Our SEO eCom Predictions for 2025

ChatGPT et al. have the potential to transform this industry like nothing we've seen before, but equally, all the promises could fall flat on their face.

In our opinion, despite all the hype, these platforms are way off being any form of a viable marketing channel for eCommerce brands.

So here are team NOVOS's predictions for the SEO eCommerce landscape in the coming year.

1. Relevant niche brand coverage becomes even more important. Each LLM has its criteria for assessing brands and content to recommend. Perplexity’s model is called CRAAP (what a name!); this is incredibly familiar to Google’s EEAT criteria, which has been in place for 5+ years. Relevancy of coverage is a key theme that runs through all models; how often is your brand being talked about across your niche industry-leading publications? (more below) This will be a key theme to continue in 2025, similar to how micro-influencers are gaining popularity for brands.

2. GEO isn’t a thing. There’s chatter about ‘GEO’ (generative engine optimisation) becoming the new ‘SEO’. We believe that without tangible metrics from ChatGPT and Google, 'GEO' fails to establish itself as a viable channel. SEO remains the primary channel for mainstream brands.

3. Feed-based Tech. Tech SEO for eCom shifts toward feed-based systems, with the shopping tab becoming a destination similar to maps and images for products and buying (more on this here). Shopping evolves into a curated product aggregation, bypassing category pages and emphasising product page optimisation.

4. AI & Shopify. Perplexity strengthens its position in mid-market eCom through advanced product integrations, particularly via Shopify. Shopify continues strides into automation and no-code to make platform knowledge less critical for SEOs.

5. Performance & Brand Connect further. Meta's creative-led approach has previously connected performance and brand teams. This trend will continue, with PR as the bridge between the two. Goals will become less siloed, and both channels will understand and appreciate the need for each other, particularly when it comes to understanding the impact of each other's work.

See the post below for the remaining 5, with additional context for each.

The Importance of Relevancy

There are two criteria for assessing brand coverage: the quality and relevancy of the publication. For years, the industry used Domain Authority (developed by Moz) to determine the quality of a publication.

There’s never been a metric that assesses the relevancy of the coverage to your brand. It’s always been subjective.

We’ve created our own, and it’s pretty epic. We’ve been testing it with our client’s accounts all year and are now ready to share it with everyone.

If you’ve been our client this year, you’d have seen slides like these in our reports.

We’re opening this metric to the broader PR and SEO industry in January. Join us for our launch webinar on Thursday, 23rd January 2025.

How Was Your Black Friday Performance?

Here’s a snapshot of how Black Friday 2024 compares to previous years.

In summary, BF 2024 was average, to say the least, when looking at the entire market.

Our report below provides a more in-depth analysis of different niches within eCommerce.

Over the years, Black Friday has changed so much—the length of the sales is getting longer, and the types of brands getting involved are constantly adapting.

In the report, we’ve examined the data and performed a deeper analysis across three core categories that saw positive movements over the last few weeks.

Featured brands include:

• Our client, Not On The High Street

• Card Factory

• John Lewis

• M&S

• The White Company

• Emma Bridgewater

• Boots

• B&Q

Watch: What Happened to The Metaverse?

Remember when Facebook rebranded to Meta as the parent company? It was a bold move to bet on the metaverse—and an even bolder one to invest $56bn in three years. This is a good watch even if you don’t work in eCommerce.

What does this mean for eCom brands?

While we covered this in last month's newsletter, it's worth emphasising that these tech giants are investing literally billions in AI. Meta has invested $56 billion into the metaverse, and who knows how many more billions into AI.

Advertising is their primary revenue source. CPCs have been rising year over year, even before these massive investments. These tech giants have only one way to recover their investment—through higher CPCs. See more in the link here.

eCom Sessions

This month, we soft-launched our eCom Sessions podcast. Co-hosted with Jake from Sarah Raven.

Black Friday & January sale planning delayed things more than we’d like, but we’re interviewing our first guest in the coming days, ready to share in the new year.

Next year, you can expect interviews from Marketing leaders at eCom brands; if there’s anyone you’d love us to interview, please let us know, and we’ll see what we can do.

We believe podcasts focus too much on founders, so with these interviews, we aim to get tangible advice from the individuals leading growth at eCommerce brands.

You can listen to our pilot episode below and subscribe to get notified as soon as our first interview goes live in January.

eCom Data Trends

The above visual shows how conversion rates have trended throughout 2024 across different niches. If you’d like either of these niches broken down in more detail, reply to this email with your request.

Compared to YoY revenue growth, we can see the start of the year was painful for most sectors. Growth looked to pick up around Q4, surprisingly around September time, not December for Black Friday, which again declined YoY market-wide.

Below is a breakdown of YoY revenue performance for different eCom sectors. Use this to benchmark your performance for the year. As you can see, any form of growth should be celebrated; it’s been another brutal year for eCommerce brands.

Fresh Off The Press

• Core Web Vitals Report Automation in Python: A Step-by-Step Guide – Our data genius has created an automated report in Python for core web vitals. This report is important beyond SEO, as it provides a general assessment of your site's speed and UX.

• 6 Digital PR trends for 2025 – Amy outlines six trends you need to be aware of in the PR world for 2025.

• The impact of PR on SEO – Essential reading for anyone just investing in onsite SEO and not focusing on offsite SEO (backlinks/PR).

• 9 must-have SEO checklist for eCommerce websites – Our client service lead, Laura, outlines nine SEO essentials for your eCommerce website. This is essential reading if you are planning a rebrand.