I own a horse. That horse happens to be white and enjoys all
things dirt and mud. That horse also manages to find anything he can get into.
Needless to say, I am constantly buying horse supplies both in person and
online. I have go-to trusted regular retailers, but I noticed recently that a
new name keeps popping up on my searches, my digital ads, and equestrian box I
subscribe to, Cavali Club.
Enter Corro.
On the Side-by-Side SEO Comparison Tool, Corro describes
themselves through the meta description as an “online store for all of the best
in horse supplies, tack and equipment, grooming supplies, and more. Lowest
prices and free shipping available for all products.” If they are making a brand
promise for lowest prices then clearly they have their eye constantly on the
competition, as they are up against the established competitors such as Dover Saddlery,
Stateline Tack, SmartPak, etc.
Recently, I remembered a Facebook horse forum I’m a part of
talking about an easy horse bathing kit you install on your hose to make
bathing easier. I couldn’t remember what it was called so I took to Google to
search “horse bathing kit”. In the top ad spot was Corro- and they did indeed
have the lowest price. This is an example of a product listing ad. Semrush
(n.d.) states that “PLAs are displayed when someone searches on Google for a
product that has a listing on Google Shopping.”
Figure
1. Google search for horse
bathing kit showing paid ads. By Google. (2022).
After clicking through I did end up purchasing the kit along
with a couple other essentials I needed that I figured I’d pick up while I was
already having product shipped. This experience made me decide to choose them
for the assignment this week, as I’m curious to take a closer look at their
strategy and why I was motivated to try someone new instead of my usual go-to
competitors.
Paid Advertising: SEM and Social Media
We know from my initial search that Corro is using paid
advertising. They are also using retargeting ads across social channels, as
they continue to follow me on Facebook and Instagram after clicking through to
their website.
Figure
2. Photos of Corro advertising and
remarketing on social media. By Akers. (2022).
Corro prioritizes most of their spend on desktop, using paid
search for 15 keywords on desktop totaling an estimated $180,000.
Figure
3. Dashboard in Semrush showing paid
search positions in Advertising Research. By Akers. (2022).
But how do they stack up against competitors?
Tietbohl (2022) states “Keyword research is often key for
building content that resonates with your audience.” It is important to
understand what your competitors are doing, but not necessarily copy their
entire strategy (Tietbohl, 2022).
While the following chart doesn’t pull in all competitors,
it does show that Corro ranks about the middle of the pack in terms of number
of paid keywords and related traffic.
Figure
4. Dashboard in Semrush showing competition
positioning. By Akers. (2022).
However, when compared to the biggest competitors they have
the least amount of paid keywords, comparing 15 to a range of 100-357 keywords
from competitors. They do have a low amount of overlap with some of the top
competitors.
Figure
5. Dashboard in Semrush showing keyword
overlap in Keyword Gap. By Akers. (2022).
Future Keyword Enhancements:
Using the Keyword Gap analysis in Semrush, Corro could
identify the keyword difficulty range of possible down to very easy to
highlight keywords that are performing well for competitors and aren’t as
competitive if they also sell that product. For example, “scoot boots” and “ulcergard”
are keywords that have a low level of difficulty with decent search volume. However,
Corro doesn’t carry those products. They do sell horse blankets, though, so the
keyword “horse blankets for sale” that has a keyword difficulty level of
possible could be a keyword to add to the their paid efforts and take traffic
away from SmartPak.
Figure
6. Listing of keywords and
competitors by possible and easy keyword difficulty in Keyword Research. By Akers.
(2022).
However, their strategy should focus more on identifying their
own high profit margin products or a select few popular products that also
generate search volume and draw customers in that way. Then they can highlight free
shipping and related products throughout the shopping experience in order to encourage
customers to buy more products while they are already looking.
Do they have an SEO strategy in place as well?
Corro’s authority score is lower than two other larger
competitors. They also have less backlinks and monthly visits. However, for
being an up and coming company they aren’t too far behind the two other
leaders.
Figure
7. Dashboard in Semrush showing authority
score, backlinks, and website analytics. By Akers. (2022).
Corro’s traffic generation strategy is on par for the
market, though they acquire a touch more on the social front than the average
market trends. This makes sense given their Cavali Club equestrian box
subscription and the paid social ads mentioned earlier (Cavali Club, n.d.).
Figure
8. Dashboard in Semrush showing market
analytics and traffic generation for Corro. By Akers. (2022).
SEO Tactics
Corro uses meta descriptions and headings, which are key page
components for a successful SEO strategy (Tietbohl, 2022). However, they do not
have a title head tag on their homepage. Their headings also don’t seem to
include some of the top keywords they want to rank for in their strategy.
Figure
9. On page SEO tactics for Corro
compared to Dover Saddlery homepages. By Internet Ninjas. (2022).
However, they do have a blog that gives them the opportunity
to use more keywords to rank higher. In one of their blog entries compared to a
competitor, they are using h2 headings but could be optimizing them better for
the right keywords.
Figure 10. On page SEO tactics for Corro compared
to Dover Saddlery blogs. By Internet Ninjas. (2022).
The blog does work as a
strategy for generating content around keywords as a whole, however, and is a
significant source of percentage of traffic brought to the page from organic
search results. This is shown in the Organic Research analysis section of
Semrush.
Figure
11. Dashboard in Semrush showing blog
traffic percentage and keywords in Organic Research. By Akers. (2022).
Therefore, on page SEO is set up to facilitate better data
collection, but it could be improved upon.
Future SEO Suggestions
Taking the keyword research mentioned above in the paid
analysis example, Corro could also make sure to expand their blog content with
keywords and phrases that have subtopic volume with high efficiency but has a low
keyword difficulty rating. For example, horse supplies list has a plethora of
blog topics and headlines and can answer a number of questions that generate
consumer search volume. The best part is that the keyword difficulty rating is
low and Corro has tons of products related to horse supplies so content should
be easy to curate.
Figure
12. Chart in Semrush showing content
suggestions for “horse supplies list” in Content Marketing. By Akers. (2022).
Conclusion
Corro is an interesting up and coming company in the online
horse supplies market. In the Semrush Growth Quadrant they began to move into
the leaders quadrant when looking at their traffic with traffic growth percent.
Figure
13. Growth Quadrant in Semrush showing
competitors. By Akers. (2022).
They are the first company in these groups to offer a
separately branded subscription box that is trendy and popular. However, the
sharing of consumer data between Cavali Club subscribers and Corro website as a
whole can feed referral marketing tactics that can be tracked. They use this
data for social media and Google advertising PPC and display advertising
campaigns. They also generate updated long form content in the form of a blog
that help drive SEO tactics. Their product headings on their page try to use
keywords instead of just the product name, such as “3M Vetrap bandaging tape”,
as well to continue to increase keyword density. However, they could do a better job at
using the most important keywords in their h2 headings throughout their blog
and site. They could also use keywords and phrases that have subtopic volume
with high efficiency but has a low keyword difficulty rating to expand their
blog content more efficiently. However, I believe they are doing a pretty good
job in this online space and I look forward to watching their market share grow
over the years as they eat into established competitors that should keep an eye
on this company instead of vice versa.
They can continue to use all of this
knowledge to fine tune their strategy by the following from Maksimava (2020):
• “Develop
(or validate) your Unique Value Proposition
• Prioritize
your product development by focusing on the aspects of competitors’ products
customers value the most
• Improve
your product by capitalizing on competitors’ weaknesses customers complain
about
• Get
benchmarks to measure your growth against
• Uncover
market segments that aren’t fully served by competitors
• Create a
new product category by identifying gaps between what your competitors offer
and what the customers need.”
References
Akers, A. (2022). Semrush
Corro project. Unpublished internal company dashboard.
Akers, A. (2022). Corro
social media advertising. Unpublished internal photo.
Cavali Club. (n.d.). Equestrian
lifestyle box. Homepage. Retrieved February 20, 2022 from https://cavaliclub.com/
Internet Marketing Ninjas. (n.d.).
Side-by-side SEO comparison tool. On-page Analysis. Retrieved from https://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/seo-tools/seo-compare/
Maksimava, M. (2020). How to Perform
a Best-in-Class Competitor Analysis (w/ Template). Retrieved from: https://buffer.com/library/competitor-analysis/
SEMRush. (n.d.). PLA
research. Knowledge Base. Retrieved February 19, 2022 from https://www.semrush.com/kb/23-pla-research
Tietbohl, M. (2022, February).
Week 6 lesson: Content management for SEO/Keyword research. Ecampus. Retrieved
from West Virginia University, IMC 642.
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