How to create good SEO content for an essentially thin ecommerce site?
-
I have a retail website that in the past has been hit by a manual action for crappy backlinks (these were all done by a previous agency and up until the penalty providing very good results). We have since removed all of the rubbish backlinks and have come out of manual penalty and are looking in to our long term strategy in terms of content and link building.
We have a blog within our site that does well with traffic and with an OK conversion to the products that feature within the posts, we are also putting together a strategy in terms of long term content plans and while this is all very good for the blog, the ecommerce part of the domain continues to suffer.
I know that part of this is because we did remove all of these links that were giving it juice, but where do you start with SEO when what you are dealing with is essentially thin content?
With around 7000 products, every page has unique descriptions and titles that have been updated to remove keyword stuffing and over optimisation that has occured in the past. We don't want to go down the route of getting an agency that is going to put us back in Googles bad books, but how do you go about getting a retail page juice without firing backlinks at it?
Not looking for the holy grail here but just looking for some advice, I want a clear idea of a direction to go in before recruiting an agency to do this.
-
Great answer Andy, had already posted my previous response to Don.
We do have design resources in house so this is not an issue, I guess that in the past we have been pretty tied up in grasping at straws to find a post that can relate in some way to a new product. I get the whole concept of content being king but I do also get that there is the notion that in the past we have maybe tried too had to draw parallels between an article and a product in the thin hope of that article bringing in convertable traffic.
Again, a really helpful post that I will certainly look to expand upon further and will be more than happy to feedback any results.
As for the tracking, thats exactly how we do track the conversions from the blog so yes please, would really appreciate any guidance in being able to track customers from the blog better.
Thanks,
Tim
-
Hi Tim
How are you measuring the success of the blog, simply using Analytics last click model - if this is the case it won't work, but I am currently writing something on how to set up Analytics to track once a user has visited the blog, then how do they go on to convert, which channels do they come from.
Once you start looking at this, you might actually realise the blog does better than you think. I am almost complete and should have it done by Monday to share with you if you are interested.
Thanks
Andy
-
Thanks Don,
They are all great points and we do already carry service reviews for the site, but not on products so this certainly something that I am keen to look in to further. We currently just have product page ratings.
One thing though that I am still unsure of and could do with some assistance with is an idea of what kind of strategy should be employed in terms of content. Is it a good idea to put a lot of resources in to the blog content, whilst this does get a lot of traffic, if does not convert particularly well in relation to products. But is it good for the domain as a whole? What kind of effect would be achievable on the domain as a whole by allocating resources in this manner?
Thanks again,
Tim
-
Hi
With our blog we don't use it as a product focus - more industry news focus, general category focus, relevant content - since changing to this strategy the conversion rate has improved.
So might be worth doing some less product specific articles and more generic articles - this is also good for long tail SEO keywords.
I don't know what resources you have available, and I am not going to say do infographics as this is wrong (too many people churning out infographics when they are not needed), but if you do have some design resources, either make your articles a bit more unique with images, illustrations - but if you do have some good information that works well as an infographic - then create one. These are usually very good for getting links. Don't just create these for the sake of it though.
But as Don said, more relevant content. Other idea's
How to guides
Unboxing articles / videos
Latest news articles
Explanation articles - help your customers to understand the products you sell, this will lead to more conversions as they can see the benefits.
Hope this is useful
Andy
-
Hi Timothy,
Short answer is content.
Easy to say hard to complete. Here are some strategy's I found helpful in the past.
Customer Reviews (moderated): these provide additional details that customers appreciate reading before making a buying decision. It also adds long-tail keywords that you may have not thought of along with lots of unique content.
Product Schema / microdata: this gives search engines and shopping listing sites a workable schema to list your products on sources you may not have been aware of.
Research and Self Review: This is one way Amazon gets ahead of its competition to illicit customer reviews. They actually send their top reviewers free products to generate unique review content. (Amazon Vine). Most companies probably can't afford to do this, so is why I recommend self reviews. If you're not a strong writer possibly hire a copy writer to proof-read.
Customer Images (Moderated): Adding customer generated images is an easy way to get additional unique photos and alt text.
Some thoughts, hope it helps,
Don
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
No-follow Links - Do they work for SEO?
Seems like some of the big sides only give no-follow links now are they still useful for building link authority? Do you have any experience? Thanks
Link Building | | seoman101 -
Republishing content?
What is the thoughts on republishing content that has already been published on a big new site onto company blog? My gut feeling is at best Google will ignore at worst a penalty could be round the corner? All thoughts welcome. ThanksRichard
Link Building | | seoman100 -
Are sites that "smell of SEO" being demoted?
I'm working with a site owner who recently hired an SEO to work on just one particular type of keyword. It seems like the more work the SEO did, the lower the keyword gradually dropped. Granted, the "work" is pretty low quality - anchor texted bookmarks, comments and low quality articles. We're doing an experiment where we are going to disavow those links and see if the previous rankings return. Another site that I am consulting with has a lot of good natural links and then some anchor texted links, but from decent sources - some guest posts (on good sites - not a spammy site that exists only for guest posts) and some places where decent websites have agreed to link to the site. The anchor texted links do not make up very much of the overall anchor text. There is good diversity and lots of brand and url anchored links. It seems like the more the SEO does for this site, the more the rankings drop. And it's not all about anchor text. The SEO placed a link in a relevant directory, using the url as anchor...rankings dropped a little. They obtained an expired domain with relevant and very natural links and 301'd it to the new domain...rankings dropped several places. And so on. Occasionally the rankings will pop up a little, but overall it's a downward spiral. Check out this post by Gary Taylor. He did an experiment where he took an established site that was ranking well and threw some spammy links at it. To quote the article, 'every day goes by my ranking for the term “domains” is getting harder to maintain.' He recently tweeted that he has been removing and disavowing links and the rankings are returning. I was looking at searches for real estate related terms in different cities. In some cities, the top sites are ones that have ZERO obvious SEO done to them. There are sites ranking on page 3 that have been SEO'd, and not all of them have poor SEO. Many are what I would consider really well done. Some of the sites ranking on page 1 have under 10 links. There was one with 2 followed links and they were not from super authoritative sites! To complicate matters though, if you look at searches like "Toronto Real Estate Agents" some of the top sites have lots of keyword anchor texted links. Perhaps this should be a blog post rather than a Q&A, but I would love to hear some of your thoughts. My personal thought is that Google's main goal with Penguin and the unnatural links warnings is to make it so that not only is it not profitable to try to manipulate the SERPS, but that every time you try to do so, you potentially do your rankings harm. I used to say that Penguin could only affect a site on the date of a Penguin refresh, but I am thinking now that Google has managed to roll Penguin into the algorithm to some extent so that it can demote the majority of any work that smells of SEO. Thoughts?
Link Building | | MarieHaynes0 -
Is my SEO Strategy is good to rank ?
I just planned my SEO Strategy for low competition keywords 1. Submit articles to top 30+ web 2.0 sites 2. Submit bookmark to top 50 sites 3. Submit Article directories to top 10 sites 4. Link them all with Wiki and blog comments Kindly let me know your suggestions
Link Building | | chandubaba0 -
Seo industry for seasonal items
Just wondering what type of link building people do for seasonal sites take http://www.sukkahworld.com or http://www.wreathsgalore.com as an example Out of season nobody wants to talk about a Christmas wreath. Do you just a get links off topic or focus on on site content and then get all your links during your season?
Link Building | | DavidKonigsberg0 -
Are link exchanges bad for SEO these days? Also, is adding my site to free yet relevent directory sites a bad idea?
I operate a computer services company in Eugene, Oregon called "Eugene Computer Geeks". We do a lot of web design, and need incoming links to my site very badly. Lately I've been asking clients if they would link to me, but they almost always ask for a link in return. If we exchange links, does Google penalize my site? Would the incoming link be better for SEO if I'm not linking back to the other site? ALSO Is it possible that manually submitting my site to free, yet relevant web directories would hurt my rankings? It's not a big deal to me if it doesn't help my rankings, as I see a benefit to having my site listed, but wanted to make sure there wasn't a chance that it would hurt my rankings. As far as I know all the directories are free from SPAM, porn, warez, or anything like that. Thanks!
Link Building | | eugenecomputergeeks0 -
Getting into DMOZ for my coaching site
Hello, Before I submit to DMOZ, I'm wondering if my site is one that would get indexed: www.bobweikel.com Also, if you have any hints beyond what I can read at DMOZ I'd really appreciate it. I don't want to submit and then after several months get rejected.
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
Getting a link from a page on a site with high site DA but low PA?
Does anyone know if it is still worth it getting a link from a page on a site with a really low Page Authority - say a news page on a site that has an SEO Moz tool bar PA of just 1 or 2, but the domain of the site has a high DA like say 83 Is this worth getting?? Thanks
Link Building | | inhouseninja0