We’ve recently analysed the top 1,000 landing pages ranking for 100 commercially valuable keywords across furniture, furnishings, and home décor.
Why? To dig beneath surface-level tactics and find what’s actually working in today’s Home & Garden search landscape.
This was a meticulously manual research process that we know others won’t have the time or resources to undertake. And our goal was to challenge conventional SEO tactics, highlight where generic advice falls short, and give you clear, actionable insights based on real data – not recycled best practices.
It’s based on high-volume search terms ranking in the top 10 organic Google results across beds, bedding, blinds, carpets, chairs, curtains, flooring, furniture, garden furniture, lighting, mattresses, rugs, and sofas.
Here are some of our key findings when it comes to ranking performance:
Collection Content
SEO success in competitive industries is rarely about silver bullets. It’s often the result of doing the fundamentals slightly better than everyone else.
We reviewed hundreds of collection / category pages and found recurring issues with content:
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Walls of text
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No content at all
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Generic, unhelpful copy
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Lack of internal links
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Poor visual hierarchy
Here’s what the average ranking data says:
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Pages with no content: 5.76
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Content below products: 5.39
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Content above products: 5.26
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Content both above and below: 5.04 🏆
Looking at the top three positions, 35% had content above and below product listings, and 69% included internal or related links, so going the extra distance could well be worth it.
Takeaway: This isn’t about stuffing pages with fluff. It’s about useful, well-placed content and helpful links that support the customer’s journey.
Landing Page Experience
We’ve seen firsthand how copying off big brands and large retailers backfires – thinking “they must be doing it right.”
Our research found that 26% of ranking pages weren’t category or product listing pages, and many were what we call “hub pages” – a page that has links to categories, guides, and only a few products.
Yet, only:
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7% of hub pages rank in the top 3.
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11% make the top 10.
Big-name brands like Argos, B&Q, Dreams, Ikea, etc. can get away with these hub pages, and a different landing page experience, thanks to their overall brand and domain strength.
But when smaller retailers (which we found still applies to £30m-£50m businesses) follow this approach, they often lose visibility and potential traffic.
Takeaway: Don’t blindly follow what bigger players do. Prioritise user intent. If shoppers expect product listing pages (PLPs), give them that.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Adding FAQs to collection pages used to be the hot SEO tactic. Today, they’re mostly… questionable.
Our data shows:
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24% of category pages have FAQs, with an averaging rank of 5.1
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76% don’t include FAQs, averaging 5.8
- Among the top 3 positions, a striking 68% had no FAQs at all.
It may not seem like a huge difference, but the effort and time that goes into creating these FAQs could be wasteful.
Worse, most FAQ content that we reviewed wasn’t written for actual customers.
It was clearly for bots and box-ticking, and these FAQs are often buried at the bottom of a page with infinite scroll, which users may never see anyway:
- What are sofa beds?
- What is bed linen?
- How do blinds work?
- What are sofa beds?
- What is a duvet cover?
- Are ottoman beds good?
Takeaway: FAQs only add value when they answer real customer questions in meaningful ways. Otherwise, your time and resources may be better spent elsewhere.
These are just a handful of our findings. You can request a copy of the report ‘Home & Garden: SEO Lessons from 1,000 Landing Pages’, by visiting this page.
