Turning Niche Site into Ecom Store (What does Google consider as an ecom?)

[hhairhelp]

Hi friends,

We run a niche site that used to have around 1.8m users a month, now just 250k. With the recent updates this year and last, we have lost the majority of our traffic to e-commerce stores writing rubbish AI content on their blog sections.

We have much better content written by experts in the industry, have a much higher DR, better backlink profile and have better on-page SEO metrics. However, given we are deemed in Google's eyes as a "niche aff site", we cannot outrank e-commerce stores for the majority of informational and commercial keywords.

We were thinking of setting up a basic shop on the main domain selling a t-shirt related to our niche to get Google to consider us as an e-commerce store instead of a niche website.

My question is what things does the Google crawler look at to consider a website a shop? Aka can we fake being a shop, or do we need to actually get a fully functioning shop online to be deemed a shop? Does anyone have experience of adding a shop to a niche site and did they see any ranking improvements?

Appreciate your input!

 

[tazarbm]

However, given we are deemed in Google's eyes as a "niche aff site"

I can't prove that this is a thing, but I've heard several people saying that if google flags your site as affiliate site and it tanks it you're done and can't recover it. So I guess it's true, which is probably why you're not ranking as well as you used to....

Although... knowing that you're still getting 250k a month this makes me believe that google haven't yet blacklisted, or tanked your site completely, which means that they're trying to force you into buying ads, which is both good and bad. It's good because you're still getting some traffic organically (many people have not been so lucky, their sites have been reduced to 200-300 visitors a month from millions), but it's bad because no matter what you'll be doing (SEO-wise) from this point onward you'll not regain the previous levels of traffic (unless google screw their algo big time, which let's hope that they do )

we cannot outrank e-commerce stores for the majority of informational and commercial keywords.

to be fair to google (weird coming from a passionate google hater like myself, I know ) if your site is a blog / content type of website it probably targets info keywords mostly, in which case it's fair that google ranks ecom sites over you.

But if your site is ecom too.... well... I don't know then. I was tempted to say that you need more authority (as google loves authority sites) but I just saw that your DR is better than your competitors and in this case I believe once again that you're being forced into buying ads.

We were thinking of setting up a basic shop on the main domain selling a t-shirt related to our niche to get Google to consider us as an e-commerce store instead of a niche website.

this might work, but put the store on a subdomain instead of a folder on the main domain, so that you don't mix the 2 up and confuse the poor googlebot that's so advanced that it can't figure out what your site is about (like it used to do 15+ years ago) unless you make it obvious to it...

Plus, the 2 types of sites being separated it helps you keep them safe and secure if something bad happens to the other one....

My question is what things does the Google crawler look at to consider a website a shop? Aka can we fake being a shop, or do we need to actually get a fully functioning shop online to be deemed a shop?

hmmm, this one I've never thought about, but I'd assume google's looking for stuff like "buy now" buttons, shopping cart / checkout pages, refund policy pages, etc...

 

[xpesos]

Hi friends,

We run a niche site that used to have around 1.8m users a month, now just 250k. With the recent updates this year and last, we have lost the majority of our traffic to e-commerce stores writing rubbish AI content on their blog sections.

We have much better content written by experts in the industry, have a much higher DR, better backlink profile and have better on-page SEO metrics. However, given we are deemed in Google's eyes as a "niche aff site", we cannot outrank e-commerce stores for the majority of informational and commercial keywords.

We were thinking of setting up a basic shop on the main domain selling a t-shirt related to our niche to get Google to consider us as an e-commerce store instead of a niche website.

My question is what things does the Google crawler look at to consider a website a shop? Aka can we fake being a shop, or do we need to actually get a fully functioning shop online to be deemed a shop? Does anyone have experience of adding a shop to a niche site and did they see any ranking improvements?

Appreciate your input!

Yes like @tazarbm said, your site is not penalized, it is just that Google has changed the serps to give advantage to certain sites, and most of the times reddit/tiktok.

I don't think if you start adding shop pages, Google will start considering it as shop not affiliate info blog.
I tested this on few sites, Google will not consider different approach or new niche as long as old content exists and is indexed.
I was experimenting on one blog and found that effect of niche change was after at least 2 months, once content was deleted. I deleted the whole site and started from scratch.

 

[tazarbm]

I tested this on few sites, Google will not consider different approach or new niche as long as old content exists and is indexed.

interesting... and it lines up with what google would do, so it's probably true (across the board I mean. because otherwise I don't doubt your personal experience).

 

[hhairhelp]

I can't prove that this is a thing, but I've heard several people saying that if google flags your site as affiliate site and it tanks it you're done and can't recover it. So I guess it's true, which is probably why you're not ranking as well as you used to....

Although... knowing that you're still getting 250k a month this makes me believe that google haven't yet blacklisted, or tanked your site completely, which means that they're trying to force you into buying ads, which is both good and bad. It's good because you're still getting some traffic organically (many people have not been so lucky, their sites have been reduced to 200-300 visitors a month from millions), but it's bad because no matter what you'll be doing (SEO-wise) from this point onward you'll not regain the previous levels of traffic (unless google screw their algo big time, which let's hope that they do )


to be fair to google (weird coming from a passionate google hater like myself, I know ) if your site is a blog / content type of website it probably targets info keywords mostly, in which case it's fair that google ranks ecom sites over you.

But if your site is ecom too.... well... I don't know then. I was tempted to say that you need more authority (as google loves authority sites) but I just saw that your DR is better than your competitors and in this case I believe once again that you're being forced into buying ads.


this might work, but put the store on a subdomain instead of a folder on the main domain, so that you don't mix the 2 up and confuse the poor googlebot that's so advanced that it can't figure out what your site is about (like it used to do 15+ years ago) unless you make it obvious to it...

Plus, the 2 types of sites being separated it helps you keep them safe and secure if something bad happens to the other one....


hmmm, this one I've never thought about, but I'd assume google's looking for stuff like "buy now" buttons, shopping cart / checkout pages, refund policy pages, etc...

Thanks for your response! Very informative. I get the point about putting the shop on a subdomain, but it would kinda defy the point of showing google we are no longer just a blog, I'm not sure the shop authority would pass to our other 4k articles then. We are currently being outranked by ecoms for info terms, which is our speciality, which I don't think is right, given the content they have is super thin and most likely AI generated. But I guess that's the way Google is doing it right now, so we have to adapt!

I can definitely feel some sort of penalty towards our content, given the type of site we are, however we still rank so its not a penalty that will show up on search console, its more of a negative weighting I guess towards us. We used to rank within minutes top 2 for info terms, now we struggle to get on page 1 even after a month.

Very frustrating, but we will persevere!

 

[hhairhelp]

Yes like @tazarbm said, your site is not penalized, it is just that Google has changed the serps to give advantage to certain sites, and most of the times reddit/tiktok.

I don't think if you start adding shop pages, Google will start considering it as shop not affiliate info blog.
I tested this on few sites, Google will not consider different approach or new niche as long as old content exists and is indexed.
I was experimenting on one blog and found that effect of niche change was after at least 2 months, once content was deleted. I deleted the whole site and started from scratch.

Thanks! Yep reddit is doing very well, and taking traffic from our info terms, but its mostly the shops taking best product and info terms from us.

Can I ask how big the sites were you tested it on? We have a 73 DR with over 4k articles and have been around since 2014. I'd hope if we actually became a shop that Google would have to treat us a shop. Deleting the content is not a possibility for us unfortunately.

 

[xpesos]

Thanks! Yep reddit is doing very well, and taking traffic from our info terms, but its mostly the shops taking best product and info terms from us.

Can I ask how big the sites were you tested it on? We have a 73 DR with over 4k articles and have been around since 2014. I'd hope if we actually became a shop that Google would have to treat us a shop. Deleting the content is not a possibility for us unfortunately.

Yes there will be no negative effect in my opinion, you can start shop on your site, but will your rankings rise considerably, that is something which cannot be said with certain.
my blog was 25+ DA, with 2k articles, but was penalized from 200k per Month to 30k per Month traffic

 

[hhairhelp]

Yes there will be no negative effect in my opinion, you can start shop on your site, but will your rankings rise considerably, that is something which cannot be said with certain.
my blog was 25+ DA, with 2k articles, but was penalized from 200k per Month to 30k per Month traffic

Thanks for the insight. Yea I don't see any harm in trying it. We will have to give it go it seems and see what happens.