How do you optimize an E-Commerce website?

[emmabjones]

A friend of mine asked me for help for her new E-commerce website (selling souvenirs). She wants to be on page one in less than a year. I'm a Social Media specialist and I know a bit about SEO, but have no idea how to optimize an E-commerce website. Usually, I write at least 1000 words on the website's home page with optimized H1, H2s and relevant long tail keywords included. But you can't have so much text in an online store (or maybe you can...). What strategy would you use to optimize my friend's website?

 

[fisicx]

She wants to be on page one in less than a year.

How much money has she got?

Nothing you can do is going to help her ranking. The only thing that is going to work is spending money on advertising.

Souvenirs, like many other products, are highly competitive. People will be spending thousands on marketing (of which SEO is just a part) so unless she has something very different and unique the chances of ranking for anything decent are very slim.

 

[emmabjones]

How much money has she got?

She doesn't have a lot to invest on marketing that's why she wants to emphasize on the website itself and make it as good as possible.

 

[fisicx]

Having a great website is a bonus but if nobody can find it then it was all a waste of time. Doesn't matter how great the images, the content, the navigation, the prices and the checkout all are, ranking on page one for anything useful is going to cost a lot of money.

If she doesn't have a budget for marketing then she should find something else to sell.

PS: 1000words on the homepage of a souvenir site is pointless. The only thing the site needs are the products.

 

[Edith@TerraNetwork]

SEO like content, keywords and headings are still relevant for an eCom shop. In addition, targeted landing pages for specific categories / keywords can help to drive traffic.

 

[fisicx]

Of course all the normal techniques and tools are reelvant but the chosen products are already well established on Google. Which means the OP isn't going to have any impact on the SERPS without a lot of investment.

For example: https://www.google.co.uk/#q=souvenir+tea+towels

The OP is going to have to outrank etsy, ebay and amazon....

 

[emmabjones]

Outranking amazon, etsy and ebay is very difficult. However, outranking Elgate is not! As you can see from your own example, there are 4 "smaller" websites in the top 10. So it's possible! That's the beauty of SEO. If you know the story of Brian Dean and Backlinko, you should know that outranking even the biggest websites is possible!

 

[fisicx]

Yes but you have to be better at SEO than them.

elgate has been online since 1997 - which means google gives them a lot of trust compare to your friend.

I'm not saying it's not possible, but it's not going to be easy and it's very unlikely she will rank on page 1 without considerable investment. Things have changed a lot in the last few years and it's become more and more difficult to rank well against established sites. Which is why advertising is seeing a big resurgence.

 

[Tin]

How do you optimize an E-Commerce website?

If you Google your question you should find some useful information but it won't span everything that your friend needs to do, to carry this off effectively. I'm in the middle of writing a new dedicated ecommerce module for my course, I'm 8,000 words into it and only about half way through so it's not easy to answer your question in only a few paragraphs. The trouble with ecommerce seo is that you need to do things on multiple pages to help one page to rank better. It's not complicated but there is a lot that needs doing and like every other aspect of seo, if you get lazy then the effectiveness of your work loses momentum.

In answer to your point re lots of text on pages, then yes, you need text, more than most people realise, and unique to each page. Most of your friend's competitors will not bother much with product or category text and this is just one area where she can bring in some 'wins'.

As others have said souvenirs is going to be a tough nut to crack, so thorough and painstaking keyword research is going to be key. Drilling down to the longtail keywords will be worthwhile.

Hope that's helpful

Ray

 

[emmabjones]

I have just found what I was looking for on the Search Engine Journal - "9 Things to Validate While Auditing E-Commerce Sites for SEO":
1. Flush out Thin or Duplicate Content
2. Use Canonical Tags
3. Balance Link Equity and Crawlability
4. Paginate Categories
5. Keep Your Sitemaps Fresh
6. Use Schema Markup
7. Simplify Your Taxonomy for Easy Navigation
8. Speed it Up – Even More
9. Monitor All Pages for Errors

 

[emmabjones]

...thorough and painstaking keyword research is going to be key. Drilling down to the longtail keywords will be worthwhile.

Thanks Ray! Very helpful reply. I will tell her to pay special attention to keyword research and write unique content on every single landing page. Her website should have more content than the competitors in order to outrank them.

 

[fisicx]

Content alone won't outrank her competitors as Ray has said.

For ecommerce every page is a landing page. And in the list you posted, 3,4,5,6 and 7 aren't really relevant.

The pages you really need to concentrate on first are the category pages. If done properly they can work well.

And apologies for being so negative but the chances of her ever getting onto page 1 are slim. I've helped people do souvenir sites in the past and the investment needed was huge and very protracted. One site took 3 years before they saw any decent resutls.

 

[Magento Experts]

Hi,

Basing on which application your friend is running their eCommerce website in you may decide to use a plugin to bridge a blog if she has, the reason I am saying blog is because we tend to post fresh content on a blog, and it is not always possible to post fresh content on a eCommerce site, but you can always talk a lot on your blog.

I work a lot on magento so I can let u know the extensions you will need to bridge your magento ecommerce with your blog.

More content issue can be solved with this above mentioned method.

Regards,
Raj

 

[justinaldridge]

I have just found what I was looking for on the Search Engine Journal - "9 Things to Validate While Auditing E-Commerce Sites for SEO":
1. Flush out Thin or Duplicate Content
2. Use Canonical Tags
3. Balance Link Equity and Crawlability
4. Paginate Categories
5. Keep Your Sitemaps Fresh
6. Use Schema Markup
7. Simplify Your Taxonomy for Easy Navigation
8. Speed it Up – Even More
9. Monitor All Pages for Errors

Most of these have very little impact on actual rankings and traffic.

I love working on ecommerce sites as you can make a very big difference to revenues when you have some traffic. But, getting that initial traffic is often tough especially in competitive niches.

As Tin said, you need a lot of content, make every section great whilst also marketing the website like mad to generate as many links to it as you can get.

It's a huge amount of work initially...you won't be getting much sleep!

 

[fisicx]

... use a plugin to bridge a blog if she has, the reason I am saying blog is because we tend to post fresh content on a blog, and it is not always possible to post fresh content on a eCommerce site, but you can always talk a lot on your blog.

No point in doing this. A blog won't help anything. If they want to write about the products they need to do this on the product pages. This is what Tin hinted at.

 

[emmabjones]

I also think having a blog won't help my friend rank higher. It's just not worth it to invest resources like time and money to create a blog just because of having fresh content. Having a blog is a good thing, but only if it's interesting to read and helpful for your readers.

 

[antropy]

She wants to be on page one in less than a year.

She doesn't have a lot to invest on marketing

So she wants to be on page one of Google but doesn't have much to spend?

It sounds like she needs to have a look at sending a product feed to Google Shopping. That'll get you to the very top of page 1 straight away, but of course it's not free and it's not a magic bullet, you have to optimize your campaign a lot to get a decent ROI and even then it's only achievable if there's a decent demand for your products and you can afford to sell them at competitive prices.

Nothing you can do is going to help her ranking.

Sorry @fisicx but that's obviously nonsense, there are always things you can do. A website that has the right keywords and decent content is going to rank higher than one that doesn't.

she wants to emphasize on the website itself and make it as good as possible.

I have just found what I was looking for on the Search Engine Journal - "9 Things to Validate While Auditing E-Commerce Sites for SEO"

You can always run the website through this free tool we developed which will check some basic SEO and marketing things automatically:
http://www.antropy.co.uk/ecommerce-website-grader/

 

[fisicx]

Sorry @fisicx but that's obviously nonsense, there are always things you can do. A website that has the right keywords and decent content is going to rank higher than one that doesn't.

I agree. What I meant was just doing traditional SEO isn't going to have much impact. It's certainly not going to get her onto page one. If she did Tin's course then she would be in a better position but it's still not going to get a new site onto page one above all those heavy hitters.

 

[antropy]

It's certainly not going to get her onto page one.

When we talk about "page one" it depends on what keywords we're talking about to be honest. If she decides to go for some really competitive ones then yes of course you're right, no small SEO budget is going to help with either on-site or off-site SEO.

But if she perhaps sells an obscure product or manages to find a high-converting keyword without too much competition, it may just be possible. AdWords is very good for this sort of keyword research.

 

[LiveChatLinda]

When it comes to optimization of e-commerce website the best way is to build as much content as you can - add product and categories descriptions, even write your own comments, add client's reviews, start on topic blog etc. Make sure that on site linking is on the highest level i.e. when you are adding related products. These are just examples but there are many things you can do in here!

 

[fisicx]

But if she perhaps sells an obscure product or manages to find a high-converting keyword without too much competition, it may just be possible. AdWords is very good for this sort of keyword research.

Indeed. But obscure products don't pay the bills - you just don't sell enough of them to make it worthwhile. Maybe if you had 1000 obscure products and sold one of each per week it would be viable but that's just hard work.

 

[pilgrim.marketing]

I agree with @antropy that Google Product Listing Ads (or Shopping, whichever they are called now) are a good way to go.

It's probably the best bang for her buck she's going to get. I've seen some success with these Ads for pennies per click and not much more per acquisition.

If she has a large amount of products they allow her to target almost every one without having to create thousands of Ad variants, negative keywords etc.

Make sure the on-page SEO stuff is all done properly (especially the conten of the product titles) and keep an eye on the traffic. It won't be quick, but then she can't afford quick!

 

[Magento Experts]

There is a limitation to what you can add to a product page, a blog article can include research and reference materials, and all of this is related, you are backing up your product with sound information that your customers would like to know before purchasing a product, this info could even include comparison with competitor products. A blog like WordPress takes a a second or two to install, it is absolutely free, and u can use any free theme on it which is responsive and get things going. Who says that additional content which is related won't help? google loves content so why not talk more? in general u can't do that on a eCommerce platform as it is not interactive but a blog can be made interactive with comments etc.. so I am in favor of it.

 

[Paul Norman]

She doesn't have a lot to invest on marketing that's why she wants to emphasize on the website itself and make it as good as possible.

This is one of the challenges. Getting a website profitable, just as with a bricks and mortar based retail business, requires investment either of money, or time. Their time. One of the constant errors relating to online retailing is that it is inexpensive.

It is not. Building an online brand takes serious, proper, real cash. Or many, many hours of your own time.

 

[emmabjones]

Building an online brand takes serious, proper, real cash. Or many, many hours of your own time.

When you don't have enough money, you invest time! You're absolutely right. My friend knows that and she is already investing all her time in this project.

 

[OJ_UX]

There are many pieces of advice already given here in optimising an ecommerce website but if there's one thing that I suggest you should add to the mix is to do a Usability Testing of your site.

I believe there is no other better opinion than the one of your potential customers - and UX Testing eliminates the habit of seeking out opinions of colleagues or hunches based on anecdotal evidence. Here are just some of the insights you can get out of UX Testing:

• Tells you why people are clicking on your Ads (by mistake or otherwise)
• Your potential customer's first impressions of your website
• How hard is it to use or navigate your website
• How people find your website via organic search engine results
• Your social media presence
• Any friction points when customer is going through the checkout process?
• Your website benchmarked against competitors

etc etc

If you're keen to try out UX Testing, there are several sites out there such as WhatUsersDo, UserTesting, UserZoom, etc. I'm quite partial to WhatUsersDo as I work there but if you're interested, here's a month free access to our UX Testing platform that enables you to run UX Tests.

 

[Duci]

A friend of mine asked me for help for her new E-commerce website (selling souvenirs). She wants to be on page one in less than a year. I'm a Social Media specialist and I know a bit about SEO, but have no idea how to optimize an E-commerce website. Usually, I write at least 1000 words on the website's home page with optimized H1, H2s and relevant long tail keywords included. But you can't have so much text in an online store (or maybe you can...). What strategy would you use to optimize my friend's website?

I think she needs to have a strong social media presence - maybe she should use sites such as Instagram and invest in a high quality camera taking high quality images of all of her souvenirs. Social media sites tend to drive a lot of traffic to websites, once again just to reiterate. She should just take high quality pictures of her souvenirs and post pictures on Instagram - she also needs to remember to keep it very attractive for the eye as the type of people she targets are people who are into 'art'. Also I would advise her to contact some of these other souvenir companies and network with them - share stuff about them on your social media page and make them share stuff about your business on their social media page.

*Note everything on social media is free - you will only have to spend £40 for a high quality camera from PCworld or amazon*

 

[fisicx]

Social media sites tend to drive a lot of traffic to websites, once again just to reiterate.

This isn't true. It works for some but most people see very little traffic and even less go on to make a purchase.

 

[1977]

Out of interest, is there any evidence out there for what sectors actually do benefit from social media in terms of sales?

 

[Raw Rob]

Out of interest, is there any evidence out there for what sectors actually do benefit from social media in terms of sales?

At a guess it's will be things directly related to the social media experience, music being one of them. I read an article about the track by Walk Off The Earth where they made a song/video (a cover of a song by Gotye) where all 5 band members played the same guitar (at the same time) and it went viral on social media, which resulted in a massive increase of sales of the song.

 

[Shopclicks]

Out of interest, is there any evidence out there for what sectors actually do benefit from social media in terms of sales?

Here in Australia, FB & Instagram are really well embedded as marketing tools for sectors like fashion, skincare, fitness, sportswear & home decor (can you see the common theme there?). I know of quite a few multi-million dollar businesses that have built their success using well managed SM.
I know that the UK has been slower to pick up on Instagram.

 

[Groggy]

Lots of good points here! Although I would agree with fisicz that PPC marketing is essential in most cases, it is NOT the only thing you can do. The original question was around optimising an ecommerce website. You've already found a list of broad tasks, but that simple bullet list hides the amount of work behind it! Our approach has been 80/20: 80% of effort goes in to content and on-page optimisation, and 20% of effort into PPC - then 80% of hard cash into PPC and 20% into content! There are countless tools to help with both - we use CartAngel, ScreemingFrog, Google Trends for content, and then outsource our PPC to someone who really knows their onions!

 

[OJ_UX]

I'm curious about your 80/20 Rule - how much time do you spend on content vs PPC?

 

[OJ_UX]

Lots of good points here! Although I would agree with fisicz that PPC marketing is essential in most cases, it is NOT the only thing you can do. The original question was around optimising an ecommerce website. You've already found a list of broad tasks, but that simple bullet list hides the amount of work behind it! Our approach has been 80/20: 80% of effort goes in to content and on-page optimisation, and 20% of effort into PPC - then 80% of hard cash into PPC and 20% into content! There are countless tools to help with both - we use CartAngel, ScreemingFrog, Google Trends for content, and then outsource our PPC to someone who really knows their onions!

I'm curious about your 80/20 Rule - how much time do you spend on content vs PPC?

 

[Groggy]

oj_ux - 80% of TIME goes into content (and UX), 20% into PPC (keyword analysis, product push etc). Then the reverse is true of CASH spend! Its not a "rule" but just what works for us.

 

[justinaldridge]

Out of interest, is there any evidence out there for what sectors actually do benefit from social media in terms of sales?

I do the marketing for a large music festival and it's all about social media. That is by far the biggest traffic and sales source for them.

I think YouTube is also hugely powerful. I watched a car video review the other day and the next day put my order in for the exact same car. Huge opportunities with video at the moment.

It's just that for most businesses I don't think SM works and in fact most of our clients don't benefit from any SM activities that they do. It can also be quite expensive to run really good campaigns.

 

[Jigneshg]

I also think having a blog won't help my friend rank higher. It's just not worth it to invest resources like time and money to create a blog just because of having fresh content. Having a blog is a good thing, but only if it's interesting to read and helpful for your readers.

Here my question is; where will you publish linkable content on your website? Since last couple of years, generating natural backlinks is the only way to increase presence in organic search. Blog / Knowledge / information or give any name to this section where you need to produce linkable content that can attract other webmaster to share with their audiences. This will be very helpful.

 

[fisicx]

Since last couple of years, generating natural backlinks is the only way to increase presence in organic search.

Not true, great content and internal linking are great ways to improve ranking.

A blog for this site is pointless as will be social media promotion. There may be some sales but not enough to sustain the business.

 

[wayzgoose]

Out of interest, is there any evidence out there for what sectors actually do benefit from social media in terms of sales?

Home craft workers do very well on the social sites.

 

[James Hawkman]

There are 3 stages.. Homepage, Category Page and Sub category page.

Always optimize your homepage first, insert keywords proportionally, insert relevant contents, inter link important categories, place your leads generating products above the fold to generate a lead.