Petcurean and Canidae SEO Comparison

Comparing SEO of dog food brands: Canidae and Petcurean
Author: Kelsey LeCoure

SEO is an important consideration for marketers because it helps your website/brand become more prominent in search engines which will assists in gaining customers, viewers, and raising overall awareness of your company.  In the dog food industry, both Petcurean and Canidae are independently owned, small companies. By the end of this post I will determine which of the two sites, when compared, has a stronger SEO.

SEO Considerations	Petcurean	Canidae
1.     URL:	http://www.petcurean.com/	http://www.canidae.com/
2.     Page Title	Premium Pet Food for Dogs and Cats | Petcurean	CANIDAE® - Pet Food Made By Pet People
3.     Meta Description	Petcurean is a premium pet food company that specializes in dog and cat food. We have five canine product lines for all your pet’s dietary needs.	Here at CANIDAE®, we’re pet people. We use the same ingredients we want for our own dogs and cats in our foods. Independent and family-owned, we’ve been making
4.     Meta Keywords and Monthly search volume:	Not found	Not found
5.     Structural elements:  H1, H2, H3	H2: Our Products • Nutrition hotline • Call 1.866.864.6112 • Petcurean near you • Try our food for free • Get the Scoop!	H1: • We Make Foods For Our Pets And Yours • We’d Love To Share Our Story With You! • Sign in with Facebook, WordPress or G+! • Follow Us On Social Media H2: We Are Pet People. • Have a Dog? • Have a Cat? • Our Featured Articles • Find a store near you! • How to Teach Your Dog to Play Fetch • The Benefits of Having Two Dogs • CANIDAE® Grain Free PURE Wild Adult Dog Formula Made With Fresh Wild Boar • Sign up for our Email Newsletter! • See what we're up to on Facebook! • CANIDAE® Grain Free PURE Sea Adult Dog Formula Made With Fresh Salmon • How to Pick the Right Dog for a Home with Children • What to Do if another Dog Attacks Your Dog • What Do Dreams about Cats Mean? • Like us on Facebook! • Receive our weekly Blog email! • Find CANIDAE at your Local Store! • CANIDAE® Q&A with Lobeau • These Dogs Hate Getting a Bath More Than Anything • CANIDAE® Grain Free PURE Control Hairball Control Cat Formula Made with Fresh Chicken • Find out where we came from and why we love pet food! • View our blog! • CANIDAE® Grain Free PURE Meadow Senior Cat Formula Made with Fresh Chicken • Tips for Finding Dog-Friendly Vacation Lodging • How to Care For a Female Dog in Heat • What Causes Cherry Eye in Dogs, and How to Correct It • Tell us Your CANIDAE® Story! • Have a health question? Come ask our Vet!
6.     Strong tags	Not found	Not found
7.     Alt Text	The Petcurean Difference • Our Story • Sustainability • NOW FRESH™ • GO!™ • SPIKE™ • SUMMIT™ • NOW FRESH™ • GO!™ • SUMMIT™ • Dogs Health & Nutrition • Cats Health & Nutrition • International Distributors • Canada & United States • NOW FRESH™ • GO!™ • SPIKE™ • SUMMIT™ • Nourishing the ones we love for life	CANIDAE® • Search • • • •
8.     Page Load Time	1.181 seconds	0.25 seconds
9.     Observations Regarding Page layout:	The page layout is easy to navigate. It is bright and colourful without being too distracting. Their website overall is aesthetically appealing	The page layout is appealing, simple, and easy to navigate. The colours are light which makes the text easy to read. There are also drop down menus when you scroll over the tabs. This makes it easy to find what you are looking for.
10. Observations Regarding Visual Content:	There are a wide variety of pictures and cute dogs on the site to help grab the reader’s attention. There is good use of colour and their visual content is consistent with their brand (orange theme, dog pictures, etc.)	There are many pictures of dogs which appeal to the reader and help describe the product.
11. Call-to-action:	Nutrition hotline, newsletter, download a coupon, find a retailer	Sign up for our newsletter, Find Canidae globally, submit your story
12. Anchored Text: (list 3)	For Dogs For Cats Where to Buy	Dog Food, Cat Food, Our Story
13. Moz Established Links:  # to Root Domain	348	711
14. Moz Established Links:  # Total Links	12,530	88,207
15. Top 3 inbound links.	http://www.plainchicken.com/ http://www.fidofriendly.com/ http://www.hautedogs.org/howloween.html	http://www.oreilly.com/pub/missingmanuals/livinggreenmm http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs025/1102543180234/archive/1103387689583.html http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs091/1102712936513/archive/1102952599588.html
16. Mobile Friendly: Yes/No	Yes	Yes
17. Content is “shareable” (Like, Tweet, Pin, Blog, etc.)	Yes – Like, tweet, pin	Yes – E-mail, Like, Pin, Tweet, Google +
18. Social Media: (List all SM icons on the home page.	Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram	Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram
19. SERP ranking results when using keywords from this table: (placing or page number)	“Premium Pet Food Company” Pg. 1	“Grain-free Dog Food” Pg. 3

Google Trends: 

Google Trends Insights:

Dog Food had a very high interest in between 2007 and 2008. Since then, the interest has been fairly stable with a very gradual increase since 2008. Both Petcurean and Canidae are non-existent on the graph. Their search volume is not high enough to display any data.

Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords:

www.petcurean.com:
where to buy Petcurean

go dog food
now fresh puppy food


www.canidae.com:

Canidae pure sea

Canidae als
grain free salmon dog food

Summary:

Petcurean’s strengths are its use of alt text and call-to-action. Canidae’s strengths are its use of structural elements and very fast page load time. Other observations are that both websites need to start taking advantage of meta-keywords. Neither of them had any that came up when using Moz which really impacts their SEO.

Both sites have a strong social media presence (they are taking advantage of all major social media channels – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram). Canidae even has a blog on their website which is great to interact with current and potential customers!

Conclusion:

In the dog food industry, Petcurean and Canidae are both small Canadian companies. They both are doing well with social media but need to work on their SEO by including more keywords, strong tags, etc. In my opinion the overall winner of this SEO Search analysis is Canidae. Their blog is very well constructed and maintained, they have a great website with drop-down menus and attractive pictures. They also have a larger number of Established total links than Petcurean does.

APA Citations:

Canidae. (2016) Retrieved from http://www.canidae.com/

Google. (May 2016). Google trends. [Dog Food, Petcurean, Canidae]. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=dog%20food%2C%20%2Fg%2F11bw42glyr%2C%20%2Fm%2F0521mt1&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT%2B4

LSIGraph. (May 2016). LSIGraph keyword generator. Retrieved from http://lsigraph.com/

Petcurean. (2016). Premium Pet Food for Dogs and Cats. Retrieved from http://www.petcurean.com

SEOmoz Inc. (May 2016). MozBar. Retrieved from https://moz.com/tools/seo-toolbar

Iams and Blue Buffalo SEO Comparison

Brief Overview of Iams and Blue Buffalo Search Engine Optimization
Mark Faber

Search Engine Optimization is a relatively new concept for marketers but a vital one. So many consumers turn to the internet, specifically search engines (such as Google) as a first step in the information and purchasing process. In the Dog Food industry Iams and Blue Buffalo are two top brands promoting healthy dog food and high quality ingredients. Using keyword sentences like “Grain free Formula”, “Natural Ingredients” and “Senior/Puppy Dog Food” these companies are trying to attract the right consumer to their website. Hopefully this table will help break down the two brands and show the power of SEO and its importance in today's marketplace.

SEO Considerations	Iams (Mars, 2016)	Blue Buffalo (Blue Buffalo Co. Ltd, 2016)
1.     Page Title	Pet Food from Iams- Only the Highest Quality Ingredients	Natural, Healthy Dog & Cat Food for Your Pet | Blue Buffalo
2.     Meta Description	Find the complete Iams pet food line, learn about our nutritional philosophy and more at Iams.com.	Blue Buffalo - Natural, Healthy Dog Food and Cat Food. Discover Why Blue Buffalo is the Best Choice for Your Pet.
Meta Keywords and Monthly search volume:	Pet food, iams, iams pet food	Not Found
3.     Structural elements:  H1, H2, H3	Not Found	H1:Blue Buffalo® H2:Dog Food, Cat Food, Pet CancerAwareness, The BLUE™ Story, Slice. Serve. Top.  (plus 10 more) No H3
4.     Strong tags 5.	Not Found	12 strong tags in total, including: About Us, Why Feed BLUE? Events, Pet Cancer Awareness
Alt Text	Yes, 12 Alt Texts including; IAMS BREED SELECTOR, INGREDIENTS GUIDE, THE IAMS DIFFERENCE	Yes: BlueBuffalo, Blue Buffalo TV Commercials, Compare Your Brand, Compare Your Brand
6.     Page Load Time	8.362 seconds	6.655 Seconds
7.     Observations Regarding Page layout: 8.	Simple Layout, only 3 ‘areas’ top scrolling images links to articles and different products. Next is Dog and Cat articles. Goes on to list the Iams Story, Ingredients etc.	Engaging content, not just a list of products, but including articles on pet cancer awareness and comparisons of different pet foods. Products and store availability are featured as call to actions at the bottom of the page as well.
9.     Observations Regarding Visual Content:	The top menu boxes are overloaded with text and options, the menus are overwhelming. The rest of the homepage is visually appealing, spacing out different sections nicely and making it all easily readable.	Visually appealing, a good mix of pictures and text with a consistent theme of corporate colours being used. Blue is featured heavily throughout the home page.
10.  Call-to-action:	Go, Join, Learn, and Buy Now	Make an online Donation, Join our Newsletter, Follow, Share
11.  Anchored Text: (list 3)	Iams Breed Selector, The Iams Difference, and Ingredients Guide	Explore Dog Food, Explore Cat Food, Ingredients
12.  Moz Established Links:  # to Root Domain	54	714
13.  Moz Established Links:  # Total Links	1295	5475
14.  Top 3 inbound links.	Japanese Iams website: http://www.iams.jp/ Newswire: http://www.newswire.ca/fr/news-releases/iams-les-fetes-en-famille-aide-plus-de-7-millions-danimaux-a-trouver-un-foyer-permanent-509486261.html Iams Japanese Website index: http://iams.jp/index.html	Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_pet_food_recalls BestFriends.org: http://bestfriends.org/about/our-partners/kind-partners GoPro Mountain Games: http://www.mountaingames.com/summer
15.  Mobile Friendly: Yes/No	Yes	Yes
16.  Content is “shareable” (Like, Tweet, Pin, Blog, etc.)	All the Articles are easily shareable through Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, and E-mail	Yes, it can be shared instantly through Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest
17.  Social Media: (List all SM icons on the home page.	Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and YouTube	Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram
18.  SERP ranking results when using keywords from this table: (placing or page number)	Page 3, 4th organic result when searching for High Quality Dog Food	Page 1, 3rd organic result when searching for healthy dog food

Google Trends: 
Dog food is a pretty broad search term and is used often. When comparing the 2 brands, Blue Buffalo and Iams, they score equally at 5. I think this is because there are so many different types of dog food brands out there without a clear market leader that the market share becomes widely distributed. Surprisingly Newfoundland and Labrador generate the most regional interest even though it has smaller population than the other regions.

Google Trends, retrieved May 19 2016

Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords:

Healthy dog food, Senior Dog Food, and Puppy dog food all appeared in the LSI generator and are listed on both the IAMS and Blue Buffalo websites. (LSI Graph, 2016)

IAMS has Healthy dog food listed several times within images, but not as alt text. It does however mention grain-free which came up in the LSI generator. IAMS only contains 5 of the keywords generated.

Blue Buffalo has healthy dog food listed in the title of the page, with the word healthy mentioned 6 times on the home page as well. Grain-free is also mentioned along with organic dog food. Blue Buffalo has 7 of the LSI generated keywords mentioned on their homepage.  

Blue Buffalo’s strengths are its use of healthy and natural dog food. By repeating these words throughout their home page, Blue Buffalo shows up quickly in the organic search for dog food. IAM’s strengths are its use of specific formulas, i.e. puppy food and senior care. The keyword sentence of Healthy dog food are found throughout both sites, but used better in the Blue Buffalo site in their headings and strong words html.

Both IAMS and Blue Buffalo are household names when it comes to the dog food market. However in my humble opinion Blue Buffalo has done a better job utilizing SEO and making their website findable and relatable. Their site showed up earlier than IAMS and made better use of specific keywords in their page titles. It also had more reliable and positive links, rather than sister companies like IAM’s. 

References

Blue Buffalo Co. Ltd. (2016, May 19). Natural, Healthy Dog and Cat Food. Retrieved from Blue Buffalo: http://bluebuffalo.com/

Google. (2016, May 19). Dog Food, IAMS, Blue Buffalo Co. Ltd. Retrieved from Google Trends: https://www.google.ca/trends/explore#q=Dog%20Food%2C%20%2Fm%2F02pkvr%2C%20%2Fm%2F02vlv0r&geo=CA&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT%2B4

LSI Graph. (2016, May 19). LSI Keyword Generator. Retrieved from LSI Graph: http://lsigraph.com/

Mars. (2016, May 19). Pet Food from IAMS. Retrieved from IAMS: https://www.iams.com/

SEOmoz Inc. (May 2016). MozBar. Retrieved from https://moz.com/tools/seo-toolbar

A Dog Eat Dog Food World - An SEO Analysis

Introduction

SEO is important for marketers because it makes sure that customers find us before they find the competition. In this report I will be looking at the dog food industry, specifically Purina and Nature’s Variety. Purina is one of the largest pet food companies on the planet. I expect them to have outstanding SEO, site design, and online presence. Nature’s Variety up until very recently was a private company that mainly specializes in raw dog food. I don’t expect too much from them but I’m prepared to be surprised. Keep a look out for keywords such as “best dog food” and “healthy dog food”. The objective of this report is to compare both sites’ SEO and see who’s is stronger.

Screen Captures of both home pages:

SEO Considerations	Purina	Nature’s Variety
1.    URL:	www.purina.com	www.naturesvariety.com
2.    Page Title	Pushing Pet Nutrition Forward - Purina® Pet Food & Products	Nature’s Variety
3.    Meta Description	Nourishing pet food and pet products. Find the right dog food, cat food, and treats for the pets that enrich your life.	N/A
4.    Meta Keywords and Monthly search volume:	Purina US, purina pet food, purina dog food, purina cat food	N/A
5.    Structural elements:  H1, H2, H3	H1: N/A H2: Dog Product Selector • Dog Breed Selector • Cat Product Selector H3: N/A	H1: N/A H2: N/A H3: N/A
6.    Strong tags	N/A	Wondering if Instinct is right for you? • Wondering if Prairie is right for you? • Give your pet a Nature's Variety Treat today!
7.    Alt Text	Purina • Purina • Tidy Cats<sup>®</sup> • Purina ONE<sup>®</sup> • Purina<sup>®</sup> Pro Plan<sup>®</sup> • Purina<sup>®</sup> Dog Chow<sup>®</sup> • Beyond<sup>®</sup> • Beneful<sup>®</sup> • ALPO<sup>®</sup> • Friskies<sup>®</sup> • Fancy Feast<sup>®</sup> • Beggin′<sup>®</sup> • Click to Chat With an Online Representative	Click to Expand • Click to Expand • Click to Expand
8.    Page Load Time	15.317 seconds	6.887 seconds
9.    Observations Regarding Page layout:	This page’s layout is easy to navigate. Every important link is available without scrolling. This may be a personal preference but I don’t like the amount of content on their landing page (too much). Overall it has a good layout.	Very simple but gets the job done. Everything fits on one page without scrolling.
10. Observations Regarding Visual Content:	Good mix of pictures and words. Every link is easily understandable (you know where you’re going next). Good use of brand colors (red, black, white)	Just the right amount of pictures. Links stand out. Good use of brand colors (green, brown, orange, yellow). These earthy tones symbolize the brand’s commitment to all natural dog food.
11. Call-to-action:	Not impressed with the amount of call-to-actions. Only a couple “share”s and one “Shop our store”	“Try It!”, “Subscribe to our news and promotions”, “Find A Store”, “Find A Vet”, “You can transform your pet’s life with Instinct Raw. Learn more…”
12. Anchored Text: (list 3)	“Dogs”, “Cats”, “Meet Purina”	“Product Choices”, “Learning Center”, “Who We Are”
13. Moz Established Links:  # to Root Domain	1171	610
14. Moz Established Links:  # Total Links	145K	7016
15. Top 3 inbound links.	http://www.adoptapet.com/ http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/qe/index.cfm http://www.pheasantsforever.org/	http://support.bestfriends.org/site/PageServer?pagename=landing_page http://www.strayrescue.org/ http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm200248.htm
16. Mobile Friendly: Yes/No	Yes	Yes
17. Content is “shareable” (Like, Tweet, Pin, Blog, etc.)	Yes	Yes
18. Social Media: (List all SM icons on the home page.	Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pintrest	Facebook, Twitter, YouTube
19. SERP ranking results when using keywords from this table: (placing or page number)	1st on page 1	N/A

 

Google Trends Insights:

There is a massive spike in search popularity across the entire industry in March of 2007. At that time there was a big dog food recall and many brands were affected. Other than that, search popularity across the board has had a small but consistent increase since 2008 (except Nature’s Variety, the have close to 0 presence). The dog food industry has been more popular than it has ever been (if you exclude the spike in 2007) the last 12 months while Purina flatlined around it’s average.

Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords:

Purina: purina pro plan, purina veterinary diets, purina points reward program

Nature’s Variety: nature’s instinct raw dog food, nature’s variety prairie, best raw dog food

Summary:

Purina’s SEO was pretty strong but the website itself was mediocre, which really surprised me. Purina’s website took top spot when searching their product brands and was on the second page when searching the generic keyword, “dog food” (first page was all retailer like Wal-Mart). I was shocked by lack of call-to-action on Purina’s site. They had many opportunities to use call-to-action, such as their “Dog Breed Selector” tool, but dropped the ball in favor of a boring link. Purina’s website also had a whopping 15+ seconds loading time and had practically no keywords related to dog food on LSIGraph. Nature’s Variety was the complete opposite; great site, awful SEO. Their website was straight forward, easy to use, and modern. Their links were intriguing which shows evidence of a great marketing team. That’s where the positives stop. If you look at my analysis I put “N/A” for 4 extremely important categories. When I looked them up on Google Trends they were almost non-existent. And when generating keywords on LSIGraph all I got were variations of the same two keywords along with names of competitors. Both of these sites could benefit from a dedicated digital marketing team coming in and sprucing up the place.

Conclusion:

If this report is any indication of the industry as a whole then everyone needs to work hard at improving their digital footprint. There were no common keywords used across both sites and SERP ranking was relatively low industry wide. If I have to winner of this analysis it would have to be Purina. They shouldn’t celebrate though, they have a lot of work ahead of them.

APA Citations:

LSIGraph. (May 2016). LSIGraph keyword generator [purina.com]. Retrieved from http://lsigraph.com/

LSIGraph. (May 2016). LSIGraph keyword generator [naturesvariety.com]. Retrieved from http://lsigraph.com/

Nestle. (May 2016). Purina. Retrieved from http://purina.com/

Nature’s Variety. (May 2016). Nature’s Variety. Retrieved from http://naturesvariety.com/

SEOmoz Inc. (May 2016). MozBar. Retrieved from https://moz.com/tools/seo-toolbar