Nike Golf’s Challenges with SEO and How They Got Past Them

Search Engine Optimization continues to grow. Unlike most other marketing methods, search engine optimization is one method. That you can use regardless of the size of your business. Many businesses are gaining massively from SEO and also they do not have to invest hugely. Amounts of money into it. If you are running a small business and you would like to get the attention of the public, then SEO is a good route to take. It is not exactly the cheapest but it is very flexible. You can tailor your SEO campaign to suit your specific needs and also requirements just like Nike Golf did.

What was the challenge?

Nike Golf is the renowned golf-specific retail brand of the Nike Company. They are probably renowned thanks to Tiger Woods. In every single tournament that he plays, Nike Golf has been decking him out. They provide everything, from the clubs and also balls to the footwear and also polo shirts. You would expect that a company like this would not have problems with marketing. It is true though, Nike Golf does not have issues with marketing especially.

The challenge that this company was facing at the beginning of its SEO campaign was the lack of a keyword strategy that was laser-focused. The company also lacked a site that was easy to crawl. The search engines had a lot of difficulties crawling the site. When you lack a keyword strategy that is focused, it is very difficult for the SEO elements. That would have been of help to the site to be effective.

As such, the goal for the company was to increase the visibility of the Nike Golf website in the search engines. In a bid to position the brand in such a way that it attracts visitors during the golf season. The strategy that was to be employed for this activity was making the site search engine friendly and also creating research-informed content. This is one of the companies that have made use of content marketing intensively getting the attention of the world effortlessly.

To solve the challenges that Nike Golf was facing, the digital marketing department at Nike teamed up with SwellPath. If you seek out the best SEO services or your specific area of residence, you should not have a problem accessing these fantastic services. It is always great to work with a professional.

Solution to the problems

There are several things that this SEO campaign brought to the company. However, two that were at the heart of the campaign are keyword research and also the implementation of advanced technical solutions that would make the site ‘crawlable’. The results were astounding in as much as the work that was done was intense.

On the part of keyword analysis. You can be sure that it was deep and also serious research being done here. They dug through immense amounts of keyword data and also did an analysis of search/industry trends. The research was most beneficial in deciding on what to focus upon. Would they pay most attention to ‘golf clothing, ‘golf apparel’, golf sportswear’, or other similar terms? Through data testing and analysis of the search landscape that the major search engines were treating these variations as distinct.

Golf Apparel

It was also found that the keyword phrase ‘golf apparel’ was more frequently used than the others. The visitors who went to the Nike Golf site using this search phrase stayed longer. They were also more likely to convert as they did more digging than others. That would make it possible for them to strategically work using high opportunity keywords and also add them to specific pages.

There was also the issue of making the site accessible to search engines. If the site remained in flash then getting better search engine rankings would be very difficult. There were several options on the table to be selected from.

1. Complete rebuilding of the website but this was too expensive for the business therefore it was out of bounds.
2. Using the NoScript tag to deliver SEO-specific content was not going to work either
3. Using newer technology that would work with the old site without being too costly was taken as the best option. It was cheap and also affordable.

They went with the third option settling on an open-source JavaScript library known as SWFObject2. This would allow the website to store an HTML-based version of the site which could be brought forward whenever a user would visit the site. It proved to be extremely helpful for site visitors using mobile devices and also at the same time, it provided great content for the search engine robots.

The results achieved

When compared to the 2010 golf season, the 2011 season saw a staggering 169% growth in the organic search traffic. This included both searches for Nike-related terms (branded search) and non-branded ones. Between the 2011 and also 2012 seasons, the site witnessed an additional 67% gain which brought the total gain from 2010 through to the 2012 season to an impressive 348%.

Gains in total organic traffic can be deceiving though. Any experienced SEO will tell you this. Non-branded traffic had actually fallen by 17% during the time that the campaign was being set up. However, once the strategy had been implemented. There was considerable growth notice. Between the 2011 and also 2012 golf seasons, there was a 250% worth increase in traffic coming from non-branded searches.

What to take home

There are several lessons that you can learn from this SEO campaign but there is one thing that stands out greatly. If your objectives are based upon getting the attention of prospective customers who shop online then you should not ignore organic search. It is absolutely beneficial to have a site that is visually appealing but that cannot come at the expense of its accessibility. As you build your website, you should make sure that the platform and also the mode through which you deliver the content is not secretly working against your SEO efforts.

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