The pet industry is seeing some major changes in terms of search, because pet owners are becoming more concerned with the quality of their pet supplies. In the effort of being "Partners in Pethood" in the web domain, PetSmart needs to revamp their website to become more optimized for the changing trends. This will create a competitive advantage in the web space.

1. By: Kimberly Ditmer
Transforming “Partners in Pethood” into “Experts in Digital
Marketing Strategy”
PetSmart
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2. Pet owners are becoming more
concerned with quality products
with rising disposable income.
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3. Specific search terms are changing
within the pet supply industry.

4. Terms such as “grain-free” are
increasing in search demand.

5. However, PetSmart does not
stand out for these terms.

6. Even though PetSmart does has a strong
brand name compared to competitors.

7. Their website is often times listed below
competitors within Google and Bing search
for even the simplest of terms.

8. It’s possible PetSmart hasn’t become
“Experts in Digital Marketing.”
Crawlability A
Relevance C
Popularity A-
Conversion B

9. The external factors affecting the success of
PetSmart’s web strategy focus on the amount
of sites linking to pages within petsmart.com.
http://www.seosiren.com/

10. This is important for Google to
rank a site’s popularity.
1 link from multiple sites is more important than
multiple links from 1 site.
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11. And PetSmart is ranked higher than
competitors in terms of popularity, but not
by much.
Company
Website
Linking
C-Blocks
Domain
Authority
petsmart.com 1607 79
petco.com 1492 77
chewy.com 214 56
drsfostersmith.com 0 1

12. Why? This strictly deals with the quality of
links. PetSmart does not have enough
unique links.
Company
Website
Total Backlinks
(Domain)
Total Linking
Root Domains
petsmart.com 1,189,461
11,553
petco.com 142,649 10,817
chewy.com 55,764 1,129
drsfostersmith.com 0 0
The difference between total backlinks and total linking
root domains illustrates the lack of uniqueness among
links.

13. Building a strategy to increase the amount of
unique links will provide PetSmart with a
competitive advantage in the web space.
# 1

14. The internal factors affecting PetSmart
directly consider the site’s crawlabilty,
conversion, and relevance.
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15. In terms of crawlabilty, PetSmart is indexed
differently within Google and Bing.
A XML site-map might be in order.

16. The conversion score is mainly affected by
the number of call to actions visible on the
homepage, which creates confusion.
#1 #2 #3

17. But when searching Google, many of the
pages for PetSmart do not include a call to
action to help the consumer make a choice.

18. Strengths
1. PetSmart’s website is visible in terms of
crawlability within the search engines with
minimal page errors
2. The website has a strong brand within search
3. Effectively uses title tags with keywords to
describe the specific page.
4. The website is easy to use with the navigation
and logo in expected locations.
Weaknesses
1. PetSmart is not using their website to full
potential to ensure a great ranking
2. Too many call to actions/ promotions going on
at the same time - making it confusing for
customers.
3. Not effectively using call to actions within
search to trigger/motivate a searcher to take
action and follow through
4. Header tags are the same for each page, and
many are not relevant to the specific products
on certain pages
Opportunities
1. Search trends for pet supplies are changing (ex.
increase in grain-free pet food search trends)
Threats
1. Increasing e-commerce competitors with the
convenience factor in mind
2. Minimum number of unique links compared to
overall total, meaning they have multiple links
from the same sites
3. Authority Domain of direct competitor (Petco)
is only a few points shy of PetSmart
Based on this current web strategy, here are the major strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities, and threats.

19. The first top priority within the web
strategy concerns building links
from multiple trustworthy sites.
Trustworthy sites link to
other trustworthy sites.

20. The second priority includes maximizing
keyword optimization for the site to rank
higher within organic search.
www.theideapeople.com

21. Interesting in learning more?
Contact me and lets continue the
conversation.
kaditmer@gmail.com
www.linkedin.com/in/kimberlyditmer
www.facebook.com/public/Kimberly-Ditmer