Seo for-ecommerce-sites-ps

SEO For Ecommerce SitesBy Paul Spreadbury

SEO Manager Just Search Ltd

About Me

Who am I ? - Paul SpreadburyPosition – SEO ManagerCompany – Just Search Ltd

Expertise• Search Engine Optimisation• Pay Per Click• Ecommerce SEO• Website Architecture , link building

Experience• Main SEO Consultant for www.sportsdirect.com• Main SEO Consultant for Ultralase • Manage all On Page SEO work for JS UK and France

Twitter.com/paulspread

http://www.twitter.com/paulspread


Learning Objectives

Learning Objectives

Why have an ecommerce website Keyword Research for ecommerce sites Analysing competitors Site Taxonomy Internal link structure Common SEO ecommerce issues Further Ecommerce SEO Advice Link Building for ecommerce websites




Why Have an Ecommerce Site?

Almost instant changes to Structure and Pricing

Marketing including promotions

Ability to sell your products online Level playing ground. Open 24hrs a day 7 days a week Eliminate costs , Secure online payments

UK Online ecommerce spending statistics

UK Spend Aug 2008 - £3.8 billion UK spend 2008 - £43.8 billion


**Figures from IMRG**



Problems?

Too much choice.....

Which Platform should I use?

Each system has adv/disadvantages :

Support Access Duplication Search Engine Friendly URLs Hosting Taxonomy




Planning

Plan the following

Keyword Research

Fundamental part of SEO Building Blocks of SEO Helps provides rankings

Review Competition

Look for larger sites What are they doing It works for them

Site Structure

Taxonomy of site Find long tail pages Internal linking




Keyword Research

Keyword Research

Most fundamental part of any SEO campaign

Start with

Brainstorming - Discover top 10-20 terms Think – Customers think differently to you Survey your customers Ecommerce sites have hundreds of keywords

Use tools Take your time and research keywords




Keyword Research Tools

Great keyword tools available

Google Adwords Keyword Tool (www.google.com/sktool) - Related terms, search volume - Shows competition, free

Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com) - Paid tool, great for long tail keywords - Great for ecommerce websites

Keyword Discovery Tool (www.keyworddiscovery.com) - Paid tool, lots of data (36 billions searches +) - Looks at spelling mistakes, provides seasonal trends




Create Keyword List

Export the data to Excel. You will have 3 types of keywords:

Competitive keywords Niche Keywords High Traffic less competitive keywords (important)

Filter keywords by:

Create separate keyword lists for different categories Remove really low search volume terms Be realistic Duplicates Use SEOMOZ Keyword difficulty tool Manually remove irrelevant terms http://www.seomoz.org/keyword-difficulty




Competitor Analysis

Review Competitors

You should now have a list of keywords

Time to review your competitition Pick a selection of important keywords High traffic, low competition

Search term in Google

Home Page or inner page ranking? Review site architecture How many internal links does that page have How many external links does the page have Is the content optimised?




What to Look For

Age of the domain Architecture of the site Content on the landing page Overall content on the site Internal/external Links (Yahoo Site Explorer) Document Structure (H1, H2 etc) Taxonomy

Discover Niche areas - High traffic - Low competition - Poor optimisation




Site Taxonomy

Decide on Site Taxonomy

Review Site taxonomy

Review Traffic data Plan site structure around search terms Optimised pages don’t have to be bolted on Now map your keywords to pages

Search by Example Page

Size www.website.com/20inch-TV/

Brand www.website.com/LG-TVs/

Type www.website.com/lcd-tvs/

Type then Brand www.website.com/LG-lcd-tvs/

Size then Type www.website.com/20-25inch-lcd-tvs/




Poor Site Taxonomy




Map Keywords to Pages

Match keywords to pages in Excel

Review existing traffic data

Rules of thumb are:

5 terms on home page 2-3 terms on category pages 1 term on the product page(s) Think about taxonomy Think about relevancy Main keyword first

Page Keywords

www.website.com/sony-tvs/ Sony TV, Sony LCD TV, Sony Bravia

www.website.com/sharp-lcd-tvs/ Sharp TV, Sharp LCD TV, Sharp Aquos

www.website.com/sony-lcd-tvs/ Sony TV, Sony LCD TV,

www.website.com/20-25inch-lcd-tvs/

20-25inch LCD TV,

Keyword map example




Internal Link Structure

Plan Your Internal Link Structure

More internal links = more strength

WEB PAGE(PR 1)

PR 0.2

PR 0.2

PR 0.2

PR 0.2

PR 0.2

PR1 from 5 PR0.2 links Important pages linked in template More links to important sub categories Clever site design passes strength right places




Implement Dynamic category linking

Stops page flooding with links

Example: www.sportsdirect.com

Main template contains links to top level categories i.e. premier league teams Click on premier league teams Opens up secondary navigation Shows other league teams Stops the template being flooded with links Useable for customers and search engines <150 internal links




Add more Internal links to the page

Link within main site template

Use main anchor text

Push more popular categories

More PR passed to the page

Sub Categories with High Traffic




Example of Strong Internal Linking

Find it quick section on www.ideasbynet.com

Useful for customers and search engines Only keyword links High search volume keywords Provides each important page with more internal links




Common Ecommerce SEO Issues

Duplication Due to site structure

Common Problems with ecommerce sites

Each Product can appears in different categories - TV can appear by size, type, brand in the sale etc Filtered results - Filter by size, colour, style etc. Paginated results - Paginated results over more than 1 page

Page Duplication Issue Issue

www.website.com/sony-tvs?colour=black Filtered by colourContent the same

www.website.com/sony-tvs?page=2 Page 2 of listings




Resolving Duplication Issues

Duplicate products

- Flatten product URL - www.website.com/productname.html - Only 1 URL to link to - More relevant - Redirect duplicate pages to main page

Pagination and filter issues

- Noindex, follow these pages - Block pages in robots.txt (add a view all page)

Noindex tag<meta name=“robots”

content=“noindex, follow”>

Robots.txtDisallow: /?page=*Disallow:/?colour=*

Code Examples




Duplicate Product Descriptions

Some products are very similar

How to Fix

Rewrite all the product descriptions Implement a review system - Internal - External - www.feefo.com (Improves conversion by 30%) - Needs a large site - Need to reply to negative feedback - They email your customers

http://www.feefo.com




Example from Amazon.co.uk




Further Ecommerce SEO Advice

Pushing New Products

To push new products

Create a blog about the new product Write some unique content Your blog post gets the credit Wait for product to be released Redirect blog to product page Product page gets a boost in the SERPs

Blog page

Blog pageProduct Page

301 redirect




Using Multiple Sitemaps

Indexing Issues, Use multiple sitemaps

Look at number of pages indexed by type By Level of the site Helps diagnose issues


Using Site Search

Discover your Internal search data

Great for ecommerce websites Need lots of traffic for actionable data

To enable site search simply do the following:

Login to Analytics Edit profile Select do track site search Enter query parameter On play.com it is ‘searchstring’

http://www.play.com/HOME/HOME/6-/Search.html?searchstring=shutter+island&searchtype=allproducts&searchsource=0




Using Site Search

Site search enabled in Google Analytics

Review data and act on this

Change landing pages Bid on the niche keywords in PPC Add top searched products to main navigation Change content on the home page Look for searches that return 0 results Update product catalogue

Act early to beat your competitors




Link Building ForEcommerce Websites

Reviewing your link portfolio

What types of links to build

High PR? more authoritive? trusted links?

Use Tools to analyse competitors link portfolio

Discover data trends Act on this invaluable data

Search term ‘32 inch LCD TV’

http://www.richersounds.com/products/home-cinema/lcd-and-plasma/lcd-tv http://www.directtvs.co.uk/32-39_Inch_LCD_TVs/prod.asp




Go to http://www.opensiteexplorer.org enter URLs export data to ExcelAdd a count column to the end of each row

Create a pivot table from this data, pivot by:

Page Authority Count

Link Profiling




1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 32 36 40 45 48 51 55 59 62 66 73 830

5

10

15

20

25

Page Authority

http://www.richersounds.-com/products/home-cinema/lcd-and-plasma/lcd-tv

http://www.directtvs.co.uk/32-39_Inch_LCD_TVs/prod.asp



Credit to Patrick Altoft from Branded 3



Other Metrics to review include:

Domain Authority MOZ Rank – Domain and Page Yahoo Links Moz Trust - Domain and Page Majestic SEO links Number of root domains Internal/External Linking pages

Discover where your page is lacking strength

http://www.seomoz.org/linkscape



SIMPLES



Ecommerce Link Building Tips

Now know what types of links to build

Top heavy with external links Target links to inner pages, traffic order

Build from the following links

Press releases Review Products Use mini sites Forums – post about your new products Social Media, Videos Contacts




Conclusion

Planning

Carefully plan keyword research Review your competitors Plan site taxonomy Keyword map inner pages

Technical

Plan your internal linking Add a review system Create flat product structure Solve filter and pagination issues

Link Building

Profile links against competitors - Build right type of links - Build appropriate amount of links Link build to inner pages

**Only a taster of what is required**




Question / Debate


Stand – E2100



Seo for-ecommerce-sites-ps

Technology

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