Maximising Ecommerce SEO - #SMConnect

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D I G I T A L@badams

Maximising Ecommerce SEOwith Advanced

Tips & Tricks

21 November 2015

#SMConnect

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Barry Adams

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Agenda

1. Technical SEO Crawl Optimisation

Faceted Navigation

2. Content & Relevance Site & page architecture

Structured Data

3. Links & Authority Link targeting

Tactics

4. International SEOT

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The Three Pillars of SEO

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1. Technical SEO

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Crawl Optimisation

• Minimising wasted crawl budget

Crawl Budget = the maximum amount of time a search engine spider will spend crawling your website before it gives up.

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Crawl Control vs Index Control

• Crawl Control;

Maximising crawl budget

Main tools:- robots.txt Disallow

- <a href=“…” rel=“nofollow”>

• Index control;

Ensuring the right pages are in Google’s index

Main tools:- <meta name=“robots” content=“noindex”>

- <link rel=“canonical” href=“…”>

- robots.txt Noindex

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Crawl Sources

• Site Crawl

• XML Sitemaps

• Inbound Links

• DNS Records

• Domain Registrations

• Browsing Data

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Identifying Crawl Waste

DeepCrawl report

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Crawl your XML Sitemap

• Use Screaming Frog to crawl your sitemap

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Optimise your XML sitemap

• Ensure your sitemap contains final URLs only

• Minimise non-200 status codes

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Use Multiple Sitemaps

• Google says max 50.000 URLs

Nick Eubanks case study shows 35.000 is optimal

Source: http://seoauv.com/increase-traffic/

http://seoauv.com/increase-traffic/

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Mismatched Canonicals

• All URLs in XML sitemap should be final canonical URLs only

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Use Canonicals wisely…

• “rel=canonical” is primarily for index issues

It is not a fix for crawl waste

Search engines need to see the canonical tag before they can act on it

Ergo, pages need to be crawled before rel=canonical has any effect

Ditto with meta noindex tags

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Minimise Internal Redirects

• Find redirects with Screaming Frog or DeepCrawl

• Internal links should all be 200 OK

• Flat site structure

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Pagination

• Potential for massive crawl waste

Especially when combined with sorting

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Optimise Paginated Lists

• Show more products per page

• Use pagination meta tags;<link rel="prev" href="http://www.domain.it/category/?page=2" />

<link rel="next" href="http://www.domain.it/category/?page=4" />

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.domain.it/category/?page=all" />

Googlebot will deprioritise deeper paginated pages

• Block sorting parameters in robots.txt;User-agent: Googlebot

Disallow: /*?order=*

Noindex: /*?order=*

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GSC Robots.txt Tester

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Alternative: X-Robots-Tag

• Special HTTP status code intended for crawlers

• Implemented in Apache .htaccess file:

<FilesMatch ".pdf$">

Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex, nofollow"

</FilesMatch>

More info: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_meta_tag

https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_meta_tag

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Faceted Navigation

• Risk of crawl waste & index inflation

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Dealing with Faceted Navigation

1. Block facet URL parameters in robots.txt

User-agent: Googlebot

Disallow: /*attribute=*

Noindex: /*attribute=*

2. Tag facet links with “rel=nofollow”

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JavaScript & Faceted Navigation

• ‘Hiding’ facets in JavaScript does not work

Google will execute JS and can follow embedded links

Don’t block JavaScript & CSS in robots.txt!

• JavaScript can add load time

Fast load speed is crucial

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Pre-rendering JavaScript / AJAX

Source: http://www.slideshare.net/phaithful/seo-and-js-new-challenges

http://www.slideshare.net/phaithful/seo-and-js-new-challenges

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JSCrawlability.com

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Optimise Load Speed

• Crawl budget = time

• Fast website = more pages crawled in same amount of time

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WebPageTest.org

• Time to First Byte

• Lightweight pages

• Caching

• Compression

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2. Content & Relevance

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Content Structure

Title Tag

Meta Description

<h1> headline

Body content(with <h2> - <h6> subheaders)

Image alt attribute

Calls to action

Links to other pages on the site

Source: http://bada.ms/perfectonpageseo

http://bada.ms/perfectonpageseo

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Product Snapshot

Customer Reviews

In-depth Description

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Unique, well-written content

• Never use standard manufacturer product descriptions

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Image Optimisation

• Filename;photo001.jpg

brown-mens-shoes.jpg

• Alt attribute;<img src=“/brown-mens-shoes.jpg” alt=“Brown Irish

Brogue Men’s Shoes” />

• Caption text;

Barker’s Irish Brogue Men’s Shoe

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Hierarchical Site Architecture

Homepage

Category 1 Category 2

Subcategory 2.1

Subcategory 2.3

Subcategory 2.2

Product 2.2 A

Product 2.2 B

Product 2.2 C

Category 3

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Information Architecture

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Hierarchical URLs

Homepage

Category 1 Category 2

Subcategory 2.1

Subcategory 2.3

Subcategory 2.2

Product 2.2 A

Product 2.2 B

Product 2.2 C

Category 3

http://domain.it/

http://domain.it/category/

http://domain.it/category/subcategory/

http://domain.it/category/subcategory/productA.html

http://domain.it/category/subcategory/productB.html

http://domain.it/category/subcategory/productC.html

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Make URLs Human-Readable

Apache .htaccess URL rewrites;

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule /(.*)/(.*)/$ page.php?category=$1&product=$2

[NC,L]

This rewrites parameter URLs:

http://www.domain.it/page.php?category=safety-

boots&brand=caterpillar

To human-readable URLs:

http://www.domain.it/safety-boots/caterpillar/

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Products in more than 1 category

Duplicate content issue:

http://domain.it/safety-boots/caterpillar/cat-holton.html

http://domain.it/casual-boots/caterpillar/cat-holton.html

Revert to root URLs for all products:

http://domain.it/caterpillar-holton-boots.html

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Structured Data

• Schema.org Product markup

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JSON-LD Markup

• In the <head> section

Separate from body code

Easier to implement

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Google Tag Manager JSON-LD

• Use GTM data layer macros to inject JSON-LD schema.org code in your product pages

Source: http://www.swellpath.com/2015/03/7-steps-to-pushing-json-structured-data-using-google-tag-manager/

http://www.swellpath.com/2015/03/7-steps-to-pushing-json-structured-data-using-google-tag-manager/

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Structured Data Testing Tool

https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/

https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/

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Expired Product Pages

• Google’s advice: serve 404 Not Found

Downside: loss of link value

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tz7Eexwp_A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tz7Eexwp_A

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My Advice

• Keep the page up

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High-churn Ecommerce

• Products with a limited lifespan, potentially thousands of new pages every week

Online auctions / ‘… for sale’ classified sites / etc

301-redirect old URL to most relevant new URL

Minimum 180 days

Serve 410 (or 404) on old URL after 180 days

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3. Links & Authority

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Homepage Links vs Deep Links

• Homepage earns the most links• Category pages rarely get links• Product pages sometimes get links

• Linked pages serve as spider entries• Linked pages rank higher (duh)• Link value needs to be spread out

Images source: http://bada.ms/mozcrawldiagrams

http://bada.ms/mozcrawldiagrams

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Spreading link value

• Internal linking is key;

Link from your key pages to deeper categories & products

Use optimised anchor texts

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Top Linked Pages (Majestic)

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Linkbuilding for Ecommerce

1. Awesome / limited edition products

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2. Blogger reviews & giveaways

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2. Blogger reviews & giveaways

Ensure the blog is relevant & authoritive

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3. Competitive Linkbuilding

Monitor your competition’s new links

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3. Competitive Linkbuilding

Find linked 404 pages on your competitors’ sites

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Linkbuilding for SEO

4. Outsourced link placements

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Linkbuilding for SEO

4. Outsourced link placements

Double-check the work

Site quality & relevance are key

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Anchor Text Distribution

• Exact Match anchor text is still important;

“…click here to buy safety boots online.”

• Don’t over-optimise;

Penalty-risk is real

• My advice: 80/20;

80% branded links, 20% keyword links

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Pro-active Link Monitoring & Cleanup

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4. International SEO

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International Domains

• Pick the right domain Generic TLDs: .com, .org, .net, .info, …

ccTLDs: .co.uk, .ie, .de, .fr, .it, .nl, …

• Generic domains can be geo-targeted with Google Search Console

• Country-code domains will be assumed to target that countryIt’s almost impossible to get a .it website to rank in

google.co.uk

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Google Search Console

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Website Structure

• Subdirectories:

website.com/gb

website.com/it

• Subdomains:

gb.website.com

it.website.com

Verify separately in Google Search Console and set the geo-target

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Country & Language

www.website.com/be-fr/

www.website.com/be-nl/

www.website.com/be-de/

Use official ISO country & language codes where possible

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HTML Language Tag

• Use the ‘lang’ attribute:

• Don’t forget to change when you launch your international version!

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HREFLANG Meta Tags

<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-ie"

hreflang="en-ie" />

<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-ca"

hreflang="en-ca" />

<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-au"

hreflang="en-au" />

<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en"

hreflang="en" />

<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/" hreflang="x-

default" />

More info: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077

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Google Search Console

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Content

• Don’t just translate – localise!

• Belgian Dutch is not the same as Dutch Dutch

Ditto with Portugal vs Brazil

And Austria vs Germany

And Switzerland vs France / Germany / Italy

Etc…

• Don’t be half-arsed – localise everything

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Summary

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SEO for Ecommerce

• Optimise your website’s crawl spaceBlock irrelevant pages

Use “rel=canonical” wisely

• Optimise your contentUnique product

descriptions

Schema.org Product markup

• Acquire linksCreate something link-

worthy

Homepage & deep links

Variable anchor texts

• International SEOGo big or go home

Use the right strategy from the start

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