ECOMMERCE SEO

AVOIDING COMMON PITFALLS

Jon Quinton, Senior SEO Consultant, SEOgadget

WHY TALK ABOUT ECOMMERCE SEO?

SIMPLE: LOSING OUT TO COMPETITORS

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QUESTION: HOW CAN YOU AVOID MISTAKES THAT

EVERYONE ELSE MAKES?

GHOSTS OF LINK BUILDING PAST

YEARS OF THIS:

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Time spent clearing up junk is time not being spent acquiring

new links

AND THIS:

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If your link profile is full of links like these, you need to learn how to analyse your profile

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Identify who is linking to you, then make a judgement call on

which links should stay

ANCHOR TEXT DISTRIBUTION

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Evaluate proportion of commercial anchors vs. brand

and noise

SEARCHING FOR OTHER RED FLAGS:

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suspicious links can be incredibly easy to spot.

WEENING OFF THE ‘GOOGLE CRACK’*

*THANKS TO @BADAMS

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Having a strong brand with diverse traffic sources will negate the risk of ranking

fluctuation

Traffic

Organic Search

PPC

Email

Social Print

Press

Events

Conferences

Meetups

Brand

Non-Brand News

Landing Pages

Shopping

Targeted Campaigns

Deals and Offers

Competitions

Ego Bait

Advertising

Editorial

Interviews

PR Stunts

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birdsong

Want to know what content might work well on social?

http://birdsongdtt.com/

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NOTE: Influential fashion blogger

IGNORE CUSTOMERS AT YOUR PERIL…

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Marketing a crap product and service gets you nowhere

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The smart money is in building a ‘tribe’ that will promote your

products for you

NOT MAKING USE OF DATA

USE INTERNAL SEARCH WISELY

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Internal search = insight gold

CUSTOM VARIABLES – STOCK INFO

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Dynamically add:

_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','Out of stock items','Samsung Series 7 Chronos 15.6 Touchscreen Laptop Silver','1099',true]);"

TRACKING HIGH CONVERTING PRODUCTS

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PAGE VALUE VS. TRAFFIC AND SEARCH VOLUME

Category Main Term Search Volume Rank Page Value

/gibson-guitars/ gibson guitars 22200 11 $1.60

/strings/ guitar strings 18100 8 $4.95

/fender-guitars/ fender guitars 14800 18 $2.10

/acoustic-guitars/ acoustic guitars 4400 12 $0.50

/electric-guitars/ electric guitars 3600 13 $1.50

/guitar-amps/ guitar amps 2900 17 $0.70

/bass-guitars/ bass guitars 2900 18 $1.25

/sheet-music/ guitar sheet music 2900 3 $3.80

/accessories/ guitar accessories 2400 11 $2.10

/guitar-cases/ guitar cases 1900 6 $1.90

/effects/ guitar effects pedals 1000 10 $1.90

/bass-amps/ bass amps 1000 12 $0.10

/marshall-amps/ marshall amplifiers 880 10 $0.11

/fender-amps/ fender amplifiers 480 9 $0.15

/acoustic-bass-guitars/ acoustic bass guitars 170 21 $0.00

/practice-amps/ practice amps 58 13 $0.00

/starter-kits/ guitar starter kits 22 7 $2.50

Using revenue metrics makes ‘SEO’ data instantly more

powerful

LETTING OPPORTUNITIES PASS YOU BY

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

4500

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Match keyword data with crawl data to find keywords not yet

being targeted =COUNTIF(Sheet4!$A$1:$A$2,"*"&B3&"*")

HOW DO PEOPLE SEARCH FOR YOUR PRODUCTS?

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Understand if people search by brand, product, category or

other

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If demand exists, don’t waste the potential on filters – create

sub categories

UNDERSTAND YOUR SEASONALITY

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Demand for motorcycle helmets spikes in the spring – optimise

in the autumn

LOSING OUT TO TECHNICAL NIGHTMARES

ARE YOU MAKING LIFE HARD FOR GOOGLEBOT?

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Quick check – how does the size of your site check out with the number of discovered URLs?

UNDERSTAND HOW CRAWL BUDGET IS BEING SPENT

61%

39%

Parameter URLS vs. Clean URLs

57%

43%

Total Crawl Budget Wastage:

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Use log-file data to identify where you might be losing

valuable crawl budget

POOR HANDLING OF PAGINATION

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Implement rel=“next” and rel=“prev”

CONTENT = YOUR CHARACTER

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If your content is good enough, show

it off. If not, rewrite it and then show it off

WEAK PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS:

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Question: does this give me enough information to make an informed

decision?

Product descriptions provided via a feed equates to inviting a panda round

for dinner

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If you want to know what good looks like, take a look at wish.co.uk

WEAPONS TOOLS OF CHOICE

• http://birdsongdtt.com/ • http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ • http://majesticseo.com/ • http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-

spider/

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Jon Quinton, SEOgadget

@jonquinton1

Blog: seogadget.co.uk

Email: jon@seogadget.co.uk

THANK YOU