In the past sixteen years, bol.com has grown from an online bookstore to a collection of specialty shops that sell over ten million items. Nearly a million people shop on the website each day – but how does bol.com ensure that their products are being found through organic search? Tobias Sweijen, SEO Specialist at bol.com, and Irene Pennings, Business Analyst at bol.com, uncover how they get their products not just to rank, but to rank on page one, with the help of the Searchlight platform. Become an expert on how to improve your own rankings through simple tips and practical steps. Presentation by: Tobias Sweijen – SEO Specialist, Bol.com Irene Pennings – Business Analyst, Bol.com This presentation was given at the 2015 Conductor C3 marketing conference. Learn more: http://c3.conductor.com/

1. N E W Y O R K C I T Y | O C T O B E R 2 8 - 2 9 , 2 0 1 5
C3 2015 BREAKOUT SESSION
HOW TO RANK 10 MILLION
PRODUCTS ON PAGE ONE
SEO Specialist & Product Owner SEO IT team
Tobias Sweijen & Irene Pennings

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1. About bol.com
2. What SEO means for bol.com
3. SEO team
4. Cooperation with Product specialists
5. Implementing scalable SEO solutions
6. Q&A
AGENDA

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THE NETHERLANDS ??

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THE NETHERLANDS
Population: 16.6 mln
Capital: Amsterdam
Amsterdam
HQ bol.com

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1999 2004 2008 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Books Film
Music
Games
Software
Consumer
Electronics
Toys (Small & Major)
appliances
Baby
Cooking & Dining
Health & Beauty Living & Sleeping
Gardening & DIY
Sports & Leisure
Jewelry &
Watches
Bags &
Accessories
BELGIUM
FROM ONLINE BOOKSTORE TO ONLINE SUPER STORE

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>10 million available products
>5.7 million active customers
No. 1 brand associated with online
shopping in the Netherlands and Belgium
50% of all online
shoppers, do so at bol.com
Brand awareness
>75%>95%

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AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS
European E-commerce Award
Global E-commerce Summit 2014
Best Webshop Belgium
Webshop Awards Belgium 2014
2nd Most Indispensable Brand
EURIB Top 100 Indispensable Brands
SEO Benchmark 2014
iProspect Netherlands
Best Customer Service Award
Opiness Service Awards 2014-2015
Best online Book-, Music-,
Movie- & Game shop
Webshop Awards Netherlands 2014

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1,000
EMPLOYEES
Warehouse Customer Service

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>60% online shoppers use a search engine*
Why SEO?
Most important
traffic driver
Cost efficient
channel
Sustainable
investment
Awareness for
informative search
terms
SEO @ BOL.COM
*internetkassa.nu 2015

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SEO @ BOL.COM
SEO
B&M IT
6 SEO specialists
4 Developers90 Product
specialists

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SEO TEAM: WHAT DO WE DO?
RESEARCH REPORTING TRAINING & EVANGELIZING

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RESEARCH:
SEEKING FOR NEW OPPORTUNITIES
B&M IT
SEO

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CONDUCTOR SEARCHLIGHT
>36,000
keywords
>500
categories
5
accounts

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WHAT WE USE IT FOR
Positions & Trends
For shops (Electronics)
For subcategories (Laptops)
For specific keywords (‘apple macbook’)
For tests

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WHAT WE USE IT FOR
Landing pages
Product pages vs category pages

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WHAT WE USE IT FOR
Business cases
What if…
All Laptop keywords rank on #3
All Electronic keywords drop 2
positions

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REPORTING
B&M IT
SEO

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REPORTING
Weekly SEO report
 Sales
 Visitors
 Conversion
 …
(Success) cases
 Hypothesis
 Rank changes
 Additional sales / visits
 …
Workspaces
 Top 10 rising keywords
 Popular unranked keywords
 bol.com vs competitors
 …

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TRAINING & EVANGELIZING
Training for all
(new) colleagues
Spread the SEO
word!
SEO

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COOPERATION WITH PRODUCT SPECIALISTS
90product
specialists

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Create content for every stage
of the customer journey
• Inspiration • Information • Categories • Products

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SEO TRAINING PRODUCT SPECIALISTS
Inspiration
Information
Categories
Products When should I mow my lawn?

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SEO TRAINING PRODUCT SPECIALISTS
Inspiration
Information
Categories
Products

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SEO TRAINING PRODUCT SPECIALISTS
Inspiration
Information
Categories
Products

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SEO TRAINING PRODUCT SPECIALISTS
Inspiration
Information
Categories
Products

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SEO MEETINGS
WITH PRODUCT SPECIALISTS
Trends &
Developments
SEO analysis To Do’s
 Keywords
 Search volumes
 Rankings
 Landing pages

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MONITORING AND EVALUATING

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1. About bol.com
2. What SEO means for bol.com
3. SEO team
4. Cooperation with Product specialists
5. Implementing scalable SEO solutions
6. Q&A
AGENDA

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SCALABLE SOLUTIONS

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LEARNING LOOP & BUILDING A SCRUM-ROADMAP
Hypothesis &
KPI’s
Design testImplement test
Evaluation
& Learnings
Doing the right things
Doing things right

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5Best practices

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1. New landing pages

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NEW LANDING PAGE: SERIES
PRACTICE 1 2 3 4 5
Unique content
Unique product
collection

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2. Better rankings for ISBN

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SEARCHING FOR ISBN
PRACTICE 1 2 3 4 5

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ISBN: +1400% BETTER RESULTS ON PAGE 1
95%
40% 29%
60% 71%
2-Feb 2-Mar5-Jan
Not page 1
Page 1
3,500,000 (instead of 250,000) books on page 1 in Google
PRACTICE 1 2 3 4 5

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3. Optimized title-tags & h1

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Old bol.com | Leather, Best rated, Seats, Sofa’s & Seats| Living
New bol.com | Best rated Leather Seats
Old bol.com | Girls, 50%, Nightwear, Children clothing | Baby
New bol.com | 50% discount on Girls Nightwear!
OPTIMIZED TITLE TAGS FOR LIST PAGES
PRACTICE 1 2 3 4 5

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Old Bags – Leather
New Kipling Women’s Leather Bags
Old Building sets – Best rated
New Best rated LEGO Star Wars Building sets
MORE SPECIFIC H1 FOR LIST PAGES
PRACTICE 1 2 3 4 5

40. MORE SPECIFIC H1 FOR LIST PAGES

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Old Buy Children Jackets? Children Jackets at bol.com
New Buy Children Jacket? Children Jackets at bol.com
ADD SINGULAR KEYWORDS FOR CATEGORIES
PRACTICE 1 2 3 4 5

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RESULTS SINGULAR KEYWORDS
PRACTICE 1 2 3 4 5
81%
30%
19%
70%
Before After 6 months
98%
57%
43%
After 6 monthsBefore
Not found
Found
Page 1 Position 1-3

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RESULTS SINGULAR KEYWORDS
PRACTICE 1 2 3 4 5
Live
date

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4. Google Crawlings

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CRAWL ANALYSIS OF 1 CATEGORY LIST PAGES
Indexed URL’s
Crawled unique canonical URL’s
3%
21%
Unique canonical URL’s 47%
Unique crawled URL’s 100%
PRACTICE 1 2 3 4 5
-94%

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• Add links from category to popular other categories
• This algorithm is based on customer behavior
SOLUTION: LIST-TO-LIST
PRACTICE 1 2 3 4 5

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• Add links from products to popular other categories
• This popularity is based on customer behavior
SOLUTION: PRODUCT-TO-LIST
PRACTICE 1 2 3 4 5

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5. No-index for several pages

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CATEGORY PAGE
PRACTICE 1 2 3 4 5
Index!

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CATEGORY PAGE + 1 BRAND FILTER
PRACTICE 1 2 3 4 5
Index!

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CATEGORY PAGE + 2 BRAND FILTERS
PRACTICE 1 2 3 4 5
No index!

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CATEGORY PAGE + 2 FILTERS
PRACTICE 1 2 3 4 5
Index!

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CATEGORY PAGE + 4 FILTERS (OR MORE)
PRACTICE 1 2 3 4 5
No index!

54. #C3NY
1. Create a landing page for each relevant keyword
2. Look for small changes that can have big impact (ISBN)
3. Use business rules for title-tags & H1
4. Get insights into Googlebot
– Create a scalable link strategy
5. Only index the most relevant pages
5 BEST PRACTICES FROM HOLLAND

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Q&A
Tobias SweijenIrene Pennings
Twitter: @TSweijenTwitter: @_pennings

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THANKS!
Tobias SweijenIrene Pennings
Twitter: @TSweijenTwitter: @_pennings