Ecommerce & Outreach
-
Hey,
Does anyone have any advice on how to approach outreach for an ecommerce site? We're in the process of doing user guides, for niche products. I wondered if this was a good angle to approach relevant communities/sites.
Or is this too time consuming for little value at the end? Is it PR outreach we should look to focus on?
Thank you
-
Hi Becky,
There have been some good replies so far but to address your question here, I think it's definitely worth doing the outreach and trying to build relationships. Unless you're a massive brand, it's hard to get noticed online without some form of outreach, at least to begin with.
In terms of time, it really does depend on your other priorities. If I had to put a time on it and given that you haven't really started yet, I'd block out maybe half a day to do some research and contact a few sites and then gauge feedback. Then build up from there.
Bear in mind that some companies will hire SEO and PR agencies to just focus on promotion of their website, so it can take up a lot of time. But if you start on it yourself with a few hours, then you get a good understanding quickly of what's involved.
A quick heads up - it's not easy! But it's important so it's worth pursuing.
I hope that helps!
Paddy
-
Great thank you for the feedback.
Should we be actively outreaching to the relevant communities or simply sharing this and seeing what the response is from this?
I think what I want to identify is how much time I need to spend on outreach. I know there is no simple answer to this
and it's ongoing of course.
-
This is exactly what I was going on about, it's great for onsite and offsite PR.
See about turning some of your guides into infographics, summarizing the data into easier bits of digestible tidbits. In the world of scan happy folks with a perpetual 5 min attention span, longer is better for SEO but not always for the user unless it's presented in a way that keeps them engaged.
Break up text with interactive bits like links or downloadable pdfs, and even images like many others say. Video is always helpful, but balance is even more important. Like a bag of trail-mix, PR needs a proper mixture of content.
-
As a fellow eCommerce admin, I believe that the best PR / Outreach we can do, is in terms of customer assistance means, what I mean is, customer help aides, information funnels that better explain, then further breakdowns of those explanations.
Reach out to your manufacturers, services that use your products along side their own ( information for items they may use but don't focus on, ( example would be if you sold lawnmower accessories, reaching out to lawn services and pitch your information pages, if they like it, they'll link to it to spread to their employees maybe or even send to clients to further back up their quality ))
When selling items, we can't really reach out to other sites / services about selling our items, that doesn't get much in return, however we reach out to them providing information that relates to them, they feel you're doing some work for them and then become more receptive.
Think back to web rings / circles back in the early days of the internet, if they were done right, sites with relative content linked up and provided this inner circle of related sites that would play off one another's information.
It's the digital's age of scratching their back while they scratch yours.
-
Hi
Thank you for the detailed response. I have just looked at their blog and its very creative with some amazing images.
Our offering is some B2C but mostly B2B. I want to invest more into brilliant imagery to go alongside our guides but this is something we'll need to work on.
Thank you for the feedback!
-
I think the key with this approach is to be genuinely helpful and to avoid actually trying to sell a product. That's incredibly counterintuitive, but the product probably isn't the endgame for your consumer. What are they using it for? Be an expert resource on THAT.
The Home Depot blog is a really excellent example of this principle in action. Instead of selling their products, they're showing very creative and aspirational ways that people can use them. They did an entire DIY series on concrete. Concrete!
So they do all of these posts about concrete, but they're never pitching you a hard sell on it. The path to purchase is there if you want it, but really they're just focused on being experts on all of the wonderful, aspirational things you can do with concrete. It's very shareable and pinnable and I want every one of those projects in my home. They've planted the idea of buying concrete without selling it to me. It's very obvious they are an authority on concrete, and it doesn't matter that they're a seller. In fact, I'm more likely to buy it from them now because their expertise on it is clear.
So I started with that instead of outreach because when the content is that good, you can push it out on social and get a good response. You can share what you're doing with influencers and they won't mind because it's obvious you know what you're talking about. Next thing you know, they're coming to you for comment as an expert. The quality has to be there or you're right, you just look like you're pushing product and that does get tend to get ignored.
-
I haven't started doing this yet, is this approach worthwhile for an ecommerce site?
I know that most outreach can be ignored if it's seen to be for ecommerce or sales.
Thanks!
-
Not enough info. Can you identify and target key influencers within each niche?
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
-
A website for China - SEO & Marketing
I want to launch a website in China and have read that the best way forward for Baidu SEO is to host the site in China itself - does anyone have experience with doing that? It seems there are a few hoops to jump through, but I imagine I'm not the first to try?
Branding | | jo910 -
Is media Outreach over?
Last week was the "anti-AdBlock" week for every media in France. They started adding pop-ups asking to disable AdBlock. Their business model based on advertisement is suffering from it. But did they ask their audience what they wanted? I would have told them: ask me questions to know more about myself and personalize my experience instead of pushing more and more ads, until my computer dies from too many scripts! What they decided? Protect their content. Now you have to log-in to access articles. The result? They delete all their links. Actually they still exist, but Google doesn't see it anymore.... So it's like they don't exist. So I'm asking you, what do you think will be the future of medias? What will happen for us as SEO guys? Do we have to focus on the ones that have non-protected contents?...
Branding | | 2MSens
I'll be more than happy to get your vision.
Have a nice day, Benoit.0 -
Ecommerce specialized portals subdomains or different domains
Hi, I am trying to decide between two different options that can affect branding and seo, I would like to hear opinions about the different options I have. Suppose that I want to open an ecommerce site for sports goods, but I want to have an specialized store for running goods. My example company name is MAZ and the country I am targetting is UK, for my general sports store I will use mazsports.co.uk, the question I have is what should I do for my "running" specialized store, every store will have a diffferent design, its own blog, its own items and its own link build campaigns. These are really different sites, but the ecommerce platform will be the same, the shopping cart could be shared and the same people working on the same warehouse will send the shipments. With this example data I see two options: Use different domains, for example for the running one, mazrunning.co.uk, using maz like the shared brand part on the domain and use a site like maz.co.uk listing the different specializations. Use subdomains for the different specializations, running.mazsports.co.uk. We will work hard to position every site, we will manage every store in its own google webmaster and analytics site, after the two initial sites (one general and one specialization) we will create a few more, maybe 5 or 6 specialized sites. In my sector people search for the specific specializations more than in general so I would not like that Google sees the running.mazsports.co.uk of the example like part of the ecommerce store mazsports.co.uk, I would like that if someone is searching for running material the site that will be shown to them is the specialized one. What should i do in this case? Thanks!
Branding | | tcruces0 -
ECommerce Sites: Sub domain vs. Unique Domains
Hello everyone! I manage 3 large eCommerce sites that sell textbooks, digital learning solutions, electronic teaching resources, etc., to three different markets in the education space (K-12, College, and Post-College/Career Search). Currently, the 3 sites live on three different sub domains of the companies main domain. Is this best practice? I assume we want all three under the same domain to consolidate domain authority. But... What if I told you that we have dozens of sub domains of the companies main domain? Some are for marketing sites, some are for digital products, some are customer-specific sites, etc. We probably have close to 100 sub domains that are used regularly. Then what if I told you that the company doesn't hardly even use the root domain (other than a handful of old pages)? Even the root domain redirects to a sub domain. Just looking for some insight on this, as I will be doing an SEO/marketing/conversion overhaul going forward. On a side note, we use Magento as an eCommerce platform, and it's rampant with duplicate content, duplicate page titles, pages with too many links, and so on and so forth. That's another problem for another day...
Branding | | brad.s.knutson0 -
Google Local & Google+
Hi All I'm looking for a bit of a steer on which direction to go in here. I have a new client and the client has a 'branch' in London. The brand is about to be franchised across the UK. They currently have a google places page in London (old style Google places, not a plus page) and nothing else on Google +. I don't really want to touch the Google place (local page) because it ranks well for their business and far higher than their organic search result. In terms of adding to their social presence, I think a Google Plus 'Brand' page would work as a generic brand, with several additional local pages being created as franchisees come on board. They have a safe and strong brand and have plans to reinforce through social. I'm about to set up the brand page and wondered if anyone has any thoughts, words of warning or points to consider? I don't know why but I feel somewhat tetchy and fearful of Google places that have yet to be merged. Thanks
Branding | | littlesthobo0 -
How to Force Merge 2 Place Listings (Both Incorrect & Different) for Same Business
Hi,
Branding | | emerald
I'm not sure what action to follow as nothing online seems to describe my Google Place situation - trying to merge 2 completely incorrect business listings for our company, that are also not identical. We have 2 listings on Google Places for our 1 company but a recent address number change has added further complication to already incorrect and different listings. our first/oldest listing was created by google but with incomplete business name, wrong map pin, completely wrong address, but shows our trip advisor reviews. created by us a year ago (we didn't realize the dupe issues) with full business name, correct address at the time (now incorrect since address number change), correct map pin, full description photos and info. This does not link to our trip advisor reviews. How to merge these when they aren't curently identical or correct? All online help seems to explain identical dupes but not this situation. What updates I tried recently: After some research, I changed all citations on the web to no.2 business name (except trip advisor who would not change), our new address number and then updated our no.2 address listing. But has stayed pending for months. It seems to be live, but still with the old incorrect address that does not match citations or our website. When I tried claiming both places with same account it showed the same pending new info I updated for no.2 in dashboard (so I can't edit no.1), but this data is not is not live on either. Last week I decided to do something radical, so logged in with a different account to reclaim no.1 and copied all information pending in no.2 to no.1 so that they should be exact same and hopefully force to merge. Both are pending and 2 different accounts now. What else can I do? We can rank locally while the 2 listings are like this. Should I call Google helpline and explain?0 -
Googe+ personal profile & business page conundrum
I have asked this question before and am still seeking help. My apologies for being repetitive and hopefully not too pesky but I am sincere in my search for guidance. I am looking for advice on how to manage my personal G+ profile along with my business G+ page. My challenge is the coordination between the two and getting people to add our biz page to their Circles instead of to me personally through my personal profile. Google+ requires that we have personal profiles- especially for authorship, but it's my business that I want to represent and promote. I do have the Google+ badge on my website and blog posts. And I am duplicating my posts on both the personal and business pages. I have joined a couple of communities and know that i need to find more and engage in those. And also, another question this brings up: in terms of the social signal aspect for our company website/blog, does it matter where I am building my Circles?
Branding | | gfiedel0 -
Ideas for formal (prom) suit & dress giveaway contest
Hi fellow Mozzers, I'm hoping to do a bit of brainstorming if you don't mind helping out. We've never done a contest for our clients before, so want some ideas on how to get the most out of it. In Australia it is coming up to formal (Prom) time, and our client sells boys suits and girls formal dresses, so I figured it was a great time for a contest. It's a brand new SEO client, so it's quite late notice...the competition can only go for about 3 weeks because most of the school formals are around late November, early December. (Not ideal I know) The client is willing to give away one free suit, and one free dress, and I want to brainstorm some ideas on the format of the contest, e.g. what should people have to do to enter the draw? Avenues we plan to promote are: Facebook (they have 600 likers), Twitter (currently not many followers), I'm thinking Australian mummy bloggers, free contest listing websites, email database. Any other ideas for promotion? The goal for the contest is to increase brand exposure, and to attract lots of links. Looking forward to hearing your suggestions. Thanks, Karl
Branding | | Static_Shift0