Ask me your toughest Ecommerce SEO Question

[the_demon]

Hi guys/gals,

I'm working on the version 2 of our company's Ecommerce SEO guide and I am looking for the toughest SEO questions that need answering! I'd like to get some outside ideas for challenges people trying to rank Ecommerce sites are dealing with, but can't seem to get past and can use some help.

To keep this organized I've setup a WuFoo form | NO PERSONAL INFO REQUIRED, NO EMAIL REQUIRED.

http://verdadmedia.wufoo.com/forms/ecommerce-seo-questions/

I will begin compiling answers as they come in and I will publish the final updated guide once I have amassed 100 questions or so. The final guide will be published on BHW free of charge.

No sales pitches, No bull$hit, just helping the community out.


*EDIT* Also, please copy and paste your question here so we don't get hit with all the same questions.

*EDIT 2* Please note it may take a week or two to gather all the questions, so please sit tight, I'll publish the guide the very minute I can!

*EDIT 3* If you can't wait, you can download Version 1 of our guide here Version 2 will be seriously more extensive though, so be sure to check in from time to time:
http://www.verdadmedia.com/downloads/Ecommerce-SEO-Guide-v1.pdf

 

[DunDidIt2X]

What is the most efficient way to rank 1000 product store? Management of it, updating products, optimization etc.?

 

[the_demon]

What is the most efficient way to rank 1000 product store? Management of it, updating products, optimization etc.?

Good question, I'm happy to say we have the perfect answer for you. Rest assured it will be added to version 2.

 

[antichrist]

What is the best way to go about adding descriptions for very large sites. Example would be 100k products.

 

[the_demon]

What is the best way to go about adding descriptions for very large sites. Example would be 100k products.

Thanks, I will add this into the section that deals w/ medium-large scale Ecommerce sites. I've already begun writing and I'll be talking about automated, manual, and hybrid methodologies to accomplish this task.


---

One user submitted the WuFoo form and asked me about running an eCommerce store in a non-US market as well (particularly Latin America). I will write a detailed section that talks about opportunities in foreign markets and I will also write about running ecommerce sites in multiple languages.

BTW: Now would probably be a great time to mention I have experience doing international and multilingual SEO for ecommerce and other types of sites, so I will certainly add some insight about Behavioral/GEO-Behavioral as well as GEO/GEO+Language based optimization.

 

[Aedan]

What is the difference between the procedures of SEO on simple website and E-commerce? Actually, I just have worked on simple SEO and don't know the basic difference. Thank you in advance.

 

[Yarosss]

What SEO WP plugin is better to use with WP ecommerce website?

 

[gatekept]

I have a site that is an affiliate ecommerce store - all links go straight to the product's original website. I am rewriting all of the descriptions so that everything on the site is 100% unique and looks good to Google, but I know that isn't enough to rank well. How would I go about ranking a site like this and what type of SEO services could my site benefit from?

 

[SEO_Alchemy]

Fantastic effort here mate. Looking forward to seeing the end project here.

Cheers.

 

[maki0423]

Your point about pagerank sculpting is a little confusing in your guide. Using rel=nofollow still bleeds PR from that link, it just isn't counted for the linked site, if I'm correct.

 

[Parrotfish2005]

What eCommerce platform are you using, and which plugins for the foundation? This is huge because that how I earn the big bucks making eCommerce site work both UE, and seo everyday.

 

[GiorgioB]

How do you deal with quality/duplicate content andon your product pages when almost all products are the same (1000s diff colors and patterns)?

 

[David Jackson]

When developing an E-commerce website which array type is used?

 

[the_demon]

Your point about pagerank sculpting is a little confusing in your guide. Using rel=nofollow still bleeds PR from that link, it just isn't counted for the linked site, if I'm correct.

Yes, it is PageRank Sculpting to a degree, however I have never seen it not work and I advise it to all of my clients and it works well. There's a difference between doing it to a page or two where it makes sense and doing it to 50 spammy articles on your site. Been doing this for years and it fixes the problem of your Privacy Policy out ranking your home page, which Google just loves to do...

I don't think Google's going to punish you over not wanting a privacy policy indexed

There's several alternative methods, but the key is to tell Google you don't want this page being given search value. It's an optional step, but something I feel comfortable doing for our company web site. If you're concerned about it, I would advise you to simply apply the Meta No Index , Follow attribute. Just be sure to only add it to the desired pages. Doing it site wide would obviously de-index you, so just remember to be careful and double check that it's properly implemented.

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, FOLLOW">

--> If your question does not get a forum reply that means it's going into the Version 2 of the guide. There was one BHW member who asked me a question which begs immediate attention, to that person I will be answering you personally via the email you provided. Please note, I can't answer every individual question posed, but if I have some extra time I'll do my best to answer it.

--> Thanks everyone for your questions, so far the Version 2 guide is more than twice as long as the Version 1 guide with SUPER DETAILED ANSWERS. Keep questions coming so I can get the guide out faster!

--> Some people have asked questions relating to "Have I been Penalized" and similar. This article may help some of you guys in understanding the different types of penalties and what to look for: http://www.verdadmedia.com/articles/how-to-determine-type-of-penalty

 

[ramuite]

How to get #1 spot on Google with little effort. That the tough question to ask.

 

[the_demon]

How to get #1 spot on Google with little effort. That the tough question to ask.

With little effort is subjective. You can either use a lot of money and hire a pro or a lot of effort and do it yourself. There is no magic software that's going to give you instant rankings and success. If there were such a "little effort" method there would be no point to SEO period.

Google's entire objective is to make ranking websites via manipulation as difficult as possible.

There are some "easy" tactics, but even that is relative. For example, even "easy" to rank keywords takes a lot of effort to find and then either you're going to have to write good optimized content with a properly optimized site AND OR have some good backlinks to juice up your site.


The best advice I can give you is to get rid of the "SEO should be easy" mentality, SEO gets harder and more complex every month and the cheap and effective tactics keep burning out faster and faster which makes SEO harder for beginners, particularly for those that don't have the resources of an SEO firm at their disposal.

***LEGAL DISCLAIMER: The following comments are my personal opinion and does not represent material fact(s) whether expressed or implied.***
At the end of the day Google is not an SEO's friend. They are the enemy. They don't want you to rank well, they want to bleed your pockets dry from over priced adwords ads with hyper inflated competition. They preech about "Just make content and users will come and share your stuff and link to you"...

No, that's not true. Hardly anyone is willing to give up a free link anymore, users like to share without attribution, and without backlinks it doesn't really matter how much content you have. Google cares about what other people say about you, not what you can say about yourself. That's why our firm doesn't waste much time with on-site SEO. It's good to do, but backlinks far outweigh the importance of content by about 9:1 ratio.

Notable exceptions being:
- Properly formatted HTML
- General good SEO practices
- Proper website structure

 

[Execute]

That's why our firm doesn't waste much time with on-site SEO. It's good to do, but backlinks far outweigh the importance of content by about 9:1 ratio.

Notable exceptions being:
- Properly formatted HTML
- General good SEO practices
- Proper website structure

That is exactly my opinion as well. I always hate it when Google preaches about good content and then when you go and do a search for some keywords that you would like to rank for, you sometimes see absolute BS ranking there but from a good authority site with a reasonable backlink profile.

Hope the new guide is coming along nicely, can't wait to read it!

 

[Freeland92]

When is your guide going to be out?

 

[edgematch]

IMHO, hundreds of people should have pressed thanks button after reading these sentences.

With little effort is subjective. You can either use a lot of money and hire a pro or a lot of effort and do it yourself. There is no magic software that's going to give you instant rankings and success. If there were such a "little effort" method there would be no point to SEO period.

Google's entire objective is to make ranking websites via manipulation as difficult as possible.

There are some "easy" tactics, but even that is relative. For example, even "easy" to rank keywords takes a lot of effort to find and then either you're going to have to write good optimized content with a properly optimized site AND OR have some good backlinks to juice up your site.


The best advice I can give you is to get rid of the "SEO should be easy" mentality, SEO gets harder and more complex every month and the cheap and effective tactics keep burning out faster and faster which makes SEO harder for beginners, particularly for those that don't have the resources of an SEO firm at their disposal.

***LEGAL DISCLAIMER: The following comments are my personal opinion and does not represent material fact(s) whether expressed or implied.***
At the end of the day Google is not an SEO's friend. They are the enemy. They don't want you to rank well, they want to bleed your pockets dry from over priced adwords ads with hyper inflated competition. They preech about "Just make content and users will come and share your stuff and link to you"...

No, that's not true. Hardly anyone is willing to give up a free link anymore, users like to share without attribution, and without backlinks it doesn't really matter how much content you have. Google cares about what other people say about you, not what you can say about yourself. That's why our firm doesn't waste much time with on-site SEO. It's good to do, but backlinks far outweigh the importance of content by about 9:1 ratio.

Notable exceptions being:
- Properly formatted HTML
- General good SEO practices
- Proper website structure

 

[the_demon]

Your point about pagerank sculpting is a little confusing in your guide. Using rel=nofollow still bleeds PR from that link, it just isn't counted for the linked site, if I'm correct.

I did some more digging on your particular question, this is what Google officially has to say on the subject:


About using "nofollow" for individual contents, whole pages, etc.

Another use of nofollow is when you're writing content and wish
to reference a website, but don't want to pass your reputation
on to it. For example, imagine that you're writing a blog post on the
topic of comment spamming and you want to call out a site that
recently comment spammed your blog. You want to warn others of
the site, so you include the link to it in your content; however, you
certainly don't want to give the site some of your reputation from your
link. This would be a good time to use nofollow.

Source: http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

So, the take away point from this is that, it is in fact okay to use nofollow internally, but it should be done appropriately. As I mentioned in my earlier post 1-2 pages or something small like that shouldn't result in a penalty particularly if the page really offers users no value. I mean, how many people REALLY READ privacy policy pages? In my experience and tracking data I usually see less than 10% of traffic clicking on the privacy policy page. However, it will vary by your market. Obviously tech savy consumers, IMers, etc. May be more apt to check out these pages.

Interestingly:
Coca Cola, IBM, and McDonald's leave their Privacy Policy page as D0 F0ll0w.

This could be because:
1. They don't want consumers to believe they have something to hide from/
2. They are under more scrutiny, maybe not worth the risk search wise.
3. Possibly that are afraid of page rank sculpting related issues. *Although, I've never had any issues as a result of doing this.
4. More users are linking to their site so unlike smaller sites the chances of it accidently showing up are lessoned by the collective link volume pushing to other key pages.

After more research I cam across a video directly from Matt Cutts on the subject:

Matt explicitly says it won't lead to penalty, but he advises the use of nofollow when you don't want that particular page showing up at all. He does say that you could just link to the page less, but as many of us know our privacy policy page is typically linked on every page in the footer. This of course, might cause Google to accidentally give it more priority than it should, which is why I stand by my advise.

Source here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=unEML5n5vTo


@VERSION 2 of the Guide: Well, the more questions people ask me the faster the guide will be put together as I'm using the questions people ask here and via the WuFoo form to put this guide together.