Enterprise e-Commerce SEO: What it Takes to Scale Success
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When it comes to Enterprise E-Commerce SEO, does the size of your website really matter? The answer is YES! The skills, strategy, and approach needed for SEO success for an enterprise website can be much different than for a smaller-scale website. Joe Douress, SEO Team Lead at Elite SEM, and Josue Ledesma, Global Content Marketing Manager at Trustpilot, will cover the differences between the strategies it takes to be successful for Enterprise eCommerce websites including: - the difference between a “small website” vs. an Enterprise website, specifically for eCommerce businesses - the challenges and opportunities that larger websites face when it comes to a modern approach to SEO - common pitfalls of Enterprise eCommerce websites, including Information Architecture, Faceted Navigation, and Indexation strategies that stand the test of time for long-term success and ROI for organic search - Inspiration and examples from large scale retailers including furniture retailer, Ethan Allen, and home improvement store, Home - Depot Screen reader support enabled.
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Enterprise e-Commerce SEO: What it Takes to Scale Success
- 1. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL Enterprise e-Commerce SEO What it Takes to Scale Success May 22, 2018
- 3. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL Global Content Marketing Manager Josue Ledesma Trustpilot SEO Team Lead Joe Douress Elite SEM
- 4. upon registration... “What's the biggest challenge you have when crafting or implementing a large-scale SEO strategy?” ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 4
- 7. Questions Case Study Common Pitfalls & What it Takes to Scale Success Adopting Small-Scale Advantages for BIG Success Advantages & Disadvantages of Enterprise Websites Enterprise vs. Small Business Websites Agenda ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 7
- 8. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 8 “93% of all traffic comes from a search engine” -Search Engine Journal
- 9. Enterprise vs. Small Business Websites ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 9
- 10. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 10 Enterprise = 100k+ pages Commonly 1MM+ pages
- 11. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 11
- 13. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 13
- 14. Advantages of BIG Enterprise Websites ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 14
- 15. Advantages ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 15 ➔Incoming links quantity / diversity ➔Invest in high priorities ➔Financial resources ➔Domain authority ➔Brand trustworthiness ➔Brand credibility
- 16. Disadvantages of Large Sites ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 16
- 17. Enterprise eComm Struggles ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 17 ➔Diluted focus ➔Friction during decision making process ➔Lack of agility and creativity ➔Not much freedom to test / experiment ➔Complicated site structure ➔Perception of inauthentic voice
- 18. Adopting Small-Scale Advantages for BIG Success ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 18
- 19. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 19 ➔Respond to new search engine updates ➔Test different strategies on different site pages ➔Think about your SERP (it’s not always about #1) ➔Optimize for local, voice, mobile, and answer But How? Always be updating (your SEO strategy)
- 20. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 20 ➔Leverage semantic HTML5 and schema ➔Create page templates and bucket site pages ➔Utilize third-party channels, links, and mentions ➔Develop content patterns and style consistencies But How? Optimize for Understanding and Credibility
- 22. What it Takes to Scale Success ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 22
- 23. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 23 Prevent Duplicate Content
- 24. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 24 Why Does it Happen? ➔Faceted navigation ➔URL structure ➔HTTPS vs HTTP ➔Product variations source: HomeDepot.com
- 25. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 25 Don’t compete against yourself! Consolidate your SEO equity
- 26. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 26 How to Fix ➔SEO tags ➔Indexation files ➔Talk to your developer
- 27. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 27 Example
- 28. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 28 Optimize Crawl Budget
- 29. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 29 Why Does it Happen? ➔Legacy page errors ➔Chain redirects ➔Tons of URLs to crawl source: Google Search Console
- 30. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 30 Serve your content to Google on a silver platter! Feed the search engines your highest quality / grade A content
- 31. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 31 How to Fix ➔Proper sitemap usage ➔Useful internal linking ➔Limit crawling of low-value content ➔Talk to your developer
- 32. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 32 Example source: EthanAllen.com
- 33. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 33 Equally Distribute SEO Value
- 34. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 34 Why Does it Happen? ➔Complicated nav ➔Deep content ➔JavaScript links source: Boots.com
- 35. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 35 Don’t send your users on a wild goose chase! You’ll make it easy for search engines too
- 36. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 36 How to Fix ➔Simplify navigation ➔Utilize linking modules ➔Format text links properly ➔Talk to your developer
- 37. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 37 Example source: KINDsnacks.com
- 38. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 38 Remove Thin Content
- 39. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 39 Why Does it Happen? ➔Limited copywriting resources ➔Unoptimized page templates ➔Lack of UGC source: Shopko.com
- 40. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 40 Watch out for Google Panda! Part of Google’s core ranking algorithm now
- 41. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 41 “72% of online marketers describe content creation as their most effective SEO tactic” -HubSpot
- 42. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 42 How to Fix ➔Build content on category / product pages ➔Optimize page templates ➔Encourage customer reviews & comments ➔Talk to your copywriter
- 43. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 43 Example source: Walmart.com
- 45. TRANSACTIONS +31.5% improvement YoY ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 45 SEO Results Enterprise eComm Website YoY 2017 TRAFFIC +11.2% improvement YoY Elite SEM fixed technical issues and optimized product page templates - leading to increased keyword rankings, traffic and revenue YoY REVENUE +49.5% improvement YoY
- 46. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 46 SEO Results Small-site lessons Since using Search CTR +45% LensDirect collected reviews using Trustpilot leading to: - over 1,100 reviews (third-party mentions) - A 45% increase in search CTR on non-branded terms - Rich snippets on search results
- 47. Key Takeaways Prevent duplicate content Optimize search engines’ crawl budget Equally distribute SEO value across pages Encourage user-generated content Remove / build out thin content ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 47
- 48. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 48 Questions? Let’s discuss! ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 48 Download Elite SEO Guide Out of Stock Product Pages elitesem.com/product-pages Download Trustpilot SEO Guide Answer Engine Optimization Answer Engine Optimization
- 49. ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL | 49 Out of Stock Product Pages SEO Guide elitesem.com/product-pages
- 50. Thank You! ELITESEM.COM CONFIDENTIAL Joe Douress | SEO Team Lead @ Elite SEM joe@elitesem.com Josue Ledesma | Global Content Marketing Manager @ Trustpilot jle@trustpilot.com
Editor's Notes
- Time to announce housekeeping items like mute yourself, when/how to ask questions, we’ll send you the recording, etc
- Poll 1: To kick things off... (1 question) 1. Are you satisfied with performance of your existing SEO efforts? (Single Choice) Answer 1: Yes Answer 2: No Answer 3: I'm not currently doing SEO
- Agenda
- Why is SEO important for your brand? 93% of all traffic comes from a search engine - so it’s imperative to not only have a presence in organic search, but to control how major search engines (Google) access and rank your content
- Poll 2: (1 question) 1. (estimate) How many pages are on your website? (Single Choice) Answer 1: <500 Answer 2: 500 - 5,000 Answer 3: 5,000 - 50,000 Answer 4: 50,000 - 100,000 Answer 5: 100,000+
- JOE - first 3 -Incoming links quantity / diversity -the sheer amount and variety of content that large ecomm sites have often leads to a variety of incoming links (from bloggers writing customer stories, news outlets promoting company announcements, social media users sharing purchases and promotions) -All of which helps give your brand exposure online -Invest in high priorities -enterprise websites tend to have the resources available (time and staff) to tackle high priorities -whether that be an upcoming large collection of products or migrating your site to another platform -and to that point... -Financial resources -I’m sure everyone here today is already starting to think about how much budget they’ll need to accomplish their goals for 2019 -large authoritative brands have more wiggle room to invest financial resources into their website than small startups do JOSUE - last 3
- JOE - first 3 -Diluted focus -with hundreds of thousands to millions of pages on enterprise websites, it’s difficult to have a niche focus - you’re the ‘jack or jill of all trades’ so to speak -this can reduce your chances of being the go-to outlet for a given topic or type of product -Friction during decision making process -Lots of red tape and approvals can extend the time it takes to get things done - especially when it comes to creating content or making technical implementations on your website -This often leads to monthly or quarterly website sprints and long-lasting code freezes -Lack of agility and creativity -Large brands are less likely to take a risk on new SEO strategies that don’t have many case studies available to provide ROI - for example, when Google first announced their accelerated mobile pages project (AMP), it was unknown whether or not it would drive more traffic or revenue -This can hinder your team’s ability to be creative with their marketing efforts overall JOSUE - last 3
- JOSUE
- JOSUE JOE -a recent example of this - up to this point, Google has crawled websites from a desktop browser point of view, and now Google is changing that to crawl the web from a mobile browser view -they’re calling this the ‘mobile-first index’ and Google expects to have most, if not all, websites migrated to their ‘mobile-first index’ by July of this year
- JOSUE JOE -I’d like to echo Josue’s mention of utilizing page templates - this can be a huge win for large ecomm developers as they can make one change to a given template and have it carry over to hundreds of thousands of their products -something as simple as expanding the amount of romance copy allowed on your product pages can have a huge impact on your SEO
- We’re moving into our next section where we cover common pitfalls for enterprise ecommerce websites, so let’s get a feel for the audience of the most common things you struggle with when it comes to SEO Poll 4: The struggles are real! (1 question) 1. Tell us your biggest challenge when it comes to SEO: (Multiple Choice) Answer 1: Creating content Answer 2: Getting technical fixes implemented Answer 3: Managing customer reviews / comments Answer 4: Platform limitations Answer 5: Measuring performance Answer 6: Not enough time in the day Answer 7: Knowing the best strategy to implement/focus on
- Going to get a bit technical here!
- Duplicate content can cause confusion in Google’s rankings -Google doesn’t know which version of the page to give authority to -Can also spread out and dilute your SEO focus rather than consolidate it to one highly authoritative page
- DUPLICATE CONTENT -Faceted navigation -faceted navigation, which comes from the ability to filter or sort products, often creates multiple instances of the same content that’s just organized or laid out differently -in Google’s eyes, this is duplicate content -URL structure -dynamic URLs can occur on large ecomm sites, as they usually have many browse paths to get to one product (for example, let’s say a user is looking for a new refrigerator to buy - they can either start by filtering by brand, or color, both of which will create their own URL based on the path they chose - but in the end, they land on the same product page. This creates duplicate content) -another issue with URLs is when URL parameters are used to track users’ clicking behavior on your site - this can create mirrored content on your site -HTTP vs HTTPS -another common cause of duplicate content is discrepancies between pages using both HTTP and HTTPS to render its content -this has become more of a recent issue since Google has started giving sites a slight ranking boost to sites that use HTTPS -so, developers sometimes will implement HTTPS to all pages on their site, but they won’t implement add a site-wide redirect from HTTP to HTTPS, and it causes duplication of the entire website -Product variations -Lastly, product variations - such as color, size, material - can also create duplicate content if not handled correctly -For example, let’s say someone is shopping on your site for a t-shirt - each time they choose a size (S, M or L) it creates a different URL but the content on the page stays the same. This essentially creates multiple URL versions of the same product. JOSUE
- DUPLICATE CONTENT -SEO tags -Canonical tags -Noindex, nofollow tags -Indexation files -Robots.txt JOSUE
- ethanallen.com - http to https redirect
- -Crawl budget is the amount of content Google can find per ‘crawl session’ before it reaches its limit -Large ecomm websites with 100k+ pages are commonly victims to crawl budget issues
- LIMITED CRAWL BUDGET -Legacy page errors -Legacy page errors are common on enterprise ecomm sites due to products going out-of-stock and presenting a 404 error -You can see an example of this in this screenshot - over 200k errors registered in Google Search Console -This means Google is crawling pages that don’t provide any value to your audience >> At the end of the presentation, we’ll be sharing a link for you to download a whitepaper focused on best practices for handling your Out of Stock Products -Chain redirects -Chain redirects can occur after years and years of consolidating content or from previous platform migrations -Chain redirects cause Google to take the ‘long scenic route’ to get to the final destination, instead of taking the optimal ‘shortcut’ route -Tons of URLs to crawl -Lastly, and most obviously, the fact that large websites can have millions of pages for Google to crawl can hinder how quickly your fresh, new content is indexed in their search results
- LIMITED CRAWL BUDGET -Proper sitemap usage -Don’t include 404s or redirects - only include valuable, useful content -Break out into multiple XML sitemap files - no more than 50k URLs per file -Useful internal linking -Remove links to broken pages, remove redirecting links -Use breadcrumb links that easily show paths from homepage > category page > product page - this ensures Google will find your most valuable content (like new products) more quickly and efficiently -Limit crawling of invaluable content -Use your robots.txt (which is simply a text file you add to your site to tell Google which content to index, and which content to avoid indexing) - setup disallow directives for any URLs that you don’t want indexed (such as product filtering URLs or thin content pages) JOSUE
- ethanallen.com - disallowing URL parameters used for filtering products, helps ensure Google only crawls content that is unique and valuable to its users
- SEO value, or link equity, can be easily diluted on large-scale websites
- DILUTED LINK VALUE -Complicated navigation -In this screenshot you can see boots.com has way too many links in their navigation (but in their defense, they have over 100k products! it’s difficult to categorize everything optimally) -The more links you have on a single page, the less SEO value you get from each link - think about when you cut a pizza pie, if you cut it in half you have 2 large slices (and 2 very happy people!), if you cut it into 8 slices you you get much less per slice -Deep content -deep content happens when it takes too many clicks to access a given page from the top of the path (i.e. the homepage, which is where Google tends to start their crawls) - typically anything more than 4 clicks is too much -this happens often with enterprise ecomm sites with thousands or millions of products -JavaScript links -JS links are, unfortunately, used very often on large ecomm sites as it makes it easier to provide links to tons of product pages - JS links are populated dynamically, while properly formatted HTML links can take more manual work - but Google still has a hard time crawling JS links and content, therefore causing SEO value to be lost boots.com
- DILUTED LINK VALUE Simplify navigation -Try to create a cleaner information architecture that buckets your products into as few categories as possible -avoid multiple dropdowns as well Utilize linking modules -add ‘related products’ links to your product pages -include ‘featured articles’ links on your blog posts (try to keep it to no more than 7 links total) Format text links properly -Avoid using JS to populate your links - instead, use properly formatted HTML links to ensure Google can find your content and properly spread SEO value throughout your site Talk to your developer
- KINDsnacks.com - related product links on product pages
- Thin content happens often on large ecommerce websites, whether it’s on category pages or product descriptions - it takes a lot of copywriting resources to keep up with the amount of pages on your site
- THIN CONTENT -Limited copywriting resources -Category pages are probably the biggest victim on large ecomm sites - copywriting resources typically focus on writing product descriptions over category pages -and to that point… -Product descriptions, or romance copy, tends to be very thin on enterprise ecomm sites - especially if you work with merchants or brands that don’t provide product descriptions for you -Unoptimized page templates -As mentioned earlier, category pages don’t get much love when it comes to copy content -Design or usability is often favored over unique copy content - therefore, page templates for categories and products tend to be very image heavy (like in this screenshot) -Lack of user-generated content -customer reviews can be a great way to build out content on product pages - problem is, lots of big brands don’t leverage this due to the customer service aspect, such as replying to or addressing poor reviews -same thing goes for user comments on a blog - the amount of work it takes to approve or deny user comments tends to scare away big brands from allowing its readers to comment on their blog JOSUE
- THIN CONTENT Build content on category / product pages -Dedicate, or hire more, resources to writing unique copy content on category pages and build out product descriptions as much as you can Optimize page templates -ensure your page templates allow for at least 100 words of copy content (especially on product pages) Encourage customer reviews & comments -let your customers help create content for you! Talk to your copywriter JOSUE
- walmart.com - copy content at bottom of category pages
- JOE Prevent duplicate content Optimize search engines’ crawl budget Equally distribute SEO value across pages
- Also launch FINAL QUESTION poll
- Contact Trustpilot: business.trustpilot.com