This document provides tips and strategies for advanced SEO for ecommerce sites. It discusses challenges like optimizing the large number of product and category pages for relevant keywords. It then outlines a product launch roadmap involving blog posts, social media, and linkbuilding. Other sections provide ideas for linkbuilding through widgets, expired product handling, followup emails, and using social media links. The document aims to help ecommerce sites effectively manage SEO at scale.

1. ADVANCED SEO FOR
ECOMMERCE SITES
Patrick Altoft
Director of Search, Branded3

2. Ecommerce site challenges - scale
• Require rankings for
o Product names & variations with product pages
o Generic keywords & variations with category pages
• 1000 products with 3 primary keywords each
• 50 category & sub-category pages with 5 primary
keywords each
• 3250 keywords requiring onsite & offsite optimisation
plus daily rank tracking & monthly traffic & revenue
reporting

3. Ecommerce site challenges - links
• Commercial sites struggle to attract natural links
• Google is against paid links
o Recent outings include JC Penney, Overstock & all
the US online florists
• How can you build links to over 1000 pages?

4. Product Launch Roadmap
Product Blog post Press
Social media
announced published release
Blogger
Traffic Rankings Linkbuilding
outreach
301 to
Signups to
Launch product Linkbuilding
email list
page
Press Blogger
Revenue Social media
release outreach

5. Perfect product launch

6. Expired Products
• Keep page live
• Show appropriate message
• Display similar products

7. Linkbuilding Via Widgets
• We developed a PHP widget to showcase the top 5
products or deals in each category of a clients
ecommerce site
• Also available as a Wordpress plugin
• Allows us to dynamically update thousands of links
across dozens of websites remotely as new products
are added or old ones removed
• Links to category, homepage & 5 products
• Ultimate scalable & natural linkbuilding system

8. Linkbuilding Ideas
• Awards for top bloggers in your sector
• Product giveaways
• Press releases & arranging coverage
• Providing images for review posts
• Offering content to affiliate sites & blogs
• Linkbait style blog posts

9. Social Media Links
• Google counts tweets & Facebook shares/likes as
links
• Lots of people run competitions on Twitter
• We’ve taken things a step further and ask for users
to tweet links to our clients product pages to enter
• Client gets valuable traffic, exposure & new followers
• Via competwition.com (version 2 coming soon) we
gained 4000 new followers in a week to one client
• Our twitition.com site has 690,000 followers

10. Followup Emails
• Email customers after 7 days
• Offer a monthly prize if users
o Leave a review of the product they bought
o Follow you on Twitter & Facebook
• Offer a voucher if users recommend you to their
friends
• Give them links to share via social media

11. Graze.com

12. Data Markup
• www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=146750

14. Google Panda Update

15. Google Panda Update

16. Google Panda Update
• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly
different keyword variations?
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by
attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original
analysis?
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
• How much quality control is done on content?
• Does the article describe both sides of a story?

17. Google Panda Update
• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large
network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

18. Google Panda Links
• googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-
high-quality.html
• www.seobook.com/questioning-questions
• seogadget.co.uk/high-quality-web-sites-the-new-google-ranking-factor/
• www.webuildpages.com/blog/google/short-clicks-long-clicks-pogosticking/

19. Learning more
• Come and see us on stand E5062
• Read Blogstorm.co.uk - UK’s largest blog about SEO with over
10,000 daily readers
• Email patrick@branded3.com for free SEO advice
• Visit our website at Branded3.com