Can we really learn from the best?
-
Hi All,
When I started my site (an eCommerce site) I copied (or tried) a lot of things from the best eCommerce sites I thought were out there.
Sites like Zappos, ZALES, Overstock, BlueNile etc.
I got hit pretty hard with latest algo changes and I posted my question at Google Webmaster Help forum I received answers from Gurus that we are keyword stuffing etc. (mainly with internal links to product pages but other issues as well).
My answer was a link to Zappos and other sites showing that what we do is nothing compared to them. I also showed dozens of SEO "errors" like using H1 tag 10 times per page, not using canonicals and many other issues. The Guru's answer was "LOL" - who am I to compare myself to Zappos.
So the question is... Can we take them for example or are they first simply because they are the biggest?
-
Companies that spend more time building their brand are going to be trusted more than companies that spend most of their time on SEO. Companies that have well-known brands and high-traffic websites with hundreds of thousands + quality external links, an aged domain, lots of brand-related signals (e.g. searches for their brand) are going to be given the benefit of a doubt.
The rest of us are S.O.L. until we can build that brand presence. You have to toe the line.
Yes you can learn from the big brand sites, especially when it comes to things like upselling, cross-selling, brand building, email marketing... but having worked with a lot of big brands I can tell you that their SEOs don't typically know anymore than others. They also have to go through a maze of bureaucracy to get anything implemented. As such, I don't pay much attention to what they are doing SEO-wise. If something works for them it probably has more to do with the power of their brand and domain than it does with a particular tactic. Emulating them with regard to SEO is typically useless, at best, and often dangerous.
-
Is there an eCommerce website (or several) you can recommend to look at?
-
In the early days we did what we wanted and had good results. Then we started to read everything out there about SEO & Marketing etc, and started to implement these changes which gave negative results.
We then started to look at what others were doing, if we felt they were the best we tried to emulate them.
What we realised pretty quick is, it doesn't work! We just have the perception they are doing it right, but we don't have access to their analytics to know if they are. You have to try things out and find out what works best for your company. Often this involves asking your customers what they like and what works for them.
I've read so many articles from experts that say don't use "send" on a call to action button. For one client that simple word has worked wonders. For another "read more" had a higher conversion than any thing else we used.
-
Sorry it wasn't clear.
All of our content is unique and we are not in the same industry as they are.
By "copied" I meant concept, structural design, naming conventions etc.
Copied IDEAS...Thanks
-
It's great to learn some new ideas from the best eCommerece websites. I would recommend you to take them for example of the good things on their website and not from the Black Hat part.
Also, it's very general to say that they are "the best", because it depends on the keywords you are searching in order to see them first on Google.
Hope that helps!
-
Hello there,
Being quite new to SEO and also PPC I rely a lot on MOZ blog and Q&A as well as other sources and I do keep an eye on bigger companies (I manage an e-commerce site for a small comapany) to get ideas and also to compare what I do to what they do, where I can improve, where I am going wrong. And I do think you can learn from them, but the way I see it is that you shouldn't be kind of replicating strategies or tactics that others have implemented because they might not work for you, and in this case they didn't.
Some of my competitors have Websites that rank well and better than the one I manage but they have tons of keywords on each page and their sites are optimized for search engines not for humans.
Consider also the link profiles of these companies, I am sure Amazon doesn't struggle in acquiring natural links from relevant and authoritative sites.
My suggestion is that you should optimize your website for your audience using as many best practices as you can and doing it by evaluating your objectives and goals. Also use competitors and bigger companies to get ideas and to differentiate your OVP
Good luck
-
Hi there,
I also run an eCommerce site. And we rank number one for many keywords in the Disco, DJ and Lighting product categories. You have told me exactly why you failed to rank in your first opening line: "I copied".
Google doesn't want content that is identical to an already existing, larger company. Why should it include your website in SERPs when you're just a copy of a much larger website?
I personally don't see anything blackhat about Zappos. But I've literally just grazed over it.
What you need to do is be unique. All content should be unique to your website. No copying manufacturer descriptions, no keyword stuffing your descriptions, using correct title tags, h1 tags and alt tagging your images.
We have competitors who have been a PR 5 and ranking better with certain keywords for years. Thankfully, Penguin and Panda took care of them and we were boosted to that beautiful number 1 spot in the SERPS.
SEO in ecommerce requires patience, beautiful content, unique descriptions, SIMPLE navigation and customer experience.
You need to find the thin line between a fantastic user experience and a crawlers dream!
I don't take any "examples" from any website. I do my SEO how my website needs to be done. I know my website, I know my products, I've studied the keywords and phrases people give Google to find certain products and I have utilized those keywords to create content people WANT to read as well as content that crawlers are going to love.
Being the biggest does help you rank. However, if they try any blackhat techniques, Google will penalize them just as hard as you or I. But do you need to use Google to reach Amazon? Or do you just go directly to Amazon? They have no problem with paying $$$$$'s a month to sit pretty at the top of the serps sponsored section.
Just my two cents
Tom
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
-
Influencers, links, guest blogging, content what really works ?
Hi there, I am scratching my head lately and wondering what is the best in order to increase the ranking of my website... I am sure most of you will say a combination of everything but what else... I know that if an influencer (someone who has a important Klout score) writes about you and links to your website is helpful but what about having a link on a webpage like that : https://goo.gl/YYy5f9 is it still worth my time asking for link on those types of webpages (not that they aren't considered spam according to moz spam score) What about having a link in article on the USA today, what is more important, the fact that the usa today writes about you and has a high DA or the person who writes it ? I am in tourism industry and work with hotels is it worth my time contacting hotels I work with for links or see that a hotel page is not related to what I do which is bicycle tours, or am I wasting my time ? Finally, can't I outrank my competitors by just being more relevant in my content than them know I have a DA of already 38...without chasing links and a website that is 10 years old. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Can I use two sitemaps?
I have a Magento website. I am going to add a Wordpress blog under /blog. If I setup each with its own webmaster tools to submit a sitemap does it hurt anything?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tylerj0 -
Can subdomains avoid spam penalizations?
Hello everyone, I have a basic question for which I couldn't find a definitive answer for. Let's say I have my main website with URL: www.mywebsite.com And I have a related affiliates website with URL: affiliates.mywebsite.com Which includes completely different content from the main website. Also, both domains have two different IP addresses. Are those considered two completely separate domains by Google? Can bad links pointing to affiliates.mywebsite.com affect www.mywebsite.com in any way? Thanks in advance for any answer to my inquiry!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Can I undo 301 redirects to purchase site
A website I am thinking of buying has 301 redirected all pages on his site to one page that explains the site is closing down. If I tell him to change the 301 to 302s will I be able to recover the old pages on the site and keep the authority, rankings and link power of the old pages and not the "Closing page"? Is all i have to do is undo the 301 redirects and everything will go back to how the site was before the 301s were in place? Or will I lose all the link power on individual pages because they already transferred to the "Closing page"? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | atomiconline0 -
Duplicate Content... Really?
Hi all, My site is www.actronics.eu Moz reports virtually every product page as duplicate content, flagged as HIGH PRIORITY!. I know why. Moz classes a page as duplicate if >95% content/code similar. There's very little I can do about this as although our products are different, the content is very similar, albeit a few part numbers and vehicle make/model. Here's an example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seowoody
http://www.actronics.eu/en/shop/audi-a4-8d-b5-1994-2000-abs-ecu-en/bosch-5-3
http://www.actronics.eu/en/shop/bmw-3-series-e36-1990-1998-abs-ecu-en/ate-34-51 Now, multiply this by ~2,000 products X 7 different languages and you'll see we have a big dupe content issue (according to Moz's Crawl Diagnostics report). I say "according to Moz..." as I do not know if this is actually an issue for Google? 90% of our products pages rank, albeit some much better than others? So what is the solution? We're not trying to deceive Google in any way so it would seem unfair to be hit with a dupe content penalty, this is a legit dilemma where our product differ by as little as a part number. One ugly solution would be to remove header / sidebar / footer on our product pages as I've demonstrated here - http://woodberry.me.uk/test-page2-minimal-v2.html since this removes A LOT of page bloat (code) and would bring the page difference down to 80% duplicate.
(This is the tool I'm using for checking http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php) Other "prettier" solutions would greatly appreciated. I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Thanks,
Woody 🙂1 -
How can I see all the pages google has indexed for my site?
Hi mozers, In WMT google says total indexed pages = 5080. If I do a site:domain.com commard it says 6080 results. But I've only got 2000 pages in my site that should be indexed. So I would like to see all the pages they have indexed so I can consider noindexing them or 404ing them. Many thanks, Julian.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | julianhearn0 -
Best method to update navigation structure
Hey guys, We're doing a total revamp of our site and will be completely changing our navigation structure. Similar pages will exist on the new site, but the URLs will be totally changed. Most incoming links just point to our root domain, so I'm not worried about those, but the rest of the site does concern me. I am setting up 1:1 301 redirects for the new navigation structure to handle getting incoming links where they need to go, but what I'm wondering is what is the best way to make sure the SERPs are updated quickly without trashing my domain quality, and ensuring my page and domain authority are maintained. The old links won't be anywhere on the new site. We're swapping the DNS record to the new site so the only way for the old URLs to be hit will be incoming links from other sites. I was thinking about creating a sitemap with the old URLs listed and leaving that active for a few weeks, then swapping it out for an updated one. Currently we don't have one (kind of starting from the bottom with SEO) Also, we could use the old URLs for a few weeks on the new site to ensure they all get updated as well. It'd be a bit of work, but may be worth it. I read this article and most of that seems to be covered, but just wanted to get the opinions of those who may have done this before. It's a pretty big deal for us. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/uncrawled-301s-a-quick-fix-for-when-relaunches-go-too-well Am I getting into trouble if I do any of the above, or is this the way to go? PS: I should also add that we are not changing our domain. The site will remain on the same domain. Just with a completely new navigation structure.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CodyWheeler0 -
Where is the best place to find an SEO coach?
I'm looking for a coach who can help me get to the next level with SEO and help me determine what's junk and what's true advice. Are there any recommendations any of you have out there on where to find such a person?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadesmith0