December 2013

10 St. John Street, Chester, CH1 1DA 0845 299 7668 hello@insideonline.co.uk www.insideonline.co.uk

LIGHTINGSector Report

Thanks for reading our sector report,

At Inside Online, we deliver results from understanding data and take great pride in the level of insights and thought leadership we provide for our clients. To assist us we have engineered ITOM our intelligent management platform to allow us to aggregate and interpret vast amounts of data to deliver ‘on the pulse’ insights into any online sector. With this data we produce these sector reports to communicate the top level insights in an easy to understand manner.

Each report aims to help you understand the vast array of data used by online marketing specialists like ourselves and how that data uncovers opportunities and risks. We hope you find these reports easy to digest, interesting and full of insight.

If you have any suggestions for our reports or would like some help understanding some of the data, please contact us at inspired@insideonline.co.uk.

Kind regards,

Andy Cooper

Managing Director

1. Search Volume Overview

2. Seasonal Trends

3. Keyword Competitiveness

4. Visibility Overview

5. Visibility Year on Year

6. Short Term Potential

7. Rate of Link Acquisition

8. Authority of Linking Domains

9. Visibility vs Authority

10. Visibility vs Indexed

11. Underperforming Sites

Contents

Lighting Sector Report

Lighting Sector Report - 1

Search Volume Overview

heals.co.uk 11063

wayfair.co.uk 9852

lightinthebox.com 9525

lightbulbs-direct.com 2496

lightrabbit.co.uk 1962

qvsdirect.com 1639

universal-lighting.co.uk 1481

lighting-direct.co.uk 1320

lyco.co.uk 1210

lights4fun.co.uk 1188

thelightbulb.co.uk 1175

lights2go.co.uk 1122

ledhut.co.uk 1057

castlegatelights.co.uk 1029

lightsaver.co.uk 1010

ultraleds.co.uk 758

litecraft.co.uk 701

Brand Searches Per Month

Brand search volume desktop vs mobile search

Mobile 15%

Desktop 85%

Total search volume around ‘lighting’ has declined overall in the last 5 years, however December 2013 is up 36% from December 2012 and is at the highest levels seen in the market since November 2010.

Lighting Sector Report - 2

The graph below shows how the UK weekly search volume for ‘Lighting’ compares between 2011 and 2012. The data has been normalised, therefore the trend lines show the percentage of peak search volume (y axis). The trend lines are designed to give some insight into what has been a turbulent year for online retail as a whole.

Seasonal Trends

The data above is taken from Google UK search only. The trends take into account searches from Desktop and mobile devices.

It is important to highlight that the above seasonal trend is just for a single keyword. The trend shown is unlikely to represent the overall search volume within the industry. If the search volume for the keyword above is down year on year, it may be that the search volume within longer-tail queries has increased.

‘Lighting’ Search volume trends 20122011 2013

Lighting Sector Report - 3

The chart below shows how monthly search volume for each specific keyword compares to the organic competitiveness of each keyword. Such analysis helps to identify “low hanging fruit” within the industry: keywords which have substantial search volume, but with limited competition in the search results. An effective search strategy will constantly review keyword strategy, examining short, medium and longer-term goals. How does your keyword strategy compare?

Keyword Competitiveness

Keywords:

1. led light bulbs2. led lighting3. garden lights4. led lights5. light bulbs

6. light bulb7. outdoor lighting8. strip lights9. led bulbs10. wall lights

11. led ceiling lights12. floor lamp13. floor lamps14. ceiling lights15. kitchen lighting

16. bedside lamps17. floor lights18. bathroom lights19. bathroom lighting20. floor lamps uk

21. light switches22. kitchen lights23. security lights24. light fittings25. led strip lights

Lighting Sector Report - 4

Searchmetrics track over 100 million keywords from Google UK, recording organic rankings and average paid search positions. This data is then cross referenced with the search volume for each individual keyword, giving popular keywords greater visibility weighting. The graph below shows how each site’s search visibility compares, splitting out organic and paid search visibility.

Visibility Overview

OrganicPaid

This graph is designed to give you an overview of how sites are performing in comparison to each other, within Google.co.uk only. It does not give an accurate insight into the monthly PPC or SEO spend for each site.

Lighting Sector Report - 5

Organic Search Paid Search Total

Nov 13 Nov 12 Difference Nov 13 Nov 12 Difference Nov 13 Nov 12 Difference

heals.co.uk 10768 11955 -10% 295 440 -33% 11063 12395 -11%

wayfair.co.uk 9852 4827 104% 0 1225 -100% 9852 6052 63%

lightinthebox.com 5421 2318 134% 4104 10113 -59% 9525 12431 -23%

lightbulbs-direct.com 2043 1724 19% 453 486 -7% 2496 2210 13%

lightrabbit.co.uk 1924 68 2729% 38 0 0% 1962 68 2785%

qvsdirect.com 1502 2773 -46% 137 502 -73% 1639 3275 -50%

universal-lighting.co.uk 1463 657 123% 18 42 -57% 1481 699 112%

lighting-direct.co.uk 1009 191 428% 311 463 -33% 1320 654 102%

lyco.co.uk 1105 2002 -45% 105 225 -53% 1210 2227 -46%

lights4fun.co.uk 1035 2803 -63% 153 361 -58% 1188 3164 -62%

thelightbulb.co.uk 795 772 3% 380 436 -13% 1175 1208 -3%

lights2go.co.uk 1024 1382 -26% 98 578 -83% 1122 1960 -43%

ledhut.co.uk 354 2109 -83% 703 753 -7% 1057 2862 -63%

castlegatelights.co.uk 813 582 40% 216 246 -12% 1029 828 24%

lightsaver.co.uk 284 408 -30% 726 829 -12% 1010 1237 -18%

ultraleds.co.uk 754 847 -11% 4 0 0% 758 847 -11%

litecraft.co.uk 658 3263 -80% 43 174 -75% 701 3437 -80%

lightingmajestic.co.uk 628 0 0% 2 0 0% 630 0 0%

thelightingsuperstore.co.uk 516 490 5% 0 625 -100% 516 1115 -54%

sparksdirect.co.uk 421 255 65% 0 0 0% 421 255 65%

affordablelighting.co.uk 400 4 9900% 5 0 0% 405 4 10025%

pagazzi.com 191 246 -22% 168 163 3% 359 409 -12%

directlight.co.uk 285 344 -17% 0 0 0% 285 344 -17%

davey-lighting.co.uk 213 41 420% 0 0 0% 213 41 420%

lightingathome.co.uk 176 898 -80% 7 15 -53% 183 913 -80%

Visibility year on year

2012 was an incredibly turbulent year for organic search, with the roll out of some huge algorithmic updates. The sites which have witnessed a significant decline in visibility may have been hit directly by updates aimed at tackling link spam (Penguin updates) or onsite content issues (Panda updates). These two factors are the most common explanations for drops in visibility.

Other factors such as site changes (expanding or reducing site size for example) or making significant structure changes are other common reasons for observing big increases or decreases in organic visibility.

Lighting Sector Report - 6

The graph below shows the number of unique organic keywords each website has ranking on page 2 or 3 of Google (positions 11 to 30). This is one way of measuring a sites short-term potential, as such keywords are unlikely to be generating much traffic (if any) in these positions. With a little push, it is entirely realistic to push many of these terms from page 2 or 3 onto page 1.

Short Term Potential

In order to make the most of the short-term potential each site has, it is essential to know which keywords are ranking just outside of the traffic generating positions. Once this is known, some simple onsite tweaks may be required to give these terms the push they need to begin attracting organic traffic. Alternatively, if all possible onsite tweaks have been exhausted, the primary focus should switch to increasing the overall authority of the domain.

Lighting Sector Report - 7

The greater the number of links a site has pointing towards it tends to correlate with the authoritativeness of the domain, which in turn tends to correlate with organic visibility. Therefore, not only is the current state of a domains link profile important, it is also vital to understand who is building new links the quickest (and how they are doing it!). The graph below shows the average rate at which each domain has acquired new links over the last 11 months. The source of this data is Majestic SEO.

Rate of Link Acquisition

As a general rule, the larger brands manage to obtain the highest number of links per month due to their ability to naturally gather links. If smaller brands are managing to gather links at a higher rate, it could be that aggressive link manipulation is taking place.

Lighting Sector Report - 8

In light of recent Google updates, the quality of linking domains has never been more important or under as much scrutiny by Google. The graph below shows the number of unique linking domains each site has pointing to it, broken down by the authority of each linking domain. Such factors carry significant weighting within the Google algorithm, and are likely to continue doing so for the foreseeable future.

Authority of Linking Domains

Very Authoritative Domains 70-100 Above Average Domain Authority 50-69 Average Domain Authority 30-49

Low Domain Authority 10-29 Very Low Quality Domains Under 10

The ultimate goal of any link acquisition drive is to achieve links from domains within the 70 – 100 range. 1 or 2 of these links have the potential to rapidly increase a sites organic visibility

Sites which have a large number of lower quality links are advised to do a full review to ensure none of the links are in breach of the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Action should be taken immediately on any links which are found in breach of these guidelines.

Lighting Sector Report - 9

As a general rule, there is a positive correlation between the number of inbound links and domain authority. Likewise, there is usually a positive correlation between domain authority and organic visibility – the greater the authority, the greater the potential the site has to rank for organic keywords. The scatter graph below shows how each site’s organic visibility score (as measured by Searchmetrics) correlates with its domain authority score (as measured by SEOMoz).

Visibility vs Authority

Sites which sit below the trend line are likely to be able to find quick onsite tweaks which could rapidly increase their visibility. With these sites, increasing the domain authority is a longer-term strategy.

Sites which sit above the trend line are far more likely to have reached close to their optimal visibility through onsite optimisation, and therefore putting focus on increasing domain authority in the short-term should be the immediate goal.

1. heals.co.uk2. wayfair.co.uk3. lightinthebox.com4. lightbulbs-direct.com5. lightrabbit.co.uk6. universal-lighting.co.uk

7. qvsdirect.com8. lyco.co.uk9. lights2go.co.uk10. lighting-direct.co.uk11. lights4fun.co.uk12a. thelightbulb.co.uk

12b. thelightbulb.co.uk13a. ultraleds.co.uk13b. litecraft.co.uk14. lightsaver.co.uk15. ledhut.co.uk

Lighting Sector Report - 10

All the work that a website does to increase its domain authority is worthless without a well built out site, including a number of different pages to target each of the important relevant keywords and keyphrases within that niche. A high number of indexed pages would generally correlate with a high level of organic visibility – as there are more pages that could rank for any given keyword query.

Visibility vs Indexed

Where a site has a high level of indexed pages but a low organic visibility, this may indicate an issue – examples of such issues could include duplicate pages, poor domain authority, poor architecture and link equity flow – or a combination of all three.

Where a site has a high organic visibility but a low number of indexed pages, this may indicate missed potential. The site in question is doing well ranking for the keywords it does target but there are probably further pages that can be built out to target a greater variety of keywords and drive greater visibility and consequently more traffic.

1. heals.co.uk2. wayfair.co.uk3. lightinthebox.com4. castlegatelights.co.uk5. ledhut.co.uk6. lightbulbs-direct.com

7. lightrabbit.co.uk8. qvsdirect.com9. universal-lighting.co.uk10. lyco.co.uk11. lyco.co.uk12. lights2go.co.uk

13. lighting-direct.co.uk14. thelightbulb.co.uk15. ultraleds.co.uk16. litecraft.co.uk17. lightsaver.co.uk

Lighting Sector Report - 11

Organic Visibility Paid Visibility Unique Linking Domains

Domain Authority

lightingmajestic.co.uk 628 2 7 8

thelightingsuperstore.co.uk 516 0 565 35

sparksdirect.co.uk 421 0 372 35

affordablelighting.co.uk 400 5 144 30

pagazzi.com 191 168 145 30

directlight.co.uk 285 0 335 34

davey-lighting.co.uk 213 0 112 33

lightingathome.co.uk 176 7 158 31

Average of Underperforming Sites 354 23 230 30

Average of Visible Sites 4057 626 547 41

Sites which are underperforming organically have an obvious major common factor – they have a limited number of unique linking domains (almost a quarter of that of the performing websites). Each of the sites listed ranks reasonably well for one or two of the generic organic keywords, but rarely more than this. In a lot of these cases, organic visibility is limited by poor onsite optimisation and poor long-tail strategies.

Underperforming Sites

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10 St. John Street, Chester, CH1 1DA

0845 299 7668

hello@insideonline.co.uk

www.insideonline.co.uk

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