![[Live] SMX Sydney ’13 – eCommerce SEO‚ How to Avoid Common Pitfalls](https://www.jasonmun.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/jonquinton-smx-sydney-13-150x150.jpg)
Speaker Profile:
Name: Jon Quinton
Company: SEOGadget
Twitter: @jonquinton1
Google+: https://plus.google.com/100878256385748589476/posts
Notes:
- Jon introduces Searchmetrics tool to monitor keyword rankings trends – use it to compare competitors and overlay with algo updates
- The most common pitfall with ecommerce SEO is dodgy and old link building tactics – penguin food
- SEOgadget are spending alot of time cleaning up old links for clients – stop building shitty links
- Identify who is linking to you and make a judgement call on which links should stay – identify the risks
- Graph up DA of linking domains and linking C block distribution
- A natural links link graph will look like a bell curve of mid range DA domains
- Directories on the sam C block is a risk – same owner hosting different directories
- Evaluate the proportion of commercial vs brand anchor text links….
- Jon shows example of comparethemarket.com link profile – very natural looking profile
- Sitewide links are red flags
- having a strong brand with diverse traffic sources will negate the risk of ranking fluctuations – there is a direct correlation with dodgy link building and relying solely on organic search
- Jon introduces the Birdsong tool to identify content types that work
- Birdsongdtt.com – identify content that works well in social
- Most ecommerce player are always in the market for a quick buck and not making use of data available to them
- Internal search data unlocks GOLD dust – make sure you track and monitor that
- Use data to tweak categories and product structure
- Another common pitfall is stock info – you can track that stuff with custom variables in GA
- Must track high converting products to helps buying teams determine best selling products
- Using revenue metrics makes SEO data instantly more powerful (category, keyword, search volume, rank, revenue)
- Use comprehensive keyword research to unlock trends and identify content gaps for any given time
- Match keyword data with crawl data to find keywords not yet being targeted
- Match keywords by user intent (brand, product category or product specific)
- Use language and terminology that users are using, don;t use internal terminology
- If there is a demand, don’t waste opportunity with product filters – create a standalone category. This will allow for better keyword targeting
- Think about seasonality, start optimising way before the spike
- Most ecommerce websites will have unique set of crawling issues
- Use the index status report in GWT to see how Googlebot is crawling the website – correlate how many pages vs what G crawls and indexes
- Understand how crawl budget is being spend with logfile analysis – log files don’t LIE!
- Most common crawl budget wastage is spent on non-value pages like pagination, filters, blank pages, etc.
- Use rel=next and rel=previous for pagination to deal with dupe content issues
- Most ecommerce players are now starting to understand value of content since Panda
- Content should reflect the character of the business not just for rankings
- Stupid content at the bottom of the page is useless – it doesn’t do anyone any favours
- Short product descriptions are a common pitfall – make sure that it provides enough information to convince users. Take in to consideration Panda thin content penalty
- Relying on product descriptions via a feed from merchants is a big NO NO – inviting Panda for dinner
- Check out wish.co.uk for good content example
- Tools that Jon uses: Majestic SEO, Open site explorer, screaming frog, Birdsong, Excel
Disclaimer:
Please excuse the typos, broken links, incomplete sentences, etc.