Practical SEO for Ecommerce

The #EcomChat session on “Practical SEO for Ecommerce” proved as popular as we expected because we’ve all got an opinion on SEO! Below are a few of the excellent comments from the one hour session. As ever, there were 3 rough outline questions to start the conversation:

1. Do ecommerce teams need an SEO specialist any more?
2. What can an ecommerce team do to radically improve SEO results?
3. Which tools are essential to do SEO?

Q1: “Do ecommerce teams need an SEO specialist any more?”

• @SEONorth: started the ball rolling by saying yes, understanding of search engines is still too critical to revenue although offsite less specialist now.
• @ewanstevenson: of 7thingsmedia made an interesting observation, that many ecommerce teams have absorbed a working knowledge of good SEO practice, but it’s confidence in the area that is often lacking.
• @aattias:shared his view “not a specialist necessarily but someone with decent knowledge helps. Product knowledge is as important imo. Outsourcing can work.”
• @emmabonar: made an interesting point, “I think it’s just as important that social / PR / content producers have an understanding of SEO” and @andrewbaker72: voiced his view that SEO is an essential ecommerce link, “Yes, absolutely essential that SEO involved in all aspects of design and deployment.”
• @rossknight: made a valid point that from a dev’s POV, having a SEO expert to check your homework is invaluable. Dev and SEO cross checking obviously needs done getting done pre production. Easy to let a code change screw up urls or similar”. The technical side of SEO is often overlooked in @jamesgurd experience – SEOs need to work closely with dev teams to ensure dev plans & SEO work together.
• @acchaudre: “As long as there will be search engines & users searching online, ecommerce teams will need SEO specialists.”
• @pferron: expressed the view that a working knowledge and confidence are a good grounding and required but someone knee deep in detail in house or agency is crucial as part of mix.
• @philpearce: raised delved into the murky waters of SEO/affiliate by saying “are affiliate feeds out-ranking original product content, and if competitiveness is niche = needs specialists.”
• @carmenmardiros: “It’s the very diverse skill set of a good SEO that makes them invaluable in-house.”
• @magique83: chipped in with “Yes they still need someone with excellent technical knowledge in my opinion. Technical Ecom SEO is extremely complicated” and his view that link building should now be handled by a content team but someone needs to oversee changes to navigation, URLs and structure.
• @ahmed_khalifa: explained that speaking from personal experience, it’s very important to have in-house specialist. Too many important factors to miss out.
• @misterwesthead: argued that it depends on the size of site. Big sites need specialist knowledge, small sites less so but still need some knowledge.
• @jon_taylor: made the valid point that SEO is complex, so is building an ecom site well, often not enough core SEO stuff gets baked into core requirements = problems.

@danbarker: posed a teaser to see how important to ecommerce people really think SEO specialists are: if you setting up a new in-house ecommerce team of 4-6 people today, is ‘SEO Specialist’ one of your job titles? @emmabonar replied “No, but it’s in the person spec for some roles”, @magique83 said “I’d say it depends on the knowledge of the rest of the team. If none of the other 5 have the knowledge then yes”. @lakey: put forward a different view, “Nope. Content folks / merchandisers / CR optimisers / analysts should all have a strong understanding of SEO”.

@jamesgurd: view is that an SEO specialist isn’t necessarily required but an SEO owner is, somebody who understands the commercial impact of SEO, the different elements that combine to make an SEO plan and how to co-ordinate these with other digital marketing. The expertise for SEO planning and tactical execution can come from outside the organisation but there must be someone within who owns how it fits in to the bigger picture to ensure SEO works towards the overall ecommerce goals and objectives.

However, the decision must surely depend on the type of business, the market it’s in and the level of competition. In highly competitive, specialised markets, an SEO specialist can be worth their weight in gold. @magique83 summed it up neatly by saying that the danger with SEO these days is that everyone thinks they are now clued up on it but it’s changed so much in past 6-12 months. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing in the wrong hands!

Dan Barker moved the conversation on to Q2 as the comments flowed thick and fast.

Q2: What can an ecommerce team do to radically improve SEO results?

• @andrewbaker72: Plan & deliver coherent strategy and deploy schema.
• @affrich: to improve, you must understand the reasons for poor performance and seek to rectify them- technical, content, links.
• @ericferguson1: for many, huge steps can be made by applying SEO discipline of site architecture, clear navigation and standard keywords.
• @ewanstevenson: a great way to see quick results is via a local/geographical strategy, calling on UGC (reviews etc) to populate with regional data.
• @chloe_eCMP: i. create better product pages, ii. create some interesting, relevant onsite content, iii. encourage social shares.
• @pferron: understand the limitation of CMS being used 4 your site, ensure basic covered for out of stock & dup content issues define KPIs.
• @ProjectOcto: Create content – you will struggle for traffic/sales if you don’t have customers.
• @OmetriaData:create excellent content to help your readership 1st and improve #SEO in the process
• @folkdigital: bring the PR team into the SEO workflow. PR gets good coverage but without SEO oversight it often doesn’t help rankings.
• @magique83: Quickest wins in SEO revolve around site/URL structure changes, internal linking, Schema markup, on page content.

@danbarker summarised the key points into some pithy soundbites to take away and throw carelessly into presentations:

1. Get going properly with Google+
2. Implement Schema.
3. No quick wins – audit, plan, execute.
4. Educate, set targets, monitor.
5. Concentrate on product data/copy.
6. ‘Content’.
7. Mine for opportunities in GWT/BWT.
8. ‘Black hat’.
9. But ‘Don’t go black hat’.

He also gave a handy list of SEO tips based on his experience:

1. Link to prods/cats with high search volumes from homepage.
2. Make sure prod pages are canonicalized.
3. Put content onto your main site, don’t silo it all on a blog.
4. Form content around product categories, not just scattergun.
5. Put in work now for seasons way in the future.
6. Make sure your brand SERP is great – & clean up any bad reviews.
7. Use other channels if you can too. eg: Use email to boost social chatter to boost pages that you’re using to boost rankings.

With time running out we moved swiftly on to Q3 for a 5 min burst of enthusiasm…

Q3: Which tools are essential for SEO today, particularly for ecommerce sites?

• @SEONorth: The usual: Majestic, Mozbar, ScreamingFrog etc. Specific to ecommerce, I’d add a good analytics attribution model. Copyscape or any tool that helps find duplicate content is handy when product long tail holds so much value.
• @ewanstevenson: Screaming Frog – SEO Spider is pretty useful especially for the SMEs or freelancers.
• @folkdigital: nothing is essential apart from Google Analytics and Webmaster tools. Everything else just aids workflow.
• @andrewbaker72: Analytics (GA), Webmaster Tools, Moz or Majestica (to check link profile)… but number 1 is @screamingfrog Essential!
• @magique83: AWR Cloud for Rankings, Moz OSE is invaluable, Analytics or more importantly someone who can use Analytics properly.
• @philpearce: my favourate SEO tools include: SeoMoz, SilkTide, LinkSleuth, ScreamingFrog, Blekko, RankPanel bit.ly/15P8Lk7. Also GoogleShopping feed validators Celebird, W3C and GoogMC – bit.ly/15PocbO, bit.ly/15PoaAJ, bit.ly/15PocbN.
• @danbarker: Amazon search suggestions is a nice one, and best seller rank/reviews there for judging which products/cats have potential.
• @NedPoulter: Have to say that Screaming Frog is ALWAYS featured in my top SEO tools #ecomchat incredibly affordable, and so many uses.

And with that, the hour was up and @danbarker and @jamesgurd glided silently into the digital ether.

Do leave a note in the comments if you have any more comments to add. And please spread the word to anyone you think may be interested, or join in if you’re free at 1pm UK time. Otherwise, simply follow the #EcomChat hashtag on Twitter.

Thanks!

Dan & James.

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