SEO For E-Commerce Sites
- Thread starter Taktical
- Start date
Taktical
Elite Member
- May 15, 2011
- 1,641
- 3,343
Like I said, you'll probably be able to get away with a couple. Just don't go crazy.
BuzzKill
Regular Member
- Aug 30, 2007
- 431
- 222
I spent the past 2 years working exclusively on large e-commerce sites. E-comm sites can be the biggest headache, but after learning from the mistakes of others (and my own) I now have a company that exclusively works on large e-commerce sites.
The core principles of SEO are what makes e-commerce sites such a bitch, there is little to no reason for anyone to link to an e-comm site. If you are running a site that sells products from multiple manufacturers, that is another migraine, the data that you get from the manufacturers is crap, complete garbage, and order fulfillment with multiple drop shippers - total nightmare. But, once you get the wrinkles ironed out, e-commerce site marketing is amazing.
The high dollar link company, webuildpages.com has a bunch of e-comm clients and they charge $2500 a month for 10 backlinks from high PR and .edu and .gov sites. I don't know if their methods have been discussed here before, but I paid them for a few months last year to see what they were doing to justify that price tag. They got the links, but 9 months later, there still hasn't been a noticable effect or natural link growth.
CSE's are the way to go for e-commerce sites. 70% of our revenue came from Google Products. PPC is almost totally unmanageable if you have more than 10,000 products - the 80/20 rule certainly applied here. There is still one 'trick' that works extremely well in PPC , but I watched that slowly start to fade when Google caught on and clicks went from .10 to 6.00
For sites with thousands of products, its all about Excel formulas and using offshore companies (like mine
) to work on the data like an assembly line. Also using the webuildpages method of link building still works for domain authority, but soon it will not.
Integrate information into the product pages and do not use canned product data thats provided from manufacturers.
On-site search should be a TOP priority. If you are serious about your ecomm site, you have to invest in powerful and configurable on-site search solutions. I have used the Google appliance and several other companies and there is one that really stands out as the winner. Hopefully you have your analytics setup properly to track on-site searches. If you are using a CMS like Magento, be ready to do some development work.
3rd party carts are hit or miss, personally I have used 3dcart for a few cheap clients recently because of the built in features - but it definitely has its drawbacks as well - If you take a look at the shops using 3dcart, you will see some truly disastrous practices in play.
Don't use subdomains if you can help it. Isolating your eommerce store in a subdomain , away from any content with substance is a mistake.
Reviews and testimonials are absolutely key, and hard to get when starting out. Google loves them, visitors love them.
Navigation, Taxonomy, and usability are the most important thing. I used to want to believe that there was some kind of loyalty with buyers online, but there isnt, its just pricing. Who is the cheapest and then who is the easiest to navigate. If you aren't A/B testing your pages, watching visitor engagement, and always optimizing your checkout process - you're nuts.
I discovered something HUGE last year, a complete game changer for all of my e-commerce clients - inexpensive to implement and absolutely invaluable, well actually it could be valued, it was responsible for a HUGE spike in ROI on every clients site. Unfortunately, I can't say what that was until I work out a way to get paid for cluing people in.
The core principles of SEO are what makes e-commerce sites such a bitch, there is little to no reason for anyone to link to an e-comm site. If you are running a site that sells products from multiple manufacturers, that is another migraine, the data that you get from the manufacturers is crap, complete garbage, and order fulfillment with multiple drop shippers - total nightmare. But, once you get the wrinkles ironed out, e-commerce site marketing is amazing.
The high dollar link company, webuildpages.com has a bunch of e-comm clients and they charge $2500 a month for 10 backlinks from high PR and .edu and .gov sites. I don't know if their methods have been discussed here before, but I paid them for a few months last year to see what they were doing to justify that price tag. They got the links, but 9 months later, there still hasn't been a noticable effect or natural link growth.
CSE's are the way to go for e-commerce sites. 70% of our revenue came from Google Products. PPC is almost totally unmanageable if you have more than 10,000 products - the 80/20 rule certainly applied here. There is still one 'trick' that works extremely well in PPC , but I watched that slowly start to fade when Google caught on and clicks went from .10 to 6.00
For sites with thousands of products, its all about Excel formulas and using offshore companies (like mine
) to work on the data like an assembly line. Also using the webuildpages method of link building still works for domain authority, but soon it will not. Integrate information into the product pages and do not use canned product data thats provided from manufacturers.
On-site search should be a TOP priority. If you are serious about your ecomm site, you have to invest in powerful and configurable on-site search solutions. I have used the Google appliance and several other companies and there is one that really stands out as the winner. Hopefully you have your analytics setup properly to track on-site searches. If you are using a CMS like Magento, be ready to do some development work.
3rd party carts are hit or miss, personally I have used 3dcart for a few cheap clients recently because of the built in features - but it definitely has its drawbacks as well - If you take a look at the shops using 3dcart, you will see some truly disastrous practices in play.
Don't use subdomains if you can help it. Isolating your eommerce store in a subdomain , away from any content with substance is a mistake.
Reviews and testimonials are absolutely key, and hard to get when starting out. Google loves them, visitors love them.
Navigation, Taxonomy, and usability are the most important thing. I used to want to believe that there was some kind of loyalty with buyers online, but there isnt, its just pricing. Who is the cheapest and then who is the easiest to navigate. If you aren't A/B testing your pages, watching visitor engagement, and always optimizing your checkout process - you're nuts.
I discovered something HUGE last year, a complete game changer for all of my e-commerce clients - inexpensive to implement and absolutely invaluable, well actually it could be valued, it was responsible for a HUGE spike in ROI on every clients site. Unfortunately, I can't say what that was until I work out a way to get paid for cluing people in.
Chrisss
Senior Member
- Feb 22, 2011
- 842
- 172
Great and contributing post @BuzzKill
The checkout page should be as simple as possible and never force user to register before a purchase.
It also a good idea to use real people for usability testing.
Such a tease - I'm getting curious now
Interesting - how do they pull that off? Is it though internal networking that this company get in touch with the decision maker and thereby are able to overprice their product?
Good point - and the time used for setting up a split test is coming back ten fold. When you first get the hang of it, doesn't it take more than 5-10 min. Depending on the changes you want to make. And the data you get is awesome.
The checkout page should be as simple as possible and never force user to register before a purchase.
It also a good idea to use real people for usability testing.
Such a tease - I'm getting curious now
transient999
Newbie
- Apr 8, 2011
- 10
- 2
xenix9 can you shoot me a PM? I don't have enough post to PM. I like to take a look at your site. From what I've been gathering, I basically have to redo my whole site. I started an e commerce site without any knowledge of website building or Internet Marketing, basically used an open-source shopping cart. Stumble onto this website when I was trying to find a way to rank my site. Any more info from Buzzkill would be awesome.
Thank you for starting this thread.
Thank you for starting this thread.
Excellent discussion. Most of the sites I have to rank are like this. Thin on content or I don't have the liberty of onsite SEO. I don't look after ecommerce sites, just sites with poor to no onsite optimization.
For me, I take the time I would spend on onsite work and create more extensive offsite SEO campaigns. Onsite is fantastic; with its help you can rank very fast. But even without onsite SEO enough good quality backlinking gets you the rankings.
Last edited:
shareunlimited
Newbie
- Sep 15, 2008
- 14
- 2
Thanks for starting this thread.
Though I am into ecommerce since 5 years though considered expert in ecommerce domain, I should say there is more and more to learn every day.
Just Sharing few tips:
1. Having an eBay store
Love it or Hate It, eBay still holds No.1 Position in the field of online Shopping.
Though pissed off with their customer support and Seller unfriendly attitude, I have been selling with them since the same period.
Once having acquired customer confidence you will have them shopping from your website without any doubt.
2. Image Optimization:
Having images optimized have brought fruitful results in what are considered to be highly competitive niche.
3. Google Places:
A Properly created Google Places / maps can help you get more customers from your local market.
4. Video: As mentioned by many above, video makes visitors stay longer on your site and also helps you to establish authority and expertise of your product ( in case you have build your own videos).
You can even have video marketing done for your products. For One of the products, My video on youtube is on top and is above the same advertisement from Product company.
Having said these, I think there is lotz of things I may be missing and have not implemented till yet on my sites. Thats the reason I am here on BHW
Though I am into ecommerce since 5 years though considered expert in ecommerce domain, I should say there is more and more to learn every day.
Just Sharing few tips:
1. Having an eBay store
Love it or Hate It, eBay still holds No.1 Position in the field of online Shopping.
Though pissed off with their customer support and Seller unfriendly attitude, I have been selling with them since the same period.
Once having acquired customer confidence you will have them shopping from your website without any doubt.
2. Image Optimization:
Having images optimized have brought fruitful results in what are considered to be highly competitive niche.
3. Google Places:
A Properly created Google Places / maps can help you get more customers from your local market.
4. Video: As mentioned by many above, video makes visitors stay longer on your site and also helps you to establish authority and expertise of your product ( in case you have build your own videos).
You can even have video marketing done for your products. For One of the products, My video on youtube is on top and is above the same advertisement from Product company.
Having said these, I think there is lotz of things I may be missing and have not implemented till yet on my sites. Thats the reason I am here on BHW
peetu69
Junior Member
- Dec 7, 2010
- 193
- 133
Just found this thread and i love the information in here.
The timing is perfect, because currently i have a local referral client which shop i should optimize. The bad thing is, he is using a "CMS" which is basically a shitty and poor coded third party client, which would require ages of coding to adjust all the permalinks and seo optimize all the website. I wrote the support a message if their "CMS" supports anything seo related from something simple like meta tags or absolute urls (currently it is like 8273%27382.html), but of course, no answer.
The main thing i wanted to do now, is to create a "magazine" in blog style for the ecommerce site like "http://shopname.com/magazine/", in which i would write some keyword researched and optimized articles and push the with the all the seo i use for my other affiliate websites.
However, i dont know if the work is worth it, because i want to grow that ecommerce site big, the seo and the usability of the other ecommerce competitors suck and im pretty sure i could beat them when i would create a normal MFA.
So what im asking is, should i try to to make the client buy a new CMS like xt:commerce or something? I already pointed to that option, when i was talking to him in the beginning, but he did not like that idea that much, because he has like 1000-3000 products in his shop and would have to redo the website again (it is pretty new, he switched to this new shitty CMS some months ago and his sales dropped by 50% compared to the previous one, which was some free CMS).
What CMS would you suggest for an ecommerce site which has a large potential, and could be optimized with plugins (wordpress style) and not much elementary coding required?
And language pack for non english should be available, though if this is not the case, letting someone translate it should not that huge problem.
The timing is perfect, because currently i have a local referral client which shop i should optimize. The bad thing is, he is using a "CMS" which is basically a shitty and poor coded third party client, which would require ages of coding to adjust all the permalinks and seo optimize all the website. I wrote the support a message if their "CMS" supports anything seo related from something simple like meta tags or absolute urls (currently it is like 8273%27382.html), but of course, no answer.
The main thing i wanted to do now, is to create a "magazine" in blog style for the ecommerce site like "http://shopname.com/magazine/", in which i would write some keyword researched and optimized articles and push the with the all the seo i use for my other affiliate websites.
However, i dont know if the work is worth it, because i want to grow that ecommerce site big, the seo and the usability of the other ecommerce competitors suck and im pretty sure i could beat them when i would create a normal MFA.
So what im asking is, should i try to to make the client buy a new CMS like xt:commerce or something? I already pointed to that option, when i was talking to him in the beginning, but he did not like that idea that much, because he has like 1000-3000 products in his shop and would have to redo the website again (it is pretty new, he switched to this new shitty CMS some months ago and his sales dropped by 50% compared to the previous one, which was some free CMS).
What CMS would you suggest for an ecommerce site which has a large potential, and could be optimized with plugins (wordpress style) and not much elementary coding required?
And language pack for non english should be available, though if this is not the case, letting someone translate it should not that huge problem.
A couple of items I don't think I've seen mentioned in the thread:
1. the power of interlinking of pages. Use the existing power of your site to send power to your key pages. Much better if these links are in-context links.
2. Use on page copy (category and product descriptions) to target some longer tail phrases. It's amazing how you can rank from just page copy with no anchor text links at all. Think about some keyword modifiers that someone might search on that your competitors aren't thinking about. Qualitative terms work great here - i.e. "best blue widget for kids". It's amazing how many folks search using qualitative terms. They think Google knows who's the best.p
3. One thing I noticed is that most folks posting in this thread seem to be selling non-unique products (i.e. drop ship items), which definitely are tougher. Two thoughts - one, if you're are indeed selling unique items, then do not market them as if they are commodities. Two, if you are selling non-unique items, then figure out a unique selling proposition (aka point of difference) that you can market - i.e. best service, fastest shipping, largest inventory, cheapest shipping, money back guarantee, price guarantee, etc. - so that you are no longer selling a non-unique product.
1. the power of interlinking of pages. Use the existing power of your site to send power to your key pages. Much better if these links are in-context links.
2. Use on page copy (category and product descriptions) to target some longer tail phrases. It's amazing how you can rank from just page copy with no anchor text links at all. Think about some keyword modifiers that someone might search on that your competitors aren't thinking about. Qualitative terms work great here - i.e. "best blue widget for kids". It's amazing how many folks search using qualitative terms. They think Google knows who's the best.
p3. One thing I noticed is that most folks posting in this thread seem to be selling non-unique products (i.e. drop ship items), which definitely are tougher. Two thoughts - one, if you're are indeed selling unique items, then do not market them as if they are commodities. Two, if you are selling non-unique items, then figure out a unique selling proposition (aka point of difference) that you can market - i.e. best service, fastest shipping, largest inventory, cheapest shipping, money back guarantee, price guarantee, etc. - so that you are no longer selling a non-unique product.
Should mention that as to point #2, I've found testimonial copy incredibly powerful for this. I've looked at some search terms that were driving traffic and couldn't figure out how I was ranking for it... then I saw that I had some of the words in testimonial copy in my template and the other part of the search words in my specific product description copy. So, Google was combining all that and ranking me for very good keyword (ie. the best sterling silver womens name ring)
deno555
Supreme Member
- Mar 16, 2011
- 1,448
- 522
Yes...testimonial copy give incredible impact...i also use short instant message widget on my small eCommerce site to make it short conversation with customer. people will believe the site is live...and make a trust for buying..
This thread is good...i am about to build big ecommerce site for next project.
This thread is good...i am about to build big ecommerce site for next project.
Taktical
Elite Member
- May 15, 2011
- 1,641
- 3,343
you're welcome :wave:
balsagoth007
BANNED
- Oct 30, 2010
- 2,107
- 1,383
Great thread from a great member.
nb: will contact you soon about our deal
nb: will contact you soon about our deal
xenter
Regular Member
- Jan 1, 2009
- 268
- 39
I am currently working on an ecommerce site as well using magento. Ranking is a bitch for root keywords. After all the on page SEO stuff, I have subscription to linkpushing, DFB, linkgenie, and linkilicious doing some heavy promoting. Specific products seems to do pretty well in rankings but most people don't search like that. I've seen big players use a blog style page to capture long tails. I am doing that now as well.
Like Buzzkill, I am working on integrating something. Auto page generation for relevant products that don't exist on the site yet. For instance, if someone searched blue chairs, and I don't have a page for blue chairs, then the system automatically creates this page and populate it with blue chairs. I get a report of a new page created and track its progress. Then I will use my subscriptions to build backlinks to it.
Like Buzzkill, I am working on integrating something. Auto page generation for relevant products that don't exist on the site yet. For instance, if someone searched blue chairs, and I don't have a page for blue chairs, then the system automatically creates this page and populate it with blue chairs. I get a report of a new page created and track its progress. Then I will use my subscriptions to build backlinks to it.
Taktical
Elite Member
- May 15, 2011
- 1,641
- 3,343
What if we promoted articles instead and drove those to the money site? sort of like a faux review or information page and then it says "to purchase this product click here"
you think that would work?
you think that would work?
milans
Regular Member
- Mar 26, 2011
- 382
- 161
If you make sure you're a couple bucks cheaper than your competitors and have unique product descriptions (which you probably have as you are ranking for them) you'll convert on them pretty good imo.
Just make sure you're the cheapest because when ppl are searching for a specific product name they are comparing prices. This is not high search volume per keyword but can be converting good.