Jo Mercer
Building Non-Brand Visibility for an Iconic Australian Footwear Retailer
The Challenge
Jo Mercer's organic traffic was heavily weighted towards brand searches.
The opportunity was capturing non-branded terms - "women's heels", "leather sandals", "comfortable flats" – where customers are still deciding where to buy.
What We Did
Technical foundation work came first – indexation cleanup, URL standardisation, internal linking improvements, Core Web Vitals.
Then we focused on collection pages as the primary non-brand growth lever. Priority categories got rewritten titles, comprehensive content covering style/fit/materials, and internal linking blocks connecting related collections. For NZ, we implemented proper hreflang and canonicals to establish it as a distinct market.
Impressive Results - Fast
Collection pages became genuine traffic drivers, generating over 130,000 clicks. NZ traffic grew 30% with some non-brand impression clusters doubling. Rankings improved across all priority categories, with the site now appearing on page 1 for competitive footwear terms it wasn't visible for previously.
- 130,000+ clicks from collection pages
- 30% increase in NZ clicks over six months
- Non-brand impression clusters doubling in key categories
- Page 1 rankings achieved for competitive terms including heels, sandals, flats and boots
- Independent NZ market rankings established from scratch
Why it worked
Fashion customers search by style and occasion, not brand. By aligning collection pages with how people actually search for footwear, Jo Mercer started capturing demand that was previously going elsewhere.
