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
-
Document download sites linking to my site. Should I disavow?
I downloaded my links through the Google Webmaster site and I have a number of new links that appear to be coming from document download sites. They have basically taken my PDFs and have them to where they can be downloaded. They are also linking back to my site and creating what I feel are sketchy links. I don't actually want traffic coming to these PDFs. They are basically sample articles for my writing company and it's just a portfolio. Here's one of the links: http://www.give-me-doc.com/Trailer-Brake-Types.pdf So, what or can I do about them? Should I disavow them? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks,
Link Building | | wordsyouwant
Valerie0 -
What are Best Practices for Ault Site SEO
Has anyone here had experience doing SEO for an Adult DVD website? A company has approached me and they obviously only want White Hat practices. I have used open site explorer to do research on some competitors. The top competitors of this company seem to have only a few high PR links from High Authority industry sites and almost all have a link from the Yahoo Directory. Does anyone know where or how to create high authority content links from this niche? It seems that most of the competitor links are on sub par pages and are single links in the side nav of other sites. I am not sure if I can post a link to the company here but any suggestions on link building for adult sites would be great. Please remember they are a retailer and don't have pop up advertising or any illegal content. Thanks,
Link Building | | macs220 -
Creating your own blog for back linking to your site
Our competitor seems to be linked to a blog that they have created themselves. From an SEO perspective is it worthwhile creating a blog that is related to your particular industry and then only including links back to your site. Also is there any way to upload ,articles etc automatically to the blog to cut down on the people hours involved in updating content?
Link Building | | Hardley10 -
Http://fiverr.com is good for seo to buy services?
fiverr.com is good for seo to buy services? Can you recommend best seller?
Link Building | | surajrathore0 -
New content checklist
Hi everyone, Hope your day is super fantastic. I am working on a new content publishing checklist. Once we publish a new article or blog post, what are the sites/ links/ actions to take to distribute the content and "get it out there". I looked around on here, but couldn't find one. Let's start a great discussion and then I will compile the answers and publish. Something like: Social:
Link Building | | okuma
Facebook
Twitter
G+
Pinterest Bookmark:
del.icio.us
stumble
rededit Answer Q's:
Yahoo Answers
Quora What do you think? Too secret sauce for a general discussion? Thanks.0 -
SEO Over-optimization
How do you know when your doing too much SEO? Started back on a couple of sites in which I had done very little to no Seo. Dont want to get an over-optimization penalty.
Link Building | | veed230 -
What to do with outdated (but ranking) content?
I'm SEOing for a theatre. We've got show pages that rank when searching for the business, but are outdated as the shows are from past years. The pages aren't accessible at all from the site now, but still exist in domain and are linked to by google. If you search the business, the results are: 1. [biz name] 2. [biz name] - tickets 3-6. outdated shows Should these pages be left up, or taken down and redirected home? Would there be any seo boost to the homepage from 301ing them home, or do you think it'd be more beneficial to have more results available as entry points into the site?
Link Building | | RyanWhitney150 -
SEO Triage - What matters most?
If you only had 8 hours to work on an SEO project... How would you spend your time to get the fastest results? On-page optimization, or link-building? Context: On-Page Optimization: "A" grade (SEOMOZ On-Page Report Card) Keywords: "moderately competitive" (SEOMOZ Keyword Difficulty Tool) Domain Authority: 33 (SEOMOZ Competitive Link Analysis)
Link Building | | JessicaCox0