Writing cornerstone content for a shop (eCommerce) website
-
Hi there
I am trying to optimise my site to the best that it can be. Since the most recent Google updates, everything that I reading is saying cornerstone content with lots of valuable content is a really good strategy as it tells Google what is the most important content on your site. Writing articles that are well structured and have give the user a detailed overview of that subject. Lots of top SEO's are saying 3000 words plus on these pages.
My question is, how do I go about this with and eCommerce site? Obviously that majority of the keywords that I want to target are product related and these are the pages that I want to come up in the search. How do I go about creating cornerstone content for these pages? I am thinking that one of my cornerstone pieces of content would be "The Ultimate Guide to [my main product category]". But that product has numerous products related to it, all of which have their own keywords, so how would this help the products to rank?
The site had two main product categories, with numerous products under each of those categories. The two main categories are targeting my best performing keywords, but currently the landing page for these is the main product category pages.
I am really struggling to work out the best strategy here. The content that I have on my actual products pages is comprehensive and covers a lot of detail about that particular product and has started to rank for product keywords, but I am guessing Google wouldn't consider that to be cornerstone content.
I hope this make sense.
Any advice anyone can give would be really useful.
Many thanks in advance
-
For a retail site, fewer things are more killer than.... "help the visitor learn about the product, decide what to buy, learn how to use the product, learn how to fix the product, and how to enjoy".
-
The issue is getting the customers in the first place. The only thing we can rely on is producing great content as at the moment we don’t have the customer base or the traffic, which is why I think producing the killer content is what we need to do.
-
Questions received from customers by email and phone are the most important driver of the content plan. At the same time, you must know the products well enough that you can identify the things that the customer needs to know, but is not asking.
We pay no attention to content length, other than telling enough to convey the information. I bet we don't have a single 3000 word article on our retail sites.
-
Yes. This is exactly what we have done. We have great products and put huge efforts into researching everything about them. We have reviewed them. Fixed them. And most of all enjoyed them. Every product we have we tested and know inside out. Naturally we have then written reviews on the products and other articles relating to the subject, but possibly the issue here is that it’s not enough? Maybe the structure is not right, which I what I am really wanting get to.
You say don’t focus on blogs or articles (content), or length, but naturally this is one thing google loves. The key content on your site. The cornerstone or x10 content. I guess what you mean is that by doing all of the above and being at one with the product the content will flow naturally. But surely there has to be some kind of keyword strategy which then leads to a content strategy or, vice versa. This surely is the basis of on page SEO?
-
I would step away from the idea of blogs and blog posts and 3k articles.
Instead decide how you can build a website designed to help the visitor learn about the product, decide what to buy, learn how to use the product, learn how to fix the product, and how to enjoy. This requires authors who have deep product knowledge and experience, and who also understand the customer. Targeting keywords is natural if you have the knowledge and experience to do the above.
-
Thanks for your response. Yes, you don’t see this often. Most traffic from organic is driven to the product pages. Obviously we are a young site and competing with people who have been in it longer and ranking well. Having said that, the niche is relatively uncompetitive. With regard to content, do you mean that you should write about your product or to you target audience in extensive blog posts. 3k plus words. With good structure and answering the questions that the user wants answered. With a table of contents etc.
I guess the main issue I am having with these pages is choosing the keywords to target as ultimately I will be competing with my product/product category pages.
Does that make sense?
-
An effective way for a small business to succeed in search is to build an ecommerce site with an extensive content library or build a large information site with a store. This should be done without concern for which type of page gets the top ranking, and with a plan to direct content-consuming visitors to sales pages. Most businesses do not take this route because they fear of paying two rain-makers for each order-packer.
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
-
How my website is dropping?
Hello there guys! My website www.ntcbrasil.com.br is dropping comparing to my competitors. My main keyword is: geotextil
On-Page Optimization | | ffbrunoff
And my main competitor is: www.mantasbrasil.com.br We have better and original content. We have better structure website with better SEO practice (so a i thought). I'm not able to find out what's making the difference between my website dropping and my competitors raking first. This is in google Brazil www.google.com.br If anyone could give me any direction i would appreciate. Thanks a lot!! Bruno Nunes0 -
We have new website abexpress.ae. The website is not ranking in the first page when I search with the Domain name itself. Any tips to improve the SEO for a new website?
We have launched a website abexpress.ae. The website is not ranking well even if we search with the Domain name. The Domain authority of the website it 10. How to increase this?
On-Page Optimization | | AlliedTransport0 -
SEO for replicated website system
I have a client who has 750 agents. They want to provide them all with a website on a subdomain (mysite.domain.com). The sites will all contain basically the same info, however, this info can be customized on each site by each rep. Most of these reps sell pretty much the same thing, so the customization wont be very dramatic. So the question is, how can we build this replicated website system and deliver SEO value to each site?
On-Page Optimization | | gotchamobi0 -
Google Website title not showing correctly
Hi Im not sure what triggered this - Page title is showing up as 'Isagenix Australia' while it should be <title>Buy Isagenix with 30 Day money back guarantee & Free Shipping in June</title> Previous title was 'Isagenix Australia - Read Isagenix reviews & buy isagenix products' but now it seems to have a mind of its own. Any suggestions would be helpful
On-Page Optimization | | IsaCleanse0 -
Duplicate Content - Deleting Pages
The Penguin update in April 2012 caused my website to lose about 70% of its traffic overnight and as a consequence, the same in volume of sales. Almost a year later I am stil trying to figure out what the problem is with my site. As with many ecommerce sites a large number of the product pages are quite similar. My first crawl with SEOMOZ identified a large number of pages that are very similar - the majority of these are in a category that doesn't sell well anyway and so to help with the problem I am thinking of removing one of my categories (about 1000 products). My question is - would removing all these links boost the overall SEO of the site since I am removing a large chunk of near-duplicate links? Also - if I do remove all these links would I have to put in place a 301 redirect for every single page and if so, what's the quickest way of doing this. My site is www.modern-canvas-art.com Robin
On-Page Optimization | | robbowebbo0 -
Should you write first - optimize later?
We are redesigning the website for our blog and podcast for an upcoming press release. In rewriting to improve some of our blog posts, podcast descriptions, copywriting and overall presentation, would you recommend writing for the reader _first - _then optimizing through SEOMoz? Or should you write with SEO in mind first? I'm a rookie to SEO and would appreciate any recommendations or strategies you may have. Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | UncleTodd0 -
Duplicate Content - Potential Issue.
Hello, here we go again, If I write an article somewhere, lets say Squidoo for instance, then post it to my blog on my website will google see this as duplicate content and probably credit Squidoo for it or is there soemthing I can do to prevent this, maybe a linkk back to Squidoo from my website or a dontfollow on my website? Im not sure so any help here would be great, Also If I use other peoples material in my blog and link back to them, obviously I dont want the credit for the original material I am simply collating some of this on my blog for others to have a specific library if you like. Is this going to damage my websites reputation? Thanks again peeps. Craig Fenton IT
On-Page Optimization | | craigyboy0 -
Website tables
Hi guys , my website www.starpluservices.com on google first page for the past 2 years and we were page rank 4, 2 months ago we changed all page titles and Keewords after that the page rank droped to 1 and we are not anymore in page 1 in google, we have done all this changes to target another keyword Office Cleaning London, now after 2 months I had 3 quotes for SEO , and 2 SEO companies told me that I need a new website because my one was done with tables and the other company told me that if I still on first page with some keywords andon the 2 page with cleaning companies to dont make a new website just update my one!! Could anyone let me know what should I do? Regards Sergio
On-Page Optimization | | starplus0