Emily Mace BrightonSEO Talk September 2017

Emily Mace
Technical SEO for E-commerce
at home and abroad
@IAmTheLaserHawk

2
To infinity and beyond
@IAmTheLaserHawk

3
Infinite scroll
Lists all products on
one page
Alternative method of
showing pagination
Great for UX and
mobile
@IAmTheLaserHawk

4
Works really well in Asian countries
where users are used to longer pages…
Infinite scroll
and international
@IAmTheLaserHawk

6
What happens when infinite scroll goes
wrong?
Uncrawlable contentOrphaned pages
Lost rankings and sales
@IAmTheLaserHawk

7
Infinite scroll – getting it right
URL changes to show
page numbers as you
scroll down
?scrollpage=2
@IAmTheLaserHawk

8
Infinite scroll and pagination working together
User sees:
@IAmTheLaserHawk

9
Search Engine sees:
@IAmTheLaserHawk

10
Infinite scroll – getting it right
No change to URLPagination in the code
Prev and Next tags in <head>
@IAmTheLaserHawk

11
User sees:
@IAmTheLaserHawk

12
Search Engine sees:
@IAmTheLaserHawk

13
Faceted navigation
@IAmTheLaserHawk

14
Faceted navigation
Ability to filter results to
find the perfect product
Again great for users
Works well with infinite
scroll too
@IAmTheLaserHawk

15
URLs and faceted navigation
But what happens to our URLs?
www.mysite.com/category/sub-category
@IAmTheLaserHawk

16
URL and faceted navigation
www.mysite.com/category/
sub-category/?price=5-150
Price
• £5-£150
@IAmTheLaserHawk

17
www.mysite.com/category
/sub-category/?price=5-
150&style=ABC
Price
• £5-£150
Style
• ABC
@IAmTheLaserHawk

18
www.mysite.com/category/
sub-category/?price=5-
150&style=ABC&size=123
Price
• £5-£150
Style
• ABC
Size
• 123
@IAmTheLaserHawk

19
www.mysite.com/category
/sub-category/?price=5-
150&style=ABC&size=12
3&colour=purple
And on and on and on…
Price
• £5-£150
Style
• ABC
Size
• 123
Colour
• Purple
@IAmTheLaserHawk

20
So it could be this
www.mysite.com/category/sub-category/?price=5-
150&style=ABC&size=123&colour=purple&Brand
=StarWars&Character=BB-8&episode=The-
Force-Awakens&gender=girls&delivery=next-
day&packaging=gift&condition=New&reviews=4-5
@IAmTheLaserHawk

21
Not great for SEO and could create lots of
competing pages…
@IAmTheLaserHawk

22
Cannibalisation fail!
@IAmTheLaserHawk

23
How to control this
Just one page visible when parameters added
Robots.txt
Canonical
tags
Parameter
handling
@IAmTheLaserHawk

24
How to control this
@IAmTheLaserHawk

25
E-commerce myth
@IAmTheLaserHawk

26
The e-commerce myth
Category pages have no content on them and
so are thin….
@IAmTheLaserHawk

27
E-commerce sites have thin content
@IAmTheLaserHawk

28
Ecommerce sites have thin content
Search engines are
cleverer than you think
Writing “SEO content”
which doesn’t add value to
users won’t help
@IAmTheLaserHawk

29
Category pages – what is important
Use of
keywords
Access
via menu
Usability
@IAmTheLaserHawk

31
Product and category keyword usage
Talking of keyword usage,
let’s go a bit basic…
@IAmTheLaserHawk

32
Marketing says:
I know it’s a pair of skinny
fit jeans but they are called
“Dave”
@IAmTheLaserHawk

33
SEO data shows:
Who knows “Dave” is a pair
of jeans?
People search for jeans and
skinny jeans…
@IAmTheLaserHawk

34
When it goes wrong
Average
ranking for
non brand
keywords
33
Average
ranking for
brand
keywords
5
@IAmTheLaserHawk

35
What competitor research tells us
Our research shows using keywords gets sites
ranking and higher levels of potential traffic
@IAmTheLaserHawk

36
We all know this!
@IAmTheLaserHawk

37
But why is it important?
Keyword visibility
Helps marketplace performance
Helps PLAs for paid
Let’s try and get marketing on board, eh?
@IAmTheLaserHawk

38
Out of stock products
@IAmTheLaserHawk

39
Heading out of stock products
Redirect
to top
level
Redirect
to
another
product
Broken
page
(410 or
404)
Keep
live
@IAmTheLaserHawk

40
Keep products live
Always best for SEO
Better for customer
Maintains our authority
@IAmTheLaserHawk

41
Handling out of stock products
Mandatory LEGO slide coming up…
@IAmTheLaserHawk

42
Make it clear on your product wall
So the page is still
indexed and linked to
BUT people know
they can’t buy it
@IAmTheLaserHawk

43
Make it clear on the product page too
@IAmTheLaserHawk

44
Similar items
Don’t forget to recommend similar items
on your out of stock products
@IAmTheLaserHawk

45
Give people options
@IAmTheLaserHawk

46
If you can’t keep live
Redirect to a similar product –
better user experience than a 404
@IAmTheLaserHawk

47
Seasonal product changes
@IAmTheLaserHawk

48
Seasonal refreshes
Similar to out of stock products
@IAmTheLaserHawk

49
Seasonal refreshes and your visibility
@IAmTheLaserHawk

50
Seasonal refreshes
Where does your boots page go in summer?
Do you include the year in the launch page?
e.g.Fall Winter 2017
What about our SEO authority?
@IAmTheLaserHawk

51
Seasonal refreshes
Avoid naming conventions which include years
Keep holding pages for product lines live in your
HTML sitemap so they exist and aren’t
orphaned – including sales pages
@IAmTheLaserHawk

52
Seasonal refreshes
Have a landing page telling
people jumpers aren’t on sale at
the moment because it’s SUNNY!
Redirect product pages to the landing page….
@IAmTheLaserHawk

53
Product options
@IAmTheLaserHawk

54
A quick one on product options
When adding products don’t add a
new product page for each option…
@IAmTheLaserHawk

55
More cannibalisation fails
@IAmTheLaserHawk

56
A quick one on product options
Have one page which includes all options
@IAmTheLaserHawk

57
Hreflang tags
@IAmTheLaserHawk

58
How do I even Hreflang all of that?
What do we need to do?
Considering international is key, getting your
Hreflang tags right is the best kick off point
This need not be hard! I can help!
@IAmTheLaserHawk

59
We’re e-commerce…
Let’s try and use our Hreflang tags in our
sitemap to improve accuracy
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/english/</loc>
<xhtml:link
rel="alternate"
hreflang="de"
href="http://www.example.com/deutsch/"
/>
<xhtml:link
rel="alternate"
hreflang="de-ch"
href="http://www.example.com/schweiz-deutsch/"
/>
</url>
@IAmTheLaserHawk

60
Why sitemaps?
We’ve seen
less issues
with sitemap
Hreflang tags
compared to
on page!
Different
stock
availability
Different
products
from country
to country
@IAmTheLaserHawk

61
So what do we do with this Hreflang tag?
Here’s a recap of some of my
top Hreflang tag tips
@IAmTheLaserHawk

62
Languages and Countries
Language first then country
@IAmTheLaserHawk

63
Don’t make up languages or countries
– sometimes the codes are different
JA-JP for Japan
@IAmTheLaserHawk

64
Don’t make up languages or countries
– sometimes the codes are different
JA-JP for Japan
Don’t have an EU site in English and
target it to every country in Europe
individually
@IAmTheLaserHawk

65
Coding the correct way
List of Hreflangs should include the
language you’re on
@IAmTheLaserHawk

66
Make sure each country sitemap tells the
same story – don’t miss confirmation links
(no return errors in GSC)
@IAmTheLaserHawk

67
Make sure each country sitemap tells the
same story – don’t miss confirmation links
(no return errors in GSC)
Don’t use URLs which redirect or are
broken
@IAmTheLaserHawk

68
Hreflang tags don’t need to be hard…
…but they do need to be right!
@IAmTheLaserHawk

69
So, WOW, I didn’t rant about IP serving this
time! That’s a first!
@IAmTheLaserHawk

70 @IAmTheLaserHawk
Did I mention, I’m looking for a talented graduate
to join my SEO team - contact me on Twitter to
find out more

|
Thanks!
#BrightonSEO
@IAmTheLaserHawk
@ObanIntl
https://www.slideshare.net/OBAN-IDForum

Emily Mace BrightonSEO Talk September 2017

More Related Content

What's hot

Similar to Emily Mace BrightonSEO Talk September 2017

More from Oban International

Recently uploaded

Emily Mace BrightonSEO Talk September 2017

Editor's Notes