The document provides a presentation summarizing SEO improvements and recommendations for the website blacks.co.uk. It identifies 5 things they are doing well in SEO including targeting keywords, site architecture, cross-selling, targeted pages, and filters/facets. It also recommends 5 SEO improvements such as fixing duplicate title tags and pages, adding more content, missing H tags, reducing internal links, and improving URL structures. Finally, it suggests 3 link building ideas: a YouTube equipment assembly/camping video campaign, a social media festival survival kit design contest, and creating more creative content like guides and reviews.

1. Presentation
BY Kevin Wiles

2. The Task
To conduct research on www.blacks.co.uk and find out the below.
• Identify 5 things Blacks are doing well in regards to SEO
• Recommend 5 SEO improvements
• Suggest 3 link building ideas
Quick Stats
• 59,313 Backlinks
• Page Speed – 61%
• Apache Web Server
• Custom E-commerce Platform

3. 5 SEO Improvements/Issues
Duplicate Title Tags
A number of title tags around the website are duplicated along with various title tags which are over the recommended length,
both of these factors together could have an impact on the search engine results, I would look at changing all duplicate title tags
and reducing the length of some of the titles.
Duplicate Pages
One more serious issue was the fact there are duplicate pages on the website, these pages have all been indexed as well which
could have a serious impact on any search campaign. There are 2 ways in which you could look at fixing these issues the first
would be to use the Canonical tag to mark the “main” page, although this method is not always available within some Ecommerce
systems and CMS systems. The other option is to add 301 re-directs to the lower level pages and divert them to the better pages.
If you do need to keep all the pages then you should look at adding new and fresh content which will then allow the pages to be
different.
Lack of Content
The homepage of Blacks actually lacks a lot of content although it does have a lot of links and images, I would try and extend the
homepage to include more content which will be key to getting the website seen more.

4. 5 SEO Improvements/Issues
Missing H Tags
I noticed a range of pages are missing H tags although this is no a crucial SEO factor it can have some impact on your On-Page
SEO, I would look at going through the website using Screaming Frog and then adding H Tags where they have been left out.
Internal Links
The overall amount of internal links from each page is massive for example htp://www.blacks.co.uk/category/footwear.html has
262 links which mainly come from drop down navigation menus, the ideal amount should be around 100, to try and solve this
issue you could add Java Script Link Menus to avoid loosing the navigation and reduce the pagerank spread.
URL Structure
I found that some of the inner product pages don’t have a good URL structure instead they use a range of characters and digits to
describe a product like the below.
http://www.blacks.co.uk/product/083479.html
Try and add some keywords to the URL which describes the product and remove the digits this is a massive role.
http://www.blacks.co.uk/mens-footwear/Mens-Mamook-GTX-Hiking-Boots.html

5. Other Issues
• Missing ALT tags • Poor Google Places
• Missing Pages (404 Listing
Errors) • Very Bad Reviews online
• Various Temporary Re- • No Mobile site
directs (302)
• Lack Social Media
• Content (Blog)
• Lacks a HTML Sitemap

6. 5 Things they are doing well
Keywords
Blacks do quite well for keywords which are used within the main homepage META, although no first they are relatively high for
various large keywords. Blacks do quite well at choosing good keywords which will bring in good amounts of traffic.
All of these keywords bring in a large amount of traffic which is very good for Blacks.
Site Architecture
The overall site architecture looks quite good with the site broken down into various sections which makes it easy to navigate
around the website and find various pages within a reasonable time frame. They allow users to easily find content and products
with minimal clicks.
Each page is also linked very well with anchor texts which makes it very easy for the user to find any page within the website
without having to use the search function.
Cross-Sell
They use the combine sell feature very well listing other products people have bought or even offers on various products like the
below page which lists offers on the shoes with other products.
http://www.blacks.co.uk/product/083479.html

7. 5 Things they are doing well
Well Targeted Pages
The pages within the website are very well targeted on certain keywords which will give Blacks a good stand when trying to gain
good positions within SERPS.
http://www.blacks.co.uk/category/clothing.html
Various category pages make very good use of good keywords and other On-Page elements to ensure the pages can be found
fairly high although they are not full of content.
Facets and Filters
One issue with E-Commerce websites is ensuring you rank well for all keywords along with colour and size however this can create
massive duplicate content issues. An ideal situation which Blacks seem to have added is Filters, where they tell Search Engines to
not index things which are of little importance like colour, size etc..
The below page shows a perfect example of this and the image on the next slide illustrates Facets & Filters working.
http://www.blacks.co.uk/category/clothing/men/shirts-t-shirts-and-sweats.html

8. Filters & Facets

9. 3 Link Building Ideas
YouTube Campaign
Blacks could look at making a YouTube video campaign where they demonstrate how to assemble tents via video and also take
them down this would come in very handy for people who are looking to go camping for the first time especially with mobile on
the rise.
The campaign would take a lot of time to et going but they could create in depth videos on how to assemble tents as well as
display ideal locations for tents and the best tents for certain weather.
This sort of campaign could also be done for the clothing range although it wouldn’t be as creative or probably as popular.
Design the ultimate Festival Kit
Run a social media campaign where you ask people to design a survival kit for various festivals, make it open to everyone and
push it out on social media only ask people to share and integrate social metrics on the website to allow sharing easily.
People could win festival tickets and there range designed and built just for them it’s a fun and quirky way for people to build
links for Blacks instead of them having to do the hard work.
Offer at least 10 prises to make sure people feel they are not going to do something and not be rewarded.

10. 3 Link Building Ideas
Creative Content
Good old fashion content will always be key to making a good link building campaign, there are plenty of ideas Blacks could look at doing from
suggesting destinations for people to go and camp or go hiking to writing reviews about campaign equipment.
Offer guides on how to camp and look after your equipment this will allow people to properly care for anything they might by from Blacks.
Provide information on costs and spaces for each festival allow people to easily find which camping equipment they could take to any festival
or camp site without encoring more costs.
Link Baiting Ideas
•The Essential Festival Survival Kit
• Which Wild Walker are you? (Infographic)
• The ultimate guide to Camping BBQ Heaven
Other Possibilities
Open an outlet store this is becoming more popular with big brands taking to sites like eBay and opening outlet stores this could be a good
way for people to find Blacks products wherever they go.
Ask people to upload pictures of locations ask them to snap images of Blacks products in use and offer them 5% off the next shop with Blacks.
Get them to use Pinerest to upload them images allowing quick shares and re-pins for Blacks
Competitions every month people love these and will always share them which will easily build links for you.

11. Thanks for Listening
I would like to thank you both for listening to my
presentation and inviting me for an interview.
Should you wish for me to give real life examples I would be happy to work on
this over the next week and provide you with results.
@kevwiles