My presentation from SMX Sydney on avoiding common pitfalls in E-Commerce SEO

1. ECOMMERCE SEO
AVOIDING COMMON PITFALLS
Jon Quinton, Senior SEO Consultant, SEOgadget

2. WHY TALK ABOUT ECOMMERCE SEO?

3. @jonquinton1
SIMPLE: LOSING OUT TO COMPETITORS

4. QUESTION: HOW CAN YOU AVOID MISTAKES THAT
EVERYONE ELSE MAKES?

5. GHOSTS OF LINK BUILDING PAST

6. @jonquinton1
YEARS OF THIS:
Time spent clearing up junk is
time not being spent acquiring
new links

7. @jonquinton1
AND THIS:
If your link profile is full of links
like these, you need to learn
how to analyse your profile

8. @jonquinton1
Identify who is linking to you,
then make a judgement call on
which links should stay

9. @jonquinton1
ANCHOR TEXT DISTRIBUTION
Evaluate proportion of
commercial anchors vs. brand
and noise

10. @jonquinton1
SEARCHING FOR OTHER RED FLAGS:
suspicious links can be
incredibly easy to spot.

11. WEENING OFF THE ‘GOOGLE CRACK’*
*THANKS TO @BADAMS

12. @jonquinton1
Having a strong brand with
diverse traffic sources will
negate the risk of ranking
fluctuation

13. @jonquinton1
Non-Brand News
Brand
Landing Pages
Conferences
Organic
Search
Shopping
Meetups Events PPC
Interviews
Press
Traffic Email Targeted Campaigns
PR Stunts
Print Social Deals and Offers
Advertising
Editorial Competitions
Ego Bait

14. @jonquinton1

15. Want to know what content
might work well on social?
http://birdsongdtt.com/
birdsong

16. @jonquinton1
NOTE: Influential fashion
blogger

17. IGNORE CUSTOMERS AT YOUR PERIL…

18. @jonquinton1
Marketing a crap product and
service gets you nowhere

19. @jonquinton1
The smart money is in building a
‘tribe’ that will promote your
products for you

20. NOT MAKING USE OF DATA

21. @jonquinton1
USE INTERNAL SEARCH WISELY
Internal search = insight gold

22. @jonquinton1
CUSTOM VARIABLES – STOCK INFO
Dynamically add:
_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','Out of stock items','Samsung Series 7 Chronos 15.6 Touchscreen Laptop Silver','1099',true]);"

23. @jonquinton1
TRACKING HIGH CONVERTING PRODUCTS

24. 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

25. LETTING OPPORTUNITIES PASS YOU BY

26. @jonquinton1
4500
4000
3500
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0

27. Match keyword data with crawl
data to find keywords not yet
=COUNTIF(Sheet4!$A$1:$A$2,"*"&B3&"*") being targeted

28. @jonquinton1
HOW DO PEOPLE SEARCH FOR YOUR PRODUCTS?
Understand if people search by
brand, product, category or
other

29. @jonquinton1
If demand exists, don’t waste
the potential on filters – create
sub categories

30. @jonquinton1
UNDERSTAND YOUR SEASONALITY
Demand for motorcycle helmets
spikes in the spring – optimise
in the autumn

31. LOSING OUT TO TECHNICAL NIGHTMARES

32. @jonquinton1
ARE YOU MAKING LIFE HARD FOR GOOGLEBOT?
Quick check – how does the size
of your site check out with the
number of discovered URLs?

33. @jonquinton1
UNDERSTAND HOW CRAWL BUDGET IS BEING SPENT
Parameter URLS vs. Clean URLs Total Crawl Budget Wastage:
39%
43%
57%
61%
Use log-file data to identify
where you might be losing
valuable crawl budget

34. @jonquinton1
POOR HANDLING OF PAGINATION
Implement rel=“next” and rel=“prev”

35. CONTENT = YOUR CHARACTER

36. @jonquinton1
If your content is good enough, show
it off. If not, rewrite it and then show
it off

37. @jonquinton1
WEAK PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS:
Question: does this give me enough
information to make an informed
decision?

38. Product descriptions provided via a
feed equates to inviting a panda round
for dinner

39. @jonquinton1
If you want to know what good looks
like, take a look at wish.co.uk

40. WEAPONS TOOLS OF CHOICE

41. @jonquinton1
• http://birdsongdtt.com/
• http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/
• http://majesticseo.com/
• http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-
spider/

42. THANK YOU
Jon Quinton, SEOgadget
@jonquinton1
Blog: seogadget.co.uk
Email: jon@seogadget.co.uk