[Live] SMX Sydney ’13 – eCommerce SEO‚ How to Avoid Common Pitfalls

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.