How Digitas Bolstered H&M’s Presence on the Digital High Street

Born out of a desire to make great fashion available and affordable to everyone, H&M was founded in 1947 as a women’s clothing store in Sweden. Since then, it has evolved into one of the world’s leading high street fashion empires with over 4,000 global stores, and online sales in 60 markets. Underlying all its success is the passion for making great and more sustainable fashion and design for all.

No stranger to adapting with the times, H&M has seen numerous evolutions over the years, from the 1980 acquisition of a Swedish mail order company which allowed customers to purchase fashion from the comfort of their homes, to most recently, undergoing a digital transformation which brought the business up to date to compete in the rapidly growing ecommerce environment. 

Identifying that if it did not adapt, H&M would be at risk of falling behind its digital-first competitors, the brand tasked Digitas with helping it perform better in online search terms such as ‘low rise jeans’ or ‘oversized cardigans’. Through an SEO business transformation programme, the agency completely transformed the brand’s business, bringing H&M to the forefront of the “digital high street” – the first page of Google search results – to match its presence on the physical high street. 

The programme drove business effectiveness at an incredible scale and pace, delivering £552 million in incremental revenue at a profit ROI of over 29:1 for four years running, hugely growing H&M’s market share within the digital battleground, and winning a multi-region Bronze Effie in the Fashion & Accessories category in 2024 in recognition of this.

Setting a five-year vision as well as yearly targets, the initial focus was on closing the gap with top global competitors by building a long-term, scalable SEO strategy. “Part of the ask was to design an SEO strategy and identify what growth was possible,” explains Digitas SEO business director, James Hazlett. “This was a challenge given competitors were also investing in SEO as a marketing channel and had been for much longer than H&M.”

With the strategic vision and technical knowledge of the Digitas UK team, a balance of short-term wins alongside a long-term roadmap allowed tangible progress along the way. 

With the brand initially holding no SEO expertise within local H&M teams, Digitas used its wider agency network to build out local SEO capabilities. “This provided search audience insights across all the major markets and languages,” James says. “This network of local SEO team members also helped to scale and localise SEO content. Four years into the transformation, we began to discuss and develop a plan to upskill local teams within H&M to take on tasks that would contribute to wider SEO success.”

H&M’s head of SEO, Filip Unevik comments: “In the wake of the SEO team’s activities, H&M has embarked on a transformative journey to integrate the insights and experiences gained into the very fabric of our brand’s effectiveness culture.”

Rolling out SEO efficiencies across markets required a detailed understanding and approach. Not only do different markets hold different seasonal trends but they use different languages and search terms when looking for an item. “In the UK, using American English terms like 'sneakers' instead of 'trainers' can affect search visibility,” James reveals. “Similarly, English terms are ineffective in non-English speaking markets like Japan. Sales behaviours also vary; while Black Friday is significant in both the US and UK, Japan's notable sales period is Golden Week.”

“For clothing, items like summer dresses are popular globally but are searched for at different times due to varying climates – for instance, Spaniards start searching earlier in the year than the British. This required a localised approach, ensuring that language nuances, seasonal differences, and consumer behaviour trends informed SEO strategy in each market. We needed to prioritise our effort based on how people search, as this would give H&M the biggest ROI and give us the best chance of hitting our extremely ambitious targets each year.”

Digitas did not disappoint. Just over halfway through the first year, the impact of the transformation programme began to come through. “The first six months focused on foundational work – audience insights, internal buy-in, and process changes – before we could scale technical and content optimisations. After the first year we knew that we were moving in the right direction, but it wasn’t until three years in that we really appreciated how much the business had transformed and taken on so many SEO processes and best practices.”

“By refining product categorisation and internal linking structures, we ensured search engines could surface H&M’s most relevant offerings. Customers searching for generic terms such as ‘black dresses’ or ‘playsuits for kids’ want to view landing pages which provide a wide variety of relevant products and Google wants to be confident that the top-ranking pages give the user what they are looking for. Our work helped customers receive what they wanted while also providing the right signals to Google.”

With a highly technical and intricate project such as this, it can only be achieved with seamless collaboration and incredible trust between brand and agency. “Our team became an embedded extension of H&M,” James states. “The team at Digitas love working on the account and its exciting projects that many SEO teams would normally not get to support, such as providing insights and recommendations to the buying office at H&M. With such a strong client-agency relationship, the team is naturally motivated to overcome challenges and get results. Our collaboration is on a personal level, as a strategic partner, rather than a purely transactional service.

“I am so proud of how SEO has been integrated across the wider H&M business and the processes that are now in place. We’re in a strong position to explore even more innovative search-driven strategies for the future.”