Prepare Your Home & Lifestyle Brand for Spring

As a home improvement brand, you’ll know how much buying potential Spring cleaning season brings to your business. It’s one of the hottest dates on the home improvement calendar, and in recent years, communities have even taken on a ‘Great British Spring Clean’ at the end of May, which focuses on cleaning up the local community.

You might be thinking, isn’t it a bit early to be thinking about Spring cleaning? Research shows that search volumes for ‘how to Spring clean’ peaked at the end of March 2021, and then again at the beginning of May. Plus, ‘Spring cleaning’ searches are currently at their highest in 30 days and are projected to keep rising! 

Which means… there is no better time to ensure your brand is jumping on the hype and maximising your marketing presence.

Spring cleaning, whether done at home or as part of the community, offers people the chance to organise, declutter, store and switch up their environments. To do this, they’ll need your help! Whether you supply storage, paint, tools or furniture, it’s imperative that: your website works with you and not against you. 

Here are some tips to ensure your website is fully optimised to convert traffic and elevate your game this Spring cleaning season:

Organise your technical SEO

As with any Spring clean, you first need to organise and have a sort-through. For your customers they’re likely going to be sorting through their belongings and organising them to make sure they can access their house and everything in it in the best possible way.
For you, this part of the Spring cleaning process gives you a chance to update and organise your website’s technical SEO to ensure your customers can both find and enjoy your website.

Update your SERP knowledge

If you want your website to be seen by potential customers, you must ensure you understand and have reacted to the latest SERP updates. Whether it’s Google, Bing or any other search engine, they’re constantly evolving and releasing new guidance on creating websites that will rank well.

Google's primary goal is to give people what they want. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

What we mean by this is when someone searches for something, Google wants to provide the most reliable, informative and relevant information. As a result, the SERP will be ranked according to how useful your information is to the person searching for something.

To clarify what ‘relevant’ or ‘reliable’ looks like in the eyes of Google, they routinely release new updates and information regarding ranking factors. This is where your Spring cleaning starts.
You need to give your SERP knowledge a refresh. Have there been any major updates since the last time you checked? How will this impact your rankings and visibility? What can you do to ensure your website is still seen by potential and existing customers?

At Reflect Digital, it’s our job to help you move the game on, which is why we’re constantly keeping an eye out for any SERP updates that you need to be aware of. Since the last time you Spring cleaned your website, there are two main Google updates we think you need to understand more about:

MUM - Google’s Multitask Unified Model was announced in 2021 and is going to be on everyone’s minds as we move through 2022. While the update hasn’t been rolled out yet, the best thing you can do during your website’s Spring clean is to get ahead of your competition. If you’re prepared for the update before it rolls out, you will only be positively impacted by it. Plus, if you’re doing what Google wants before it tells you to do it…you’re winning the SERP game!

So what is MUM? In short, the MUM update is the next step in Google’s mission to make search more human. Once rolled out, it will mean that Google is able to understand more than just text on a page; it will be able to understand and rank text, image and video simultaneously!

Is MUM new to you? Don’t worry, our founder and CEO Becky has written a handy guide on understanding Google’s MUM update, including tips on how you can prepare for it.

CWV - Google’s Core Web Vitals update rolled out almost a year ago in May 2021. However, there has been a second part to the update whereby Desktop has spent the first quarter of 2022 rolling out the inclusion of Desktop within their initial CWV update, which previously only focused on Mobile. We believe that this update is so important that we’ve actually dedicated our next Spring cleaning tip to it!

Put slow load times in the bin

That’s right, Google’s Core Web Vitals update rollout has been so integral to the success of a website’s ability to rank well that we’ve given the update its own section!

As your customers will be clearing out and binning anything that doesn’t bring them joy or is getting in the way, this is your chance to do the same for your website. In this case, you need to put slow page loading speeds in the bin.

The CWV update is all about page speed and is marked against three metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

Don’t worry, it’s easy to test your Core Web Vitals on your website using Google Search Console or Screaming Frog. GSC has its own Core Web Vitals section specifically for testing against CWV metrics. Screaming frog’s SEO Spider (yes, we love the animal theme too!) combines with PageSpeed Insights API to measure your CWV metrics. Both pieces of software will help you identify any pages on your website that need optimising!

Potential issues that could be negatively impacting your CWV scores include but are not limited to:

1. Images - Images are one of the main issues that create low CWVs scoring. Issues with images can include high resolution images with large file sizes, images with large dimensions and also images with no dimensions at all. High resolution and large dimensions can negatively impact LCP, whereas having no dimensions can decrease your CLS score.
2. Third-party Scripts - The bigger your website gets, the more third-party scripts used on your page for tracking purposes. While these scripts are useful and can make your website more dynamic, too many of them can slow your page loading speed significantly. As part of your Spring clean, you should audit your scripts to make sure they’re all necessary and if they’re not, show them the door!
3. Cookie Policy - If your website has Cookie Policy that’s injected via a plugin, you might find the rest of the page is delayed when loading. Don’t worry, this is easily rectified as you can Preload enhancements to make sure your browser knows that your Cookie Policy banner needs to be loaded quicker than usual.

Find out more about CWVs and how you can say goodbye to slow page loading times in our recent blog on what to consider for Core Web Vitals in 2022.

Tidy up your user experience

The next step of any Spring clean is to focus on the cleanup! Once your customers have sorted through, organised and binned unwanted or unnecessary items, they will inevitably need to tidy up their homes. We believe you need to join them in this Spring cleaning step by tidying up your user experience!

User experience is the single most important aspect of any website. Why? If the person using your website is able to easily, quickly, and simply navigate through each page to get to their desired destination, they are more likely to purchase what you’re offering. However, a negative user experience often leads to users terminating their journey on your website early, therefore missing out on key conversions.

We don’t need to explain to you how important a slick user journey is in ensuring a positive user experience. Instead, we’ll let behavioural science do the explaining:

Peak-End Rule is an example of a cognitive bias that affects how people remember their previous experiences. In this instance, it relates to how a user remembers their previous experience of navigating your website.

With Peak-End Rule, the most intense positive and negative moments, as well as the end moment of a user’s experience are weighted heavily in their recollection of an event. As a result, users are much more likely to remember particularly positive or negative experiences of navigating your website.

With this being the case, tidying up your user experience is crucial so that you can identify and change any elements that could create a negative emotion and cause a customer to leave your site early.

So, what can you do to enhance the user experience? Firstly, you need to ensure you understand user intent so you can identify who your audience is and what they’re looking for so that you can adapt your website and content accordingly.

There are a million and one ways to improve user experience, we couldn’t possibly name them all. However, here are a couple of top tips for ensuring a smooth and positive experience for your users:

1. Make your website accessible - You need to ensure your website is accessible to every user who lands on it. Whether this is through optimising your content to make it readable, changing colours or fonts, adding captions to videos or optimising image tags, you need to make adjustments to your website! If you don't, users may leave your site early, or even worse, not able to access your website at all.
2. Identify and fix redirect chains - As your website evolves and URLs change, it’s natural to add redirects from old to new pages. However, there can be issues when you create redirect chains by adding redirects to more than one page in a row. If your customers are greeted with redirect after redirect, they’re unlikely to have a positive user experience and may leave your site early. By neatening up your redirects and ensuring you don’t create chains or loops, you’ll improve user experience and improve your website’s SEO!
3. Have clear and concise site navigation - There is no better way to improve user experience than to simplify your site navigation. How your users are able to navigate around your site will depend on whether they become customers or not. If they have to go through too many pages before reaching their desired destination, they’ll be put off or get distracted by other pages. Likewise, if there are not enough pages between the point of entering the site and purchasing the product, they may feel they don’t have all the information they need to go through with their purchase!

Sorting through and organising your technical SEO doesn’t end here, we’ve only selected a few of the most important elements to get your Spring cleaning started. You need to prioritise what technical elements will benefit your website the most and optimise them. Want to find out more about the other aspects of technical SEO? Lucky for you, we’re a team of friendly and innovative SEO specialists, so find out more about our technical SEO offerings.

Give your On-Page SEO a refresh

Everyone knows that Spring cleaning season is the ultimate opportunity to give your home a refresh. Whether it’s a full-blown renovation, a lick of paint, new curtains or simply just changing the layout of an existing room, refreshing is an integral part of a Spring clean.

It comes as no surprise that this is also the case for your website. You should be using your dedicated Spring cleaning time to refresh your website’s on-page SEO, from contact information to content!

Out with the old and in the new

Our first tip for giving your on-page SEO a refresh is directly related to your customers doing the same thing in their homes. As your customers decide they want to update their bedrooms, living rooms and bathrooms as part of their Spring clean, they’ll be looking for new materials and homeware to help them do so. If you’re using Google My Business, your business information will be the first thing people see on their SERP when coming across your website.

If potential customers come across your website during their search for new products but your contact information is outdated, they won’t be able to get in touch with queries, understand your operating hours and, as a result, be unlikely to use your services. You could be losing revenue, all because you’ve changed your email or have new operating hours.

It couldn’t be more simple to refresh your business information, simply go through your website and ensure all information relating to your business is up to date and correct. Keep an eye out for emails, phone numbers, addresses, staff pages, product offerings, operating hours, policies, company values and anything else that could deter a customer if it’s not up to date.

Similarly, if the rest of your website hasn’t been updated in a while, you could be missing out on opportunities to upsell and give your customers insights on other products. 

As part of your on-page SEO Spring clean, you should ensure your internal linking is optimised. If you do so, customers will be able to find other relevant pages on your website, you will be helping to improve the rankings of those pages and this could increase your revenue during the all-important Spring cleaning season.

So, how do you optimise your internal linking? Firstly, you need to review your website’s pages and find any opportunities to add internal links within the content. Try to link to your cornerstone pages, landing pages and contact pages as much as possible. Remember though, you don’t want to draw readers away from the page they’re reading too early as they may not finish reading the blog or looking through the products.

Once you’ve identified new internal linking opportunities, you need to incorporate them into your content using relevant anchor text. To keep it relevant, you should:

• Avoid using non-descriptive anchor text such as ‘click here’
• Try to use keywords that the linked page is targeting
• Avoid using keywords that the current page is targeting
• Make the anchor text short, but descriptive

Keeping your website updated is the best way to let your customers know how much you care about your business. So, find your Spring cleaning groove and refresh your website’s key information to improve conversions, ranking and customer satisfaction!

Freshen up your content

In terms of the content on your website, optimising the internal linking and updating the business information isn’t enough if you really want to make the most of Spring cleaning season.

Your page content is your opportunity to connect with your potential customers, engage and inform them, and encourage them to use your services. Whether you’re writing content for a product page or a blog, you need to ensure it fits your tone of voice, is going to grab your reader’s attention, and has all the information they need to continue through their user journey.

Spring cleaning season offers you the opportunity to use your content to drive high numbers of traffic that converts into sales. If you have relevant, captivating blogs relating to Spring cleaning then potential customers are likely to find these pages through their web searches and use your services because of them.

So, how can you create engaging content that converts into Spring cleaning sales?

• Keyword research - The basis for strong content that converts into sales is keyword research. If you can understand what your audience is searching for then you can write content about it that answers their questions. You may have done keyword research in the past but search volumes change from month to month so you need to do updated keyword research before you choose your content topics. At Reflect Digital, keyword research is at the core of our SEO and PPC services because we use data-led research to help businesses level up their websites. As a result, we use keyword research tools daily; we recommend using SEMrush or Google Ads Keyword Planner, both of which provide regularly updated keyword search volumes.

• Be relevant - We know this might sound obvious but creating relevant content is crucial, otherwise, you can kiss goodbye to leveraging Spring cleaning season! Being relevant not only gives you a better chance of ranking highly on SERPs for specific keywords, it also makes your content far more likely to convert readers into customers. You can come up with relevant topics by doing a competitor analysis to see what other businesses have been doing. It’s also a great idea to stay up to date with current affairs and trends to see how you can use them within your content. Want a top tip? Make note of all the national days, weeks and months that are relevant to your business so that you can jump onboard through your content
• Choose engaging topics - When it comes to thinking of blog topic ideas, you need to make sure they’re going to captivate your target audience. Your topics shouldn’t come across like all you want to do is sell products, they should sound informative to pique the reader’s attention. Think of blogs as an exchange; you’re going to provide information on a topic that your business specialises in, and in return, the reader is going to become one of your customers (if your content is up to scratch). So, for Spring cleaning season you could think about topics such as: 
  • How to freshen up your living room
  • What are the top home improvement trends this Spring?
  • Tips for nailing this year’s Spring cleaning
  • How to get ahead of Spring cleaning season
  • What are the best colours for Spring decor?
• Make your content accessible - As you create your fantastic new Spring clean-themed content, you need to ensure it’s accessible to everyone. With over 14 million disabled people in the UK alone, inaccessible content is the fastest way to discriminate against disabled people, lose conversions, decrease revenue, and damage your brand’s reputation. By making your content readable and accessible, you’ll be allowing everyone to enjoy the fantastic content you’ve written, as is their right to do so. To make your content accessible, use simple language, a variety of sentence lengths, paragraphs, bullet points to make the content digestible, and ensure correct grammar.

Your on-page SEO is what potential customers will see when they’re on your website so it needs to make a good impression. If you lead by example and Spring clean your website, you’re bound to skyrocket above your competitors when it comes to leveraging Spring cleaning season!

Want to find out more about how we take a human-first approach to all our content and copywriting? Take a look at what makes our content stand out, and how yours could too.

Spruce up your off-page SEO

So, you’ve organised your technical SEO and freshened up your on-page SEO, now it’s time to spruce up your off-page SEO.

The clue is in the title with off-page SEO, this is the work that happens away from your website to give your website more traffic, conversions, authority and all-around hype! As a result, it’s just as important to level up your off-page SEO when

Spring cleaning your website, as it is to elevate your content or improve page loading speed.

Rehome your content with a PR campaign

There is no better way to leverage Spring cleaning season than to run a PR campaign! Digital PR campaigns are multi-faceted which means they’re effective for more than one reason.
In terms of brand awareness, running a PR campaign ahead of Spring cleaning season will get your brand out there and in the minds of potential customers. Whether the campaign is website, radio, podcast, or social media-based, it’s bound to lead to high numbers of traffic!

This is similar to traditional PR campaigns, but what makes digital PR stand out for leveraging Spring cleaning season is the backlinks it produces. If you run a PR campaign and a website publishes your campaign on their website and links to your website, you will be given a backlink. In the eyes of Google, a backlink is like a vote of confidence in your website, therefore the page that’s linked to is more likely to rank highly on the SERP. If the backlink is given from a high-authority domain, such as a national press outlet or well-known industry website, the backlink will carry more weight with it, which is why it’s always a good idea to target high-authority websites.

So, how do you create an engaging digital PR campaign that will convert customers and raise the number of backlinks your website has?

1. Make it relevant - We don’t mean to state the obvious but when you plan and create your digital PR campaign, you need to make sure it’s relevant in more ways than one. Firstly, your campaign needs to be relevant to your business. There’s no point in creating a PR campaign about new cybersecurity regulations if the aim of your campaign is to achieve more conversions throughout Spring cleaning season. Similarly, your campaign needs to be relevant to current affairs; you wouldn’t release a Spring cleaning campaign in July for example. By making your campaign relevant to both your business and current affairs, your campaign is more likely to be picked up by publications which are then more likely to create conversions as it’s so timely for potential customers.
2. Stand out from your competitors - When you create your digital PR campaign, it’s important to do competitor research. You need to scope out your competition, see what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and what you can do to stand out from them. You will not be the only home improvement brand trying to maximise conversions over the Spring cleaning season. In fact, the businesses trying to leverage these conversions won’t be limited to just home improvement brands either. You face tough competition to convert customers, which is why your PR campaign needs to be the one that catches their attention the most. Whether it’s taking a different angle, presenting your campaign in a more visually captivating way, or choosing a topic that no one would expect but everyone will love, you need to be a trailblazer rather than a follower!
3. Choose your campaign wisely - This tip follows on from the previous one about standing out from your competitors. To have the most successful campaign possible, you need to choose the format and your assets carefully. Are you going to create a graphic, blog, brainteaser, whitepaper? How about a collaboration with a well-known brand? Will it be for backlinks or brand awareness? What platforms are you using for your campaign? If it’s a big campaign, you may have several of these ideas in action at one time. Every decision you make will have an impact on who reads your campaign, engages with it and becomes a customer because of it!
4. Target the right publications - For your campaign to be a success, you need to be outreaching and pitching to the right publications. It’s fantastic to be featured by national publications and tabloids, but remember that they may not lead to as many conversions as being featured by a small industry-specific publication. This doesn’t mean you can’t target national publications, but try and have a balance! Think about who you want to target in your Spring cleaning campaign and where they’re most likely to find out about it. 
5. Take time for outreaching - Outreaching and pitching can feel like a losing battle sometimes. When you’re sending out hundreds of emails and getting only a few responses, it’s easy to lose confidence in your campaign. If you’re reading this, we want you to take this as your sign to keep persevering and striving to create a successful campaign! Outreach doesn’t stop after you’ve sent the first email. You need to have a working press list that is continually updated with more potential contacts and don’t forget to follow up. After a few days, if you’ve not received replies or had your campaign featured, then send another polite email. If you take time for outreaching and don’t give up, your campaign is sure to be a success!

At Reflect Digital, we’re dedicated to getting you game-changing coverage that will increase both brand awareness and backlinks. Find out more about our digital PR expertise.

Key Takeaways

So there you have it…our guide to preparing your home improvement brand’s website for Spring cleaning season. That was rather fun, wasn’t it?

As firm believers of leading by example, we want you to Spring clean your website’s SEO so that your customers will come to you for all their Spring cleaning needs. We have taken you on a whistlestop tour through technical SEO, on-page SEO and off-page SEO. From improving your CWV score and fixing redirect chains, to updating your business information and coming up with relevant blog topics for Spring cleaning season, to creating a relevant digital PR campaign to gain backlinks, we’ve given you everything you need to get a head start on leveraging Spring cleaning season!

The best part? Optimising your website will have a positive impact on your rankings, traffic and conversions in general, not just for Spring cleaning season. If you follow this guide and regularly refer back to it during other parts of the year, you’ll stay on top of the home improvement game all year round.

If you want to talk to us about any aspect of SEO, digital PR or want to find out more about how we harness the power of human behaviour for our services, get in touch with us today.

Now I’m off to organise my wardrobe and choose a new wallpaper for my home office…Happy Spring cleaning!