The Secrets Behind Warby Parkers 1.5 Million Monthly Visitors

In this article, we look at Warby Parker

You'll learn

• How Warby Parker reaches customers on all parts of their journey.
• The clever in-content ads they use to maximise traffic.
• What your SEO plan MUST cover (and if it doesn't you need to have words with your agency).

Let's dive in.

What is Warby Parker?

Warby Parker is a US-based optician that started life with just a $2500 seed investment.

It was founded in 2010 with the goal of providing high-quality, stylish eyewear at an affordable price. The company is known for its direct-to-consumer model, which allows it to offer glasses and sunglasses at a fraction of the cost of traditional retailers.

Customers can try on glasses at home for free using the company's Home Try-On program, which allows them to select up to five frames to try on for five days.

Today they also have brick-and-mortar stores and even an online eye test.

What are Their SEO Metrics Like?

Ahrefs gives the site a DR of 81 and a UR of 42.

They have over 171,000 backlinks from 17,400 domains, which gives their site 1.5 million monthly visitors.

The estimated cost of this traffic is valued at $1.9 million if you were to buy it using PPC.

Semrush has them reaching slightly more people.

They have the site at 2 million visitors.

Ok, so how do they generate his traffic?

Why Nothing Beats Brand Marketing

According to Semrush, Warby Parker has a nice split of traffic, with 63% of it informational and 22% commercial.

And when we dig into the traffic you can see what's going on.

The Warby Parker home page generates 50% of their traffic.

If you follow me online, you'll know how much I preach about the value of brand marketing.

I speak to marketing managers all the time, and many of them are either smashing their budgets on PPC, and/ or simply can't get investment from the powers above to invest in brand marketing.

But Warby Parker is a great example of brand marketing in action.

Because of the sheer amount of brand search interest, they have a large share of search.

I have no doubt this is generating huge amounts of revenue.

But aside from the brand traffic, they have over 2800 pages.

So what are they about?

Eyewear A to Z

Warby Parker has deployed a simple yet effective content strategy.

They've created content a blog/ content hub that is called 'Eyeware A to Z'.

It covers the following topics:

• All about eyewear.
• Eye health.
• How-to guides.
• Fashion and lifestyle.

I've lost count of the number of sites that overcomplicate things, but this is a nice and sensible structure.

And their content keeps with this simple but effective approach.

Articles are around the 1500 word range and use a range of custom graphics, images and a sticky nav bar.

But something that I love to see in brand content is their own ads, and Warby Parker does this with huge ads.

Content design is an often ignored part of marketing, which is quite annoying.

Marketing managers will spend a fortune on display ads, and yet never place 'in content' ads on their own site.

And with over 2000 pages, this gives Warby Parker a huge opportunity to sell to people.

But how does Warby Parkers SEO work on a performance level?

Performance SEO is the Future

If you've read any of my posts this week, you'll know I've been talking about performance SEO.

So what is it?

SEO is a high-yield marketing channel that works through reaching buyers who use search engines to learn and find/ buy products/ services.

In particular, SEO reaches people in 3 stages of their journey.

1. Prospects unaware/ not in the market to buy.
2. Prospects researching the category.
3. Prospects ready to buy today

So, how does Warby Parker look?

They rank number 1 for the search term eyeglasses. And also rank on page 1 for similar high-traffic terms.

They also rank for a wide range of research and informational terms.

So, when it comes to judging its organic performance, Warby Parker has hit their goals.

But what can you learn from Warby Parkers SEO approach?

Topical Authority Matters

Topical authority is something that matters for websites.

But authority is nothing without strategy.

Warby Parker made a commitment to help people who use search engines to find eyewear and advice about vision.

They've been adding content to their site for years and this is a good idea.

So, the big tip here is to create content that your audience would find useful.

But also, ensure you design that content to maximise sales potential through in-content ads.

However, you also have to try and rank for buyer terms.

Warby Parker does this.

And this is why you must have a performance-focused SEO agency.

One that links your SEO to commercial goals.

If there's one key takeaway from this week's newsletter is this.

Traffic is vanity, performance SEO is sanity.

You need a plan to reach buyers on the customer journey and those also not in the market/ unaware of your products/ services.

My advice, go to your SEO agency and ask them how their plan is meeting your commercial goals.

If they can't tell you, message me.

JBH will be able to get your SEO performing.

Thanks for reading.

Andrew Holland