Stuck at Page 2-3 (eCommerce SEO)

[Trima]

Hello all,

I want to explain my personal case to see for some advice/orientation. I started with my eCommerce business a year and a half ago, in which I have been practicing the SEO stuff that I've been learning during these years and making some mistakes that I've been solving during the last months.

First of all, site architecture wasn't properly built, so I had to redefine it again by creating more collection pages (some products were placed on the same one when there was keyword volume enough to divide them into different collection pages). This was done more than 6 months ago.

Secondly, the backlinks acquisition during the first months was completely wrong, so by rapidly acquiring low-quality backlinks and with an over-optimization of anchor text's the profile ended up being unnatural.

During these last months, I've been focusing on a better acquisition of backlinks, searching from those that come from niche blogs of my country with real traffic, as well as of some press-related sites with my niche section and with more natural anchor-text (not focusing on the exact keyword as I tend to do).

The fact is that my competitors doesn't seem to have a good SEO. Ignoring the metrics (DA/DR), as I know they're external and so, not that important, I'd say that their backlinks profile isn't even good but they have been in the industry for 10-15 years (They have 10-15 years old domains), which I wouldn't say it's a direct SEO factor, but I guess that them being on the top of the SERPs for the last years can have some kind of effect. Is this possible? (Or maybe that me having a relatively new in-comparison domain can have some negative effect as well)

Other of the factors that I don't know to which extent can have an effect is the brand search volume. Their brand search volume is around 700-800 per month, while mine has been for months in 50-100. This is something that I've been working on during the last weeks (by advertising), and seems that if the tendency can sustain in the long-term, I'll be able to stabilize that volume at 1.000-2.000 per month, which is aligned with what they have. Would this make any difference or is it something that Google will completely ignore?

During the last months the website is stuck at page 2 and 3 for most of my keywords (the ones I try to rank with my collection pages), while some of the product pages appear at the first page as the work done with Merchant Center seems to be great (and because there're no backlinks created to the product pages (?), who knows...)

Would you say that it's possible that I have an algorithm filter/penalty that disallows me to jump to first page? Or is it just that I need more time in order to build enough authority?

Other measure that I've been considering and implementing is the creation of blog articles, as they're some informational keywords that need to be approached by them. By creating them, I'm able to link my collection pages giving them some plus of naturalness, although I don't know to which extent is interlinking this relevant.

Another one that I've implemented is breadcrumbs in the product page (hierarchy based ones).

Would you have any other recommendation to me?

Thanks you all in advance

 

[kshatriya]

Would you say that it's possible that I have an algorithm filter/penalty that disallows me to jump to first page? Or is it just that I need more time in order to build enough authority?

It could be either. But in either case, the only way forward is to continue building good links.

Share the URL with me if you'd like for me to take a look. I'm running a few ecommerce sites solely with SEO (no paid ads to products or to money pages)

 

[Global Rank]

After fixing site architecture and cleaning up backlinks, my new eCommerce site struggles to outrank older competitors possibly due to domain age, brand search volume, or authority should I focus on brand building, content, or suspect a penalty?

 

[Monsterer]

For an e-commerce site, the main promotions are Video, Image, and text methods;

• The time and effort you spend on SEO backlinks, from a few efforts you have to make, Instagram reels, and TikTok videos
• But TikTok is not gaining as enough attention as before, as they are banned in some countries
• As you agreed that you built low-quality links before that would is the reason for not improving your reach than your competitors
• You have to avoid tool links, automatic traffic methods, which will penalize your reach and engagement
• Focus on the organic way of link building and running ads naturally, so you can get good leads and sales
• In one backlink you can your product images, product videos and an article with suitable keywords
• So put focus on the backlink strategy you can surely attain the results and outrank your competitors

 

[Rusty PAN]

Im Stuck in the pawg

 

[Trima]

Still identical, we'll see with the Core Update rollout.

This is how the positions for /collections pages (excluding branded terms) look like. As you can see, after November-December 24' Core Updates the positions are somehow stuck in the range 11-13

 

[Nproxyio]

You may be affected by the age of the domain, as older domains are often more trustworthy in the eyes of google. Quality and natural backlinks are also important. Having a history of poor quality backlink can make google somewhat lower in rating, it take time and constant rebuilding

 

[Trima]

You may be affected by the age of the domain, as older domains are often more trustworthy in the eyes of google. Quality and natural backlinks are also important. Having a history of poor quality backlink can make google somewhat lower in rating, it take time and constant rebuilding

It could be a reason! Recently I have been investigating an ecommerce in a similar niche (not exactly my niche), which after time (2 years or so) he started to gain positions from a day to another. In that case, the progression made me came to conclusion that new domains could be experiment some kind of a devaluation within the first years (the always-mentioned "sandbox").

But yes, I agree in that with the history of poor quality backlink profile seems that I need more time in order to look trustworthy into Google's eyes

 

[Trima]

You may need to build more guess links for your domain to beat other competitors . Is looking like you do a good job already but you must push

Honestly yes mate, I would say so. These are the implementations that have been done during the last 7 months (since the site got stuck at those positions).

• Redesigned site architecture with new subcategories
• Implemented hierarchical breadcrumbs on product pages
• Improved overall UX.
• Redesigned collection pages (from a grid of products to a short description, usable filters, text below grid collection pages)
• Strengthened internal linking between blog and collections.
• Published 20 informational blog posts attacking TOFU, positioning them and interlinking to collection pages.
• Added informational pages: About us, Guides, FAQs, etc.
• Disavowed toxic and artificial backlinks.
• Acquired 6–7 new backlinks from real sites with traffic.
• Increased brand search volume to 30–35 per day, (competitors are on the range of 600-700 monthly, so I'm surpassing them at this point)

To be honest, I wouldn't say that there's something more to do with this site. The only things that I could keep by this point are the brand searches and the acquisition of quality backlinks, although there's something that should be taken into account. Most of my competitors don't have backlinks pointing to their collection pages, or if they have them, it's just one or two backlinks, so I fear that by building more and more backlinks to collections I wouldn't look like natural into Google's eyes, so what I have done recently is acquiring a backlink that points to one of the top articles of my blog (which receives traffic and interlinks to some of the main collection pages).

After having done all of this, I'd say that the only difference with my competitors is the domain age. I interpret domain age not being a ranking factor itself, but years of historical ranking in top positions having kind of importance. Plus, the unnatural looking of my website and its backlink profile can be a reason for being stuck at these positions.

Let's see if with this update something changes, and if not, I'd keep on building informational blog posts, acquiring quality backlinks and increasing brand search volume, I doubt there's anything else I could do.

 

[praetserge]

I'd say you should concentrate more on info keywords than on link building and link to your money pages from there and thus funnel the traffic.