Starting next week, Blueclaw will be running a market comparison on different online sectors to see who is making the most of their digital marketing –this week however, we’re doing a Christmas special, after all, it is November.

This blog will show you who has the best attributes in the toy sector, covering multiple metrics, including market coverage, site authority and social shares.

Being that Christmas is indeed just around the corner, online toy retailers will be gearing up to service 70% of their yearly revenue. With this in mind, we ran our MarketScout tool and took an in-depth look at who could make the most money out of their online presence this Christmas.

Our website focus was toysrus.co.uk. We started by taking a list of top level traffic-driving phrases in the toy sector, using a major focus on headline phrases such as “kids toys” and “childrens toys”, and the long tail variants of those terms.

This represents the key phrases used in the analysis. The green ticks indicate the phrases toysrus.co.uk rank for in the top ten of Google.co.uk.

Unsurprisingly toysrus.co.uk is a runaway market leader, and even toysrus.com, the global domain, comes in quite high in the UK SERPs.

As most departmental domains have a higher authority, it stands to reason that tesco.com, argos.co.uk and johnlewis.com also appear high in the sector visibility report.

One interesting outcome here is that smythstoys.com and thetoyshop.com are a long way behind for their main market sector. Smythstoys.com has spent millions on paid television media this year, even sponsoring primetime as the focus sponsor for The Simpsons.

As a major online toy retailer, Smyths will need to focus its efforts on several aspects of search marketing to catch-up with the leaders.

The toy market shows some interesting metrics when we take a closer look at the backlink profile of each domain.

The first metric that stands out is the colossal strength of Ikea.com, toysrus.com, johnlewis.com and play.com, as their link profiles eclipse the majority of the market. This however, is not proving to be the overriding factor that drives this sector’s SERPs.

Topical Equity and Topical Trust Flow are metrics pioneered by Majestic. Dixon Jones, Majestic’s marketing director explained how Topical Trust Flow works in a detailed interview with us earlier this year.

The analysis of the sector’s market leaders opens our eyes a little on what theme a link profile needs to push to the top, as even Toysrus.co.uk has an lower overall Trust Flow, but collectively its profile pushes it towards shopping, shopping/toys and shopping children.

As any backlink profile goes, this one clearly indicates to Google that the site’s focus is selling toys with a major focus on children’s toys.

Taking a closer look at smythstoys.com, it is easy to see that theme and focus will outweigh collective power in the toy sector.

Smyths toys have a good focus on the shopping sector, and we can even agree that the video game sector is a fair representation of a focus market. While the link profile does seem to show a fair theme for its market, the missing Topical Equity factor is the focus of the shopping/children sector.

There has been years of debate about how social media can assist your search engine rankings, but does Google use social shares in the ranking process?

This video was released by Matt Cutts earlier in the year, and basically, the short answer is no.

Our social analysis does not focus on twitter followers, people in your G+ circles or even your LinkedIn connections, as we focus on looking at how many times an individual person has shared your content on social media.

Understanding this metric gives us an indication of how good your content is, how trusted your site is and most importantly, whether your site is likely to be earning links naturally.

Let’s take a look at toysrus.com. This is toysrus.com’s most shared piece of content over the last year. It’s a usable, share-able piece of link bait that will naturally pick up earned links.

It has picked up seven natural links from thematic, relevant and authoritative websites, giving the URL a higher Trust Flow than toysrus.co.uk has on its homepage!

Now take a look at toysrus.co.uk. This is its most shared piece of content in the last year.

This is actually a shopping page for a product, and goes to show that the social team for toysrus.co.uk uses a different strategy from their colleagues over the pond.

This also gained a total of seven links, but there is a clear difference in the quality and theme.

Another thing that peaks our interest on the social competitor analysis is the fact that platforms with the highest coverage for the toy sector are primarily imaged based.

Facebook eclipses Twitter for social media coverage and this is down to the user demographics and who shares most from children’s toy websites.

A study conducted by Microsoft shows us why Facebook is leaving Twitter behind in the social world - with mums as a focus.
The area that makes Facebook stand out for mums is the amount of online support that is available, and not just from known contacts.

There are hundreds of support groups that have been set up for mums, some have been created by authorities, but most have grass roots origins and have grown over time as the advice given from the profile has gained authority and popularity.

Another main contributor to Facebook’s success with mums is the availability of group interaction.

Having the ability to get opinions en masse helps people make quick and valuable decisions. Facebook’s group support structure helps build a social area for the world of busy mums.

Online retailers need to understand where mums spend their online time to ensure they get the best out of social media.

Understanding the collective questions that peak interest in your target consumers’ world will help any company build marketable content that will help increase social shares, and in-turn, directly affect rankings by earning links in a natural and informative way.