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Maximising
Ecommerce SEO
with Advanced
Tips & Tricks
21 November 2015
#SMConnect

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Barry Adams

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Agenda
1. Technical SEO
 Crawl Optimisation
 Faceted Navigation
2. Content & Relevance
 Site & page architecture
 Structured Data
3. Links & Authority
 Link targeting
 Tactics
4. International SEO Technology
Relevance
Authority
The Three Pillars of SEO

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1. Technical SEO

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Crawl Optimisation
• Minimising wasted crawl budget
Crawl Budget = the maximum amount of time a
search engine spider will spend crawling your
website before it gives up.

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Crawl Control vs Index Control
• Crawl Control;
Maximising crawl budget
Main tools:
- robots.txt Disallow
- <a href=“…” rel=“nofollow”>
• Index control;
Ensuring the right pages are in Google’s index
Main tools:
- <meta name=“robots” content=“noindex”>
- <link rel=“canonical” href=“…”>
- robots.txt Noindex

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Crawl Sources
• Site Crawl
• XML Sitemaps
• Inbound Links
• DNS Records
• Domain Registrations
• Browsing Data

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Identifying Crawl Waste
DeepCrawl report

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Crawl your XML Sitemap
• Use Screaming Frog to crawl your sitemap

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Optimise your XML sitemap
• Ensure your sitemap contains final URLs only
• Minimise non-200 status codes

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Use Multiple Sitemaps
• Google says max 50.000 URLs
Nick Eubanks case study shows 35.000 is optimal
Source: http://seoauv.com/increase-traffic/

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Mismatched Canonicals
• All URLs in XML sitemap should be final
canonical URLs only

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Use Canonicals wisely…
• “rel=canonical” is primarily for index issues
It is not a fix for crawl waste
Search engines need to see the canonical tag
before they can act on it
Ergo, pages need to be crawled before
rel=canonical has any effect
Ditto with meta noindex tags

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Minimise Internal Redirects
• Find redirects with
Screaming Frog or
DeepCrawl
• Internal links should all be
200 OK
• Flat site structure

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Pagination
• Potential for massive crawl waste
Especially when combined with sorting

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Optimise Paginated Lists
• Show more products per page
• Use pagination meta tags;
<link rel="prev" href="http://www.domain.it/category/?page=2" />
<link rel="next" href="http://www.domain.it/category/?page=4" />
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.domain.it/category/?page=all" />
Googlebot will deprioritise deeper paginated pages
• Block sorting parameters in robots.txt;
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /*?order=*
Noindex: /*?order=*

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GSC Robots.txt Tester

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Alternative: X-Robots-Tag
• Special HTTP status code intended for crawlers
• Implemented in Apache .htaccess file:
<FilesMatch ".pdf$">
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex, nofollow"
</FilesMatch>
More info: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-
index/docs/robots_meta_tag

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Faceted Navigation
• Risk of crawl waste & index inflation

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Dealing with Faceted Navigation
1. Block facet URL parameters in robots.txt
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /*attribute=*
Noindex: /*attribute=*
2. Tag facet links with “rel=nofollow”

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JavaScript & Faceted Navigation
• ‘Hiding’ facets in JavaScript does not work
Google will execute JS and can follow
embedded links
Don’t block JavaScript & CSS in robots.txt!
• JavaScript can add load time
Fast load speed is crucial

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Pre-rendering JavaScript / AJAX
Source: http://www.slideshare.net/phaithful/seo-and-js-new-challenges

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JSCrawlability.com

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Optimise Load Speed
• Crawl budget = time
• Fast website = more pages crawled in same
amount of time

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WebPageTest.org
• Time to First Byte
• Lightweight pages
• Caching
• Compression

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2. Content & Relevance

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Content Structure
Title Tag
Meta Description
<h1> headline
Body content
(with <h2> - <h6> subheaders)
Image alt attribute
Calls to action
Links to other pages on the site
Source:
http://bada.ms/perfectonpageseo

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Product Snapshot
Customer Reviews
In-depth Description

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Unique, well-written content
• Never use standard manufacturer product
descriptions

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Image Optimisation
• Filename;
photo001.jpg
brown-mens-shoes.jpg
• Alt attribute;
<img src=“/brown-mens-shoes.jpg” alt=“Brown Irish
Brogue Men’s Shoes” />
• Caption text;
Barker’s Irish Brogue
Men’s Shoe

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Hierarchical Site Architecture
Homepage
Category 1 Category 2
Subcategory
2.1
Subcategory
2.3
Subcategory
2.2
Product 2.2
A
Product 2.2
B
Product 2.2
C
Category 3

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Information Architecture

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Hierarchical URLs
Homepage
Category 1 Category 2
Subcategory
2.1
Subcategory
2.3
Subcategory
2.2
Product 2.2
A
Product 2.2
B
Product 2.2
C
Category 3
http://domain.it/
http://domain.it/category/
http://domain.it/category/subcategory/
http://domain.it/category/subcategory/
productA.html
http://domain.it/category/subcategory/
productB.html
http://domain.it/category/subcategory/
productC.html

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Make URLs Human-Readable
Apache .htaccess URL rewrites;
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule /(.*)/(.*)/$ page.php?category=$1&product=$2
[NC,L]
This rewrites parameter URLs:
http://www.domain.it/page.php?category=safety-
boots&brand=caterpillar
To human-readable URLs:
http://www.domain.it/safety-boots/caterpillar/

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Products in more than 1 category
Duplicate content issue:
http://domain.it/safety-boots/caterpillar/cat-holton.html
http://domain.it/casual-boots/caterpillar/cat-holton.html
Revert to root URLs for all products:
http://domain.it/caterpillar-holton-boots.html

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Structured Data
• Schema.org Product markup

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JSON-LD Markup
• In the <head> section
Separate from body code
Easier to implement

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Google Tag Manager JSON-LD
• Use GTM data layer macros to inject JSON-LD
schema.org code in your product pages
Source: http://www.swellpath.com/2015/03/7-steps-to-pushing-json-structured-
data-using-google-tag-manager/

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Structured Data Testing Tool
https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/

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Expired Product Pages
• Google’s advice: serve 404 Not Found
Downside: loss of link value
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tz7Eexwp_A

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My Advice
• Keep the page up

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High-churn Ecommerce
• Products with a limited lifespan, potentially
thousands of new pages every week
Online auctions / ‘… for sale’ classified sites / etc
 301-redirect old URL to most relevant new URL
Minimum 180 days
Serve 410 (or 404) on old URL after 180 days

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3. Links & Authority

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Homepage Links vs Deep Links
• Homepage earns the most links
• Category pages rarely get links
• Product pages sometimes get links
• Linked pages serve as spider entries
• Linked pages rank higher (duh)
• Link value needs to be spread out
Images source: http://bada.ms/mozcrawldiagrams

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Spreading link value
• Internal linking is key;
Link from your key pages to deeper categories & products
Use optimised anchor texts

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Top Linked Pages (Majestic)

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Linkbuilding for Ecommerce
1. Awesome / limited edition products

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Linkbuilding for Ecommerce
2. Blogger reviews & giveaways

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Linkbuilding for Ecommerce
2. Blogger reviews & giveaways
Ensure the blog is relevant & authoritive

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Linkbuilding for Ecommerce
3. Competitive Linkbuilding
Monitor your competition’s new links

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Linkbuilding for Ecommerce
3. Competitive Linkbuilding
Find linked 404 pages on your competitors’ sites

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Linkbuilding for SEO
4. Outsourced link placements

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Linkbuilding for SEO
4. Outsourced link placements
Double-check the work
Site quality & relevance are key

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Anchor Text Distribution
• Exact Match anchor text is still important;
“…click here to buy safety boots online.”
• Don’t over-optimise;
Penalty-risk is real
• My advice: 80/20;
80% branded links, 20% keyword links

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Pro-active Link Monitoring & Cleanup

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4. International SEO

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International Domains
• Pick the right domain
 Generic TLDs: .com, .org, .net, .info, …
 ccTLDs: .co.uk, .ie, .de, .fr, .it, .nl, …
• Generic domains can be geo-targeted with
Google Search Console
• Country-code domains will be assumed to target
that country
It’s almost impossible to get a .it website to rank in
google.co.uk

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Google Search Console

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Website Structure
• Subdirectories:
 website.com/gb
 website.com/it
• Subdomains:
 gb.website.com
 it.website.com
Verify separately in
Google Search Console
and set the geo-target

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Country & Language
www.website.com/be-fr/
www.website.com/be-nl/
www.website.com/be-de/
Use official ISO
country & language
codes where possible

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HTML Language Tag
• Use the ‘lang’ attribute:
• Don’t forget to change when you launch your
international version!

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HREFLANG Meta Tags
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-ie"
hreflang="en-ie" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-ca"
hreflang="en-ca" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-au"
hreflang="en-au" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en"
hreflang="en" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/" hreflang="x-
default" />
More info: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077

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Google Search Console

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Content
• Don’t just translate – localise!
• Belgian Dutch is not the same as Dutch Dutch
Ditto with Portugal vs Brazil
And Austria vs Germany
And Switzerland vs France / Germany / Italy
Etc…
• Don’t be half-arsed – localise everything

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Summary

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SEO for Ecommerce
• Optimise your website’s
crawl space
Block irrelevant pages
Use “rel=canonical”
wisely
• Optimise your content
Unique product
descriptions
Schema.org Product
markup
• Acquire links
Create something link-
worthy
Homepage & deep links
Variable anchor texts
• International SEO
Go big or go home
Use the right strategy
from the start

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Thank You
barry@polemicdigital.com
www.polemicdigital.com
twitter.com/polemicdigital
twitter.com/badams
#SMConnect