’s about who gets to frame the conversation when a shopper types “best winter boots outfit”.

Click here to read our latest UK clothing market report.

Market context

Next outranks 500-plus clothing sites for traffic and trust. The sector itself grew 10 % in organic visibility over the last six months. Next kept pace but didn’t outstrip the tide, which means upside still exists.

Brand Feb 2025 organic traffic score YoY change Δ vs market
Next 16,311,250 +10 % +1 %
John Lewis 8,841,275 +39 % +29 %
Boohoo 2,443,095 –21 % –30 %

Source: Salience Index 2025

John Lewis is closing the gap with a content-commerce push, while Boohoo’s visibility slump shows what happens when keyword stuffing meets thin category pages.

 

Seasonality plays

Search interest in wide-leg jeans is up 30 %; winter boots queries rose 37 % in Q1 2025. Next’s “Edited” hub grabs both with evergreen guides that read like magazine spreads, not catalogue copy.

Tactics in action

  • Watch & Shop videos turn styling clips into clickable product hotspots. Shoppable-video tech lifts add-to-bag rates by up to 30 % across retail (project-aeon.com).
  • Human search intent: Articles answer entire outfits (“blue women’s jeans size 10”) instead of single SKU pages, no faff, no pogo-sticking.
  • Internal linking grid: Every guide points to size filters, colour variants and user reviews. Crawlability plus human flow equals SERP stickiness.
  • UGC gallery “Inspired by You”: Real customers model the kit. Social proof lives on-site, not lost in an Instagram void.

Engagement → conversion

Next doesn’t rely on ranking alone. Each content asset includes:

  1. “Shop the look” buttons above the fold.
  2. Klarna messaging is for split payments, and goodbye cart friction.
  3. Back-in-stock alerts tied to email and SMS.

Suggested visual: miniature funnel showing video views → clicks → basket adds → check-outs.

 

Sloppy SEO shortcuts to avoid

  • Chasing volume over value — Boohoo’s 2024 over-optimised category copy now sits on page 2.
  • Ignoring site architecture — orphan filters cannibalise parent pages and bleed PageRank.
  • Generic information gain — rewriting “how to wear jeans” won’t beat Next’s hands-on fit-mentorship videos.

 

Key takeaways

  • Editorial commerce wins. Treat product pages like stories, not stock lists.
  • Interactivity converts. Video hotspots remove five clicks from the journey.
  • Rich internal linking still matters. Every asset must feed equity upstream and down.
  • UGC = trust. Real people wearing real stock out-punch slick studio shots.
  • Keep eye on rivals. John Lewis is the climber; Boohoo shows the cost of coasting.

 

Next steps for you

  1. Audit content depth. Do your guides answer a whole outfit query?
  2. Test shoppable video. Pilot on two high-margin categories before peak season.
  3. Map UGC hot-spots. Pull Instagram tags into a gallery block within PDPs.
  4. Fix orphan facets. Run a crawl — any page with fewer than two internal links needs a home.

Conclusion

Next hasn’t replaced Vogue yet. But it has seized the distribution crown by merging editorial taste with e-commerce tech. In a £85 bn market, the brand that guides intent wins the sale. Build experiences for humans first, bots second, and you’ll outrun the algorithm du jour.

 

P.S We’re a specialist ecommerce agency with 15+ years of experience.