Clarks and Converse

Introduction

By: Karl Janiec

SEO is important for marketers, as it helps create brand awareness, and will effectively allow a brand to reach the top of a search on search engines, or relatively high when a desired phrase or keyword is looked up.

This is vital for companies who want to raise social media engagement, and lead consumers to their website to view company information and products (Which company doesn’t want this?).

This audit will examine the SEO activities of shoe companies Converse, and Clarks. 

1.     URL:	http://www.clarkscanada.com/ /	http://www.converse.com/
2.     Page Title	Clarks Shoes, Boots & More for Men and Women | Clarks CA	Converse - Official UK Store | Converse.com
3.     Meta Description	Discover Clarks Shoes and Boots online. We have many different styles for men, women and kids in a variety of size and width fittings with free delivery.	The Official Converse UK Online Store offers the complete Converse Sneaker and Clothing Collection. Shop All Star, Cons & Jack Purcell now
4.     Meta Keywords :	N/A	new arrivals, men's, women's, electronics
5.     Structural elements:  H1, H2, H3	H1 H2 H3	H1 H2 H3
6.     Bold/Strong tags and 7.     Italic/em tags	WOMES SHOES. GRACE. THE ELEGANCE OF SIMPLICITY	CHUCK TAYLOR: THE BEGINNING
8.     Alt Text	Clarks Store locator discover more trusted shops guarantee	Shop Now Chuck Family Learn More Chuck Family Prime Star Shop Mens Shop Womens Custom_New_Colours
9.     Page Load Time (estimate or use Moz)	50 50	50 75
10.  Call-to-action:	Discover More	Never Miss a beat: Sign up and receive 15% off next purchase
11.  Anchored Text:	NA	NA
12.  Mobile Friendly: Yes/No	Yes	Yes
13.  Social Media: (List all SM icons on the home page.	Facebook Twitter Instagram	Twitter Facebook Instagram

Google Trends

It seems that both brands follow similar trends, and actually spike around the same time. This is probably during interest in general shoe trends. It has been quite steady, however in August, converse had a big spike. This is due to a new shoe release announcement.

Latent Semantic Indexing Keyworks

Converse:

 converse high tops

 converse black

 converse sneakers

Clarks:

 men's clarks shoes

 clarks men's sandals sale

 clarks shoes for women sandals

   Conclusion

Converse's strengths are: More awareness, stronger brand name, been around longer

Clark's strengths are : High quality shoe, loyal fanbase, strong brand and subbrands.

Areas that need improvement

Both lack social media interaction, and do not participate as much in the athletic section. Clarks is not involved at all in athletic footwear.

The company which performed better was converse. It reaches out to more followers, contains stronger keywords, more content, and has a better developed webpage. Clark’s lacks meta keywords and even alt text in some cases. It seems to me that Clark’s went for more of a minimalist and simple webpage, but it still lacks some of the SEO that converse has.