5 Retail Principles to Rule your E-commerce SEO

#ecommerceseo at #wmf17 by @aleyda from @orainti
5 Retail Principles to Rule your 
E-Commerce SEO

I’m Aleyda Solis

I help online stores to maximise  
their revenue with Organic Search…

Organic is the 1st traﬃc source for  
shopping sites in Italy
similarweb.com

It’s usually one of the most proﬁtable too

With a critical role in conversion paths

And although businesses are now
understanding that is critical

Optimisation issues are also common  
and obvious, even towards users

And Italian top players are not trivial

Are you ready to compete with them?

Let’s use some retail
principles to win…

It’s time to sell

Without being this guy!

1. Connect by targeting your
audience wishes & pain-
points when purchasing

Do you really want to compete with them?

Instead of focusing on your industry  
top but very competitive queries
kwfinder.com

It’s better to diversify & target users  
across the purchase journey queries
https://www.consumerbarometer.com/
Online Ideas
& inspiration Opinions,
reviews &
advice
Brand
discovery Product, price &
features
comparisons
Product
availability
Online offers,
promos &
coupons

Taking into consideration voice &  
conversational searches
http://searchengineland.com/google-reveals-20-percent-queries-voice-queries-249917

Which terms across your top categories
already generate high visibility & low CTR?
Google Search Console / OnPage.org

Those that generate more visits  
but poorer conversions?
SEOmonitor

Which are the relevant queries that some of
your competitors are targeting & you’re not?

Use them to expand & identify queries ideas
around categories, products w/ characteristics
Categories Sub-Categories Products

What are the actual questions  
made about them?

Check not only in Google but those  
searched in Amazon & Ebay too
keywotdtool.io

What’s their seasonality & when  
you should target them each year

Use the intent & context to connect  
them with your content
+
informational
reviews
advice
guide
news
transactional
research
compare
register
buy
or
Products
Brands
Categories
or
or

Identifying which area and level of your site
is relevant to target them in each case
x
communit
y
product
category 2
learning
center
events
home
product
1a
product
1b
product
n1
product
n2
category  
a
category  
b
blog
product
category 1
product
category
n

In which format your content should be
based on the context & goal
https://www.distilled.net/blog/the-content-matrix/

So you can oﬀer useful product information
addressing queries with far less competition

It’s about targeting your
audience wishes & pain-points
when purchasing

2. Rule your
oﬀering by a Supply
& demand principle

Why having millions of pages if they’re not
visited, just consuming crawl-budget?
botify.com

Do you have URLs included by default in
XML sitemaps but are not internally linked?
deepcrawl.com

In most platforms these are “patched” by  
non-indexing, canonicalising or redirecting

It’s like having products in your store on  
stock which are never sold but taking space

Crawl & check how much of the content  
is unique & shared between pages

Identify the pages with little and duplicate
content internally & externally too
safecont.com

Start publishing, indexing & optimising
based on a supply & demand principle
Should you index a page?
YesNo
Does your
audience search
for what is offered
on the page?
Don’t
index it
No
Is search
volume high
enough to
compensate the
indexation
effort?
Yes
No Is there enough
offering to be
featured on the
page?
Yes
Index it

Prioritise those already critical pages with
higher traﬃc to start with their content

Start diﬀerentiating similar products  
that cannibalise each other

To develop speciﬁcally useful and  
unique information than other sites

Featuring useful & attractive descriptions,
starting with your hottest categories, products

as well as brands

With comparisons that allow  
also to control your search reputation

Publishing & distributing your how-to’s &
guides across other platforms too

Avoid indexing internal search results that
target the same queries than categories
Internal
search
result
Category

Refer your internal search results to your
category pages for the relevant queries
Internal
search
result
Category

If you can’t, avoid generating duplication…
Internal
search
result
Category

Don’t use “canonical tags” to ﬁx this, you’ll be
likely wasting your crawl budget with it.
No

Yes
Control this directly at linking level

Or URL structure too
Yes

Making your indexable content unique,  
fulﬁlling a demand while keeping it proﬁtable

It’s about generating content
following a supply & demand
principle to make it proﬁtable

3. Organise your online
store showcase to
connect & sell

Avoid the lack of correspondence between  
the query and content level & type
It should be
targeted with
a listing, not a
product

This is caused by “standardised”  
organisation with content that overlays
=
Category Sub-category

Reorganise your content to diﬀerentiate  
& connect with your user intent
Home Hub Listing Product

Link consistently to your most important
categories, subcategories & product family
Parents
Siblings
Children

Prioritising based on identiﬁed trends  
and leveraging high seasonality too

Developing category & product pages that
actually perform the role of a sales person
Is there an offer? Is it available?
Are there many colours?
What other people buy? How can I complement it?
How does it compare to others?

While incentivising UGC to increase  
freshness, uniqueness & trust
But how does it solve X problem?
What other people end-up finding it?

Establish rules for  
expired products & campaigns
The product or campaign not available anymore
Is this
permanent?
Keep the page published
and indexable, showing
related products or
offers, giving option to
notify users
The product page should
be 301-redirected to its
parent category & the
campaign page to the
offers section
NOYES

Leveraging them whether they are  
disappearing or just temporarily unavailable

Remember to reuse these pages & update
them to match with each year’s queries

Capitalising their established link popularity
CognitiveSEO

Instead of doing this

It’s about organising your online
store to connect & sell

4. Make your oﬀer accessible
from wherever your
customers are, also on the go

Most of the searches are now done  
from mobile devices
http://searchengineland.com/report-nearly-60-percent-searches-now-mobile-devices-255025

It’s then reasonable that Google is  
moving to a mobile-ﬁrst index
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/11/mobile-first-indexing.html

And critical to start optimising  
for a mobile ﬁrst search
http://searchengineland.com/faq-google-mobile-first-index-262751

Check which queries are already performing
better for mobile thank desktop

The ones giving more mobile visibility  
& traﬃc to your competitors
sistrix.com

Which are those speciﬁc queries that they’re
targeting on mobile that you’re missing

Verifying which of these queries are more
popular to target on mobile than desktop

Remember to rank for your own app too!
NO

Crawl & validate your site mobile
conﬁguration with the smartphone crawler

It’s fundamental to make sure you’re showing
as much content on mobile than desktop
VS

Although in this case it’s ok to hide it
http://www.thesempost.com/hidden-content-mobile-rankings/
=

It’s critical to facilitate its access  
avoiding interstitials & pop-ups
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-easily-access-content-on.html

Don’t do this

Or this might happen
https://www.sistrix.com/blog/pinterst-com-hit-googles-interstitials-update/

You can use app banners instead
https://developer.android.com/distribute/users/banners.html

All this will make your mobile
traﬃc & transactions grow

It’s about making your oﬀer
accessible from wherever your
customers are, also on the go

5. Attract your
customers attention
to bring them in

SERP features have become more 
common in shopping results
https://www.semrush.com/sensor/

Increase your organic search results visibility
with them for informational queries

Verify for which queries your site is already
showing them & what’s their performance

Which search results that you’re targeting are
showing them and you’re not included

The ones already giving  
visibility to your competitors

How they’re ranking for these queries  
and with what content?

Prioritise the usage of structured data for
products, reviews, videos & images.
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-structured-data

Validating their implementation with the
Structured Data testing tool & Search Console
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/search-gallery

To maximise your visibility vs. your  
competition in SERPs… even if it’s Amazon!

It’s about attracting your
customers attention to bring
them in

These “old-school” retail
principles will make you win

By making your E-commerce
SEO great again!
Your
audience
wishes & pain-
points
Supply &
demand
principle
Showcase to
connect & sell
Be wherever
your customer
is
Attract your
customers
attention

Just like this ;)

#ecommerceseo at #wmf17 by @aleyda from @orainti#ecommerceseo at #wmf17 by @aleyda from @orainti
Grazie

5 Retail Principles to Rule your E-commerce SEO

5 Retail Principles to Rule your E-commerce SEO

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