Seasonal Trends 
Visibility Vs Authority 
Link Acquisition 
Content Performance 
10 minutes Reading time
20 pages Length
Updated April 2020
We’ve taken notes on the online stationery and office supplies market in this edition of our sector reports, discovering exactly what makes it tick. Inside, you’ll learn which brand has the best handwriting and which could do with some spelling lessons when it comes to SEO and online marketing performance.
A range of metrics are investigated, including page speed, keyword potential, and online visibility – essential measurements if you’re looking to give your brand and website a significant boost. As well as the necessities, social score, brand mentions, and online reputation have also been written down, giving you a complete picture of your competitors’ strategy online.
If you’re a stationery or notebook brand looking to take charge of your SEO and online marketing, download this office supply industry analysis now. It will grant you never-before-seen insight into your market and competition. With this in your hands, you’ll be a force to be reckoned with.
The stationery market is looking rather colourful this year with an overall visibility elevation of 16%. Even the majority of the top 10 brands have seen some increase, some more than others. In particular, Paperchase saw a huge increase of 132% this year and Ryman saw a boost of 71%. Despite being large brands, they’re still improving their visibility. Nice work.
However, although some big brands are doing well, others, such as WHSmith, have lost visibility. Maybe they should be taking some online pointers from the brands below them?
To find out where you stand in the visibility league table, get our report now.
Here is a quick rundown of the top 10 sites:
The stationery market does not shy away from its fair share of high competition keywords. Just like other industries, there are plenty of queries and terms which receive high search volume and equally high competition ratings.
Many of the best keywords in the business are rated as 80 or above in terms of organic competition. For the novice SEOs among you, this is a very high rating. It would take a lot of work to get a spot with this rating.
Despite this, many of the brands in this report have had success at getting position on some of the most sought-after spots in the industry.
The most competitive term – ‘pencil case’ – gets 60K+ a month in search volume and has a competitive rating of 82/100. Despite the competition, many of the top brands can be spotted on the SERPs.
WHSmith takes the number one spot, regardless of their -4% drop in visibility this year. Additionally, Paperchase, The Works, and Ryman get good positions too. Well done to these brands for achieving tough but rewarding spots on the SERPs.
A similar story can be seen with another competitive keyword – ‘notebook’. This keyword gets 40K+ in monthly searches and has a competitive rating of 86/100. However, Paperchase takes the top position in this battle, leaving WHSmith in position two. The Works and Ryman are all present, but Staples also appears to take position five, so well done to them.
There is plenty of opportunity in the SERPs for both large brands and small brands to take advantage of. Like the high competition keywords, these hold a lot of search volume. However, unlike the high competition keywords, they are low in competition and are easy to snatch if you know the content that Google wants to see for them.
Our report dives deeper into these keywords to see what is needed to satisfy the searcher intent. Here’s what we uncovered when looking at the SERPs for some of these search terms.
With Google getting smarter every day, the algorithm now identifies keywords on the page which are related to the main search query. It uses these semantic keywords to help it identify what the page is about and how to rank it. The more semantic keywords there are the better Google can read and rank the web page.
Many of the sites on the SERPs for the opportunity keyword list are using semantic keywords within their meta data. They’re including closely related concepts which help Google identify what the page is about and how best to rank it.
If you want to snatch up some of these lucrative terms you should look to add more closely related keywords into your title tags and copy. Help Google figure out your page and let them know it’s comprehensive in information to satisfy the searcher’s intent.
Some of the products within the stationery market are sensitive to time and date, such as calendars and diaries. Several keywords identified in the opportunity lists are variations of these kinds of products and many brands (including large ones) fail to have a category to rank for them.
To put this into perspective, some brands are missing out on thousands of extra clicks every month and all they need to do to capture them is build a simple category page.
If you want to discover the time sensitive keywords in this report, download it using the form above.
Social media is incredibly important for businesses in 2020 and beyond. It’s a superb media stream for building a loyal following, increasing virtual awareness, and boosting the bottom line. However, many brands fail to successfully utilise social platforms and end up wasting time with useless techniques.
Our report investigates the social media of your competitors to see what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong. With this, you can get a bird’s eye view of which brand is killing it on social and how you can mimic their approach to achieve similar results.
The top performer on social in the stationery market is Paperchase, which has a social score of 1051 and 258500 monthly brand search. Although Notebook Therapy has a better social score, Paperchase wins overall. They have 640K+ followers across multiple platforms.
When exploring their social platforms, it is clear how they’ve created such a strong score. They post a lot of high-quality pictures and colour images to grab your attention on social media. They also make suggestions about what you can make with their stationery with direct links to the products. On Instagram, they receive thousands of likes on their posts and post about topical situations. This is a great way to stay relevant and grab people’s attention when they’re scrolling through.
Although there is still much to learn about social media, Paperchase is one starting point if you’re looking to see how a professional brand goes about creating and converting a following.
One factor that is essential in every online transaction is trust. Without it, consumers will feel apprehensive about purchasing with you and may go to your competition. Even Google is aware of this factor and makes sure to look for trust amplifying signals from your site to understand how to rank it.
One method people use to gain trust about a brand is reviews. Online reviews are everywhere, and it is essential you maintain positive ratings for both Google and consumers.
In our report, we check out the reviews of your brand and compare it to the competition, seeing how it performs in the eyes of the consumer.
Interestingly, it’s the big brands who are suffering in this market. Paperchase and Ryman all have review scores of 2/5. WHSmith scores even lower with a 1.5! These brands need some serious help in their reputation management departments.
Despite the negativity from the big brands, here’s the top 5 stationery market brands for online reviews:
Page speed is a necessity. Not only is it used by Google as a ranking signal but it’s also a simple way to improve your user experience. If you’re skimping on your page speed, you could be losing out on a ton of extra profit.
Our report studies the page speed scores of the stationery market to see which sites are running smoothly.
Here’s what PageSpeed Insights identified as the top 5 fastest stationery market brands:
Read more about the importance of page speed here.
Our reports don’t cost a penny – they’re 100% free. We aim to build connections with brands by providing competitive insights. It’s as simple as that.
Sometimes brands don’t make our report because they don’t meet our threshold. If you want to have your brand included, get in touch and we can send you a personalised report immediately.
If you want to know anything about the report or are curious about how we can create a bespoke SEO strategy for your brand, get in touch today.
