[Need Help] New E-Commerce Site SEO Strategy

Hello BHW,

I just launched a new fashion e-comm store for a client with 70+ categories and 300+ products. How would you go about putting together an SEO strategy for this beast?

Not an SEO newbie.. have been on BHW since 2013, but need your help with the following questions:

1) Initially, would I need to provide a unique description for each product and category before allowing Google to crawl? Or can I get away with putting copy on most important categories and products, then noindex the ones without copy for now?

2) Where would you even start the keyword research with 70 categories? Is it a good idea to create long-tail keyword sub-categories such as "/hats/running-hats-for-kids/" and invest into writing copy for these pages?

3) How do you get away with building links without paying $150 - $300 backlink from some fashion blog? Since this is not an affiliate site, PBN is not an option.

Paid consultants are welcome to PM me.

Cheers!

I have a client who has over 200 categories, 5000 products.

I can tell you how we organised that on Shopify.

1) Doesn't matter, Google doesn't really penalize you for duplicate content at the start. They won't till you get awesome traffic somehow.

You should get the content for important categories & products first and get them copy written.

I usually just plan perfect categories, where the products will be placed (to make awesome relevancy)

Eg: caps/baseball-caps/product-name (good thing about ecom is that your sidebar can have a lot of settings where people can find what they are looking for.

I usually look at Amazon, Samsung, Lg for their product silo. It's amazing. You can learn a lot by visiting their site and playing around.

2) Ask your client what's his best selling product, most expensive & trending product. I would start from there.
You can write 200-300 words for your categories and 1000 words for your products and check what others in your niche are doing. Usually with that many products you won't be able to do every product properly or it can take a year to reach a point where everything works well.
Ecom producrs rank for a lot of keywords: blue cap, red cap and other variations you must have mentioned on your product page.

3) you build 80% of your links to your homepage!
PBNs are even a bigger game in ecom industry btw... You just have to ask your client. A guest post can cost you $50 to $1000. You have to use them to your homepage (without targeting any keyword as such).

I hope you got a good budget for this

I don't offer paid consultation though. But I hope my free answer helped.

WebMinati said:

I have a client who has over 200 categories, 5000 products.

I can tell you how we organised that on Shopify.

1) Doesn't matter, Google doesn't really penalize you for duplicate content at the start. They won't till you get awesome traffic somehow.

You should get the content for important categories & products first and get them copy written.

I usually just plan perfect categories, where the products will be placed (to make awesome relevancy)

Eg: caps/baseball-caps/product-name (good thing about ecom is that your sidebar can have a lot of settings where people can find what they are looking for.

I usually look at Amazon, Samsung, Lg for their product silo. It's amazing. You can learn a lot by visiting their site and playing around.

2) Ask your client what's his best selling product, most expensive & trending product. I would start from there.
You can write 200-300 words for your categories and 1000 words for your products and check what others in your niche are doing. Usually with that many products you won't be able to do every product properly or it can take a year to reach a point where everything works well.
Ecom producrs rank for a lot of keywords: blue cap, red cap and other variations you must have mentioned on your product page.

3) you build 80% of your links to your homepage!
PBNs are even a bigger game in ecom industry btw... You just have to ask your client. A guest post can cost you $50 to $1000. You have to use them to your homepage (without targeting any keyword as such).

I hope you got a good budget for this

I don't offer paid consultation though. But I hope my free answer helped.

Click to expand...

Thank you so much! This is more valuable to me than you think.

Honestly, I'm always concerned about indexing any site without some written content... since I did get penalized once only 3-4 weeks after I submitted a sitemap. Then, I got the penalty lifted by saying "Hey Google, i didn't realize those pages were getting indexed. I'm still working on my product descriptions and those were placeholders" lol

You have a good point with following major websites' silo structures. But the competition is fierce in fashion(especially super generic like /shoes/running-shoes/.. That's why I'm thinking about creating many sub-categories with long-tail keywords and group the products matching those long tail words.

I recently got contacted by guest post link broker who provided me a list of 100s of websites with supposedly good DR and TF scores. Prices ranging from $120 - $1000 like you said. Would that be a good place to start for homepage links? or do you usually start with a good press release?

Also, what's a good monthly budget for this really? I want to be able to provide great value but still make profit

lepman said:

Thank you so much! This is more valuable to me than you think.

Honestly, I'm always concerned about indexing any site without some written content... since I did get penalized once only 3-4 weeks after I submitted a sitemap. Then, I got the penalty lifted by saying "Hey Google, i didn't realize those pages were getting indexed. I'm still working on my product descriptions and those were placeholders" lol

You have a good point with following major websites' silo structures. But the competition is fierce in fashion(especially super generic like /shoes/running-shoes/.. That's why I'm thinking about creating many sub-categories with long-tail keywords and group the products matching those long tail words.

I recently got contacted by guest post link broker who provided me a list of 100s of websites with supposedly good DR and TF scores. Prices ranging from $120 - $1000 like you said. Would that be a good place to start for homepage links? or do you usually start with a good press release?

Also, what's a good monthly budget for this really? I want to be able to provide great value but still make profit

Click to expand...

Competition is fierce everywhere these days (Weird stuff happened with you lol)

Yup. You will have to rank some easy long tails to start.

I would start with a GMB, Press release, Citations then move on to guest posts, Niche edits & Pbns if you really need to boost up your pages. Have to show that this ecom will not just take your credit card and have fun with it... I hope you understand.

Depends on the time too. You have to see how many people you have to hire to do the job in a set period of time.

like you have 300 products, Charge for 1000 word description will cost around $100 if you are going for an okay copywriter. It can be $15 per 1000 words too if you order from the market place. Depends on the quality and how it helps you convert.

The minimum you want is 15*30 = 450(just for writing 30 descriptions), Then there's setting up the products & Managers.

I would say if you are going at it 100 products per month, the budget needed is over 10-15k a month(below that you will be working a lot for not a lot of profit). I am lazy to do all the maths here but you can calculate everything & just double it.

Like if you think that your cost will come out to me 7500, quote 15k. Because at the end of the day it will be more than what you have calculated for sure.

(That'd be $500) (i kid)

WebMinati said:

Competition is fierce everywhere these days (Weird stuff happened with you lol)

Yup. You will have to rank some easy long tails to start.

I would start with a GMB, Press release, Citations then move on to guest posts, Niche edits & Pbns if you really need to boost up your pages. Have to show that this ecom will not just take your credit card and have fun with it... I hope you understand.

Depends on the time too. You have to see how many people you have to hire to do the job in a set period of time.

like you have 300 products, Charge for 1000 word description will cost around $100 if you are going for an okay copywriter. It can be $15 per 1000 words too if you order from the market place. Depends on the quality and how it helps you convert.

The minimum you want is 15*30 = 450(just for writing 30 descriptions), Then there's setting up the products & Managers.

I would say if you are going at it 100 products per month, the budget needed is over 10-15k a month(below that you will be working a lot for not a lot of profit). I am lazy to do all the maths here but you can calculate everything & just double it.

Like if you think that your cost will come out to me 7500, quote 15k. Because at the end of the day it will be more than what you have calculated for sure.

(That'd be $500) (i kid)

Click to expand...

LOL! Another great response..

The client is definitely not investing more than $5k per month. It looks like I'll have to get creative and start showing some results in 3-6 months so he willing to increase that budget. Even if I rank 1 or 2 categories or products, we'll ramp it up from there. Or focus on SMM and PPC at first so he gets some sales.

Cheers dude!

WebMinati said:

I have a client who has over 200 categories, 5000 products.

I can tell you how we organised that on Shopify.

1) Doesn't matter, Google doesn't really penalize you for duplicate content at the start. They won't till you get awesome traffic somehow.

You should get the content for important categories & products first and get them copy written.

I usually just plan perfect categories, where the products will be placed (to make awesome relevancy)

Eg: caps/baseball-caps/product-name (good thing about ecom is that your sidebar can have a lot of settings where people can find what they are looking for.

I usually look at Amazon, Samsung, Lg for their product silo. It's amazing. You can learn a lot by visiting their site and playing around.

2) Ask your client what's his best selling product, most expensive & trending product. I would start from there.
You can write 200-300 words for your categories and 1000 words for your products and check what others in your niche are doing. Usually with that many products you won't be able to do every product properly or it can take a year to reach a point where everything works well.
Ecom producrs rank for a lot of keywords: blue cap, red cap and other variations you must have mentioned on your product page.

3) you build 80% of your links to your homepage!
PBNs are even a bigger game in ecom industry btw... You just have to ask your client. A guest post can cost you $50 to $1000. You have to use them to your homepage (without targeting any keyword as such).

I hope you got a good budget for this

I don't offer paid consultation though. But I hope my free answer helped.

Click to expand...

I have an established client in fast fashion. The issue is the site has 20000+ products and
90,000 pages with 2.5 million internal links within Google Console.


What sort of macro-strategy would you advise.? Since it's fast fashion at a low-price point
a lengthy product description for a bodycon dress would be pointless.