The Tesco Subdomain Generating 2 Million Monthly Vistors

In this breakdown, we look at the subdomain of Tesco that serves up millions of monthly visitors.

You'll learn.

• How Tescos have grabbed a gap in the retail market.
• The craft behavioural science element that adds more value as they use their site.
• How brands can use this approach to grow.
• How you can leverage a similar approach.

Let's dive in.

Real Food by Tescos

Just in case my international readers are unaware, Tescos is a supermarket retailer which started in the UK and is now expanding globally. Started by Jack Cohen in 1919, it now has a UK turnover of over £50 billion.

It's a mega business.

What's the Subdomain?

The domain in question is realfood.tesco.com

According to Semrush, the subdomain generates 2.1 million visitors a month.

So what's so good about and why am I in love with the site?

Simple. Tescos decided to go all in as a publisher and is reaping the rewards.

The real food subdomain has a whopping 84% of its keywords based on informational content, which is amazing considering that they are a supermarket.

So, what is the site about?

Essentially it's a recipe site, but that's not the magic.

It's what's going on inside the recipes.

One Click Ingredients to Cart

One of the annoying things with recipe sites is that you can't order the ingredients.

Take this BBC site.

A great recipe and a good web page, but all I can do is print the recipe.

With the Tesco real food subdomain, you can add all the ingredients for a recipe in a single click.

Now, they aren't the only site that does this.

However, their competitor Sainsbury's, has barely tried.

Semrush has its recipes subdomain, generating just 219 visitors.

And while Asda is trying, their applet-style approach just isn't as good.

It's low in information, but granted, it might load better in their app.

However, this isn't why this matters.

Light Category and Heavy Category Buyers

My family shops at all the supermarkets.

We shop mainly at Aldi, and when we're out of items and short on time, we shop at the smaller Asda near our home, and my wife goes to Tescos near her office.

But Aldi gets most of our shopping money.

As a result, you could describe our family as a 'heavy buyer' of Aldi.

They don't need their advertising to attract our business, it's our default.

But equally, as a family short on time, we're exploring options to make our lives easier.

Meal planning is one of those, and so we're looking at recipes a lot these days.

This is how I found the Tescos real food website.

Now, armed with this website, Tescos has achieved a few things.

Firstly, because they make it so easy to use their site, the chances of me now shopping at Tescos at least once have increased.

And that's a big thing.

If I try this once, they'll have increased revenue by getting a new customer. If enough people try this once, they'll increase their turnover.

If I try this once and love it, then switch my weekly shop over to them. They've acquired a new heavy-category buyer with no media cost.

And this is probably very likely as shoppers look to save money and optimise their time.

(Of note, we'll be giving this a try).

There's a lot of behavioural science going on here.

There is a nifty binder option here that allows me to add more recipes/ save them. This makes using the app more powerful with each visit.

But why are they ranking?

How Tescos Spotted a Traffic Gap

If we take 'chocolate cake recipes' as a keyword, we can see that the only retailer ranking is Tescos.

The BBC own most of the SERP, but Tescos are the only retailer there.

To be honest, it's the same with most recipe searches.

Tescos was the only retailer to show up for 20 recipe keywords I tried earlier.

Not only is this a great way to take people into the Tesco business to become heavy buyers, but it's a great way to increase light-category buyers.

But how can your brand/ business use this?

Shoulder Topics: The Secret to Growth

What Tesco has done is go down the route of shoulder topics.

For example, their main offering is food sales.

What do people do with food? They create meals via recipes.

Therefore, recipes are Tesco's shoulder topic.

Given how many products/ sectors Tesco is now involved in, they can take this concept further.

But how can you leverage this?

Look at what you do/sell and create useful content at scale around a shoulder topic.

Do you sell camping equipment? Create a huge learning centre around the world's best camping locations and campsites.

Do you sell toys? Create free online interactive computer games.

The only limits are your imagination and commercial viability.

How Would I Grow the Traffic of Tesco's Competitors?

I like to add a section in these newsletters where my mind can wander and consider new ideas and tactics.

Assuming that this approach has been a commercial success for Tescos (and it's hard for me to think it wouldn't be, as they're still adding pages).

I would generally recommend that the competitors follow suit and go after Tescos with the same approach.

But they could do this with a twist.

Rather than go after recipes alone, they could go after circumstances that lead to purchasing.

Here are some examples (all could either be subdomains or even separate sites)

• 10 Minute meals
• Spend less eat more
• Fakeaways
• Pizza academy (I love this idea as you could take on the Pizza delivery industry).
• Feed a family for a Fivver club
• Midweek Monster Meals
• Kids feeder (a huge website focused on feeding kids meals and snacks)

These websites/campaigns could be promoted with digital PR and TV ads and or be part of a larger brand hierarchy.

This is something I've been talking about for a while now. Search can be more than just keywords, it can be entire marketing concepts that keep a brand easy to mind and easy to find, leveraging category entry points.

People don't think about buying food from a supermarket. They think about 'what are we going to feed the kids? How are we going to reduce our shopping bills?'

By leveraging how people think, brands can move to create websites and content that match people's needs.

How Can You Use This Approach?

You might be reading this with a small site or with customers with low budgets, and that's fine.

You can use the same approach but with your blogs and newsletters.

Let's say you're a garden furniture retailer. Create a newsletter that gives a breakdown of a great garden every week

If you sell antique books online, create an online book club and book review blog.

Think shoulder topics and human psychology rather than traffic volume.

Thanks for reading.

Andrew Holland