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
-
How Can A SubDomain Out Perform A Root Domain?
Hi guys! I have a rather strange SEO question. It may not be that strange at all actually. If a site has a subdomain or a shopping cart that is on a subdomain through a third-party shopping cart provider, can the third party shopping cart transfer value to the subdomain causing the subdomain to have greater domain authority than the main site or root domain? Another question, this subdomain, up until yesterday, blocked google from crawling it with robots txt, however it has a much higher domain authority than the root domain. The root domain has a really low domain authority, despite not blocking google from crawling it. How is this possible? I hope these questions make sense. I am a little stumped & trying to figure out why the subdomain is out-performing the main site despite being hidden from search, if that's even the case. Please let me know if I have it all wrong..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Prae0 -
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 -
What is the best way to take advantage of this keyword?
Hi SEO's! I've been checking out webmaster tools (screenshot attached) and noticed that we're getting loads of long tail searches around a search query 'arterial and venous leg ulcers' - on a side note we're a nursing organisation so excuse the content of the search!!! The trouble is that google is indexing a PDF page which we give out as a freebie:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 9868john
http://www.nursesfornurses.com.au/admin/uploads/5DifferencesBetweenVenousAndArterialLegUlcers1.pdf This PDF is a couple of years old and needs updating but its got a few links pointing to it. Ok so down to the nitty gritty, we've just launched a blog:
http://news.nursesfornurses.com.au/Nursing-news/ We have a whole wound care category in which this content belongs, and i'm trying to find the best way to take advantage of the search, so I was thinking: Create an article of about 1000 words Update the PDF and re-upload it to the main domain (not the sub domain news.nursesfornurses.com.au) Attach the PDF to the article on the blog OR would it be better to host this on the blog, and setup a 301 redirect to this page? I just need some advice on how best to take advantage of this opportunity, our blog isn't getting much search traffic at the moment (despite having 300+ articles!!) and i'm looking into how we can change that. I look forward to your response and suggestions. Thanks! qtY64B10 -
Best practice for the brand name in Page Titles
We are considering changing the way we treat our brand (TTS) in our page title tags. In MOZ I found the following advice: Optimal Format Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TTS_Group
or
Brand Name | Primary Keyword and Secondary Keyword Are these of equal merit or is the former (Primary keyword | Brand) the better route? Currently we use the second version - 'Brand | Primary Keyword' - but we are proposing to shift to 'Primary Keyword | Brand'. We currently get an awful lot of brand traffic that converts very well so I need to be sure that no harm is done as a minimum. All views appreciated. Many thanks. Jon0 -
What is the best way to incorporate region-based keywords?
Greetings Mozzers, I am wanting to get the most "bang for my buck" in regards to region based keyword pages. If I am going after the keyword "Plumber" and the region "San Antonio", would it be best to: 1- Create a San Antonio Plumber page where we can target all critical factors for the region based keyword "San Antonio Plumber"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MonsterWeb28
2- Link every instance of the term "San Antonio" and "San Antonio Plumber" throughout the site to the newly created "San Antonio Plumber" page. Thank you for any advice/clarification on this matter.0 -
What is the best way to handle special characters in URLs
What is the best way to handle special characters? We have some URL's that use special characters and when a sitemap is generate using Xenu it changes the characters to something different. Do we need to have physically change the URL back to display the correct character? Example: URL: http://petstreetmall.com/Feeding-&-Watering/361.html Sitmap Link: http://www.petstreetmall.com/Feeding-%26-Watering/361.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebRiverGroup0 -
Large site rel=can or no-index?
Hi, A large site with tens of thousands of pages, but lots of the pages are very similar. The site is about training courses, and the url structure is something like: training-course/date/time I only really want the search engines to index the actual training course pages, which is the better option for me and why?: a) rel=canonical b) noindex, nofollow Thanks, Gary.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cottamg0 -
How Can Low Quality Links Be Removed?
Let's say that in looking in OSE that you find an overall low quality link profile. Let's say that some of those links were acquired by using article marketing systems like UAW or SEO Link Vine, which were hard hit in Penguin. Let's also say that some keywords were targeted within blog networks that passed a lot of page rank to targeted pages. Let's say that at one point in time an offshore link building team was used and they posted low quality blog comments on pages with hundreds of outbound links. Let's say as a result of the drop in SERPS that you've finally been convinced that there must be a better way and in the process join SEO Moz - and now you want to clean up the low quality link profile. How does one go about removing links on such a diverse number of sites? Are there best practices for how to remove links you longer want pointed to your site? Or is it simply best to go on about the work of building a lot of quality links and let the past be in the past? Thanks for your input Mozzers...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sdennison0