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
-
Other sites linking to our site through sitewide footers
Hello, We have other sites linking to our site through images in sitewide footers, resulting in a link from every page of each site. Those sites are not owned by us and they decided to link to us on their own. They usually link to us as their "sponsor" or "partner", sponsor as in sponsor of some event and partner as in we sometimes work together on joint initiatives. I've searched Moz forum and other articles, but haven't been able to find an answer to this question. We'd like to make sure Google doesn't consider it to be spammy and we don't get any sort of penalty. Should we ask them not to link to us through those images in a sitewide footer or ask them to simply add "nofollow"? We don't want to remove those links if they are not considered to be harmful and removing them will hurt our DA/PA.
Link Building | | marynau0 -
If My site has 20 DA will it be good to get backlinks from a very low DA 3 site for free
is there any side effects to get backlinks from a site which has low DA than you?
Link Building | | ShashankDubey10 -
Need help for SEO
After Penguin 5 what are the major changes in onpage that is necessary and what are the best techniques for link building?
Link Building | | Chirag7530 -
Do I have to be worried about listing my events on third-party sites with the same content?
Hello everyone, We run classes and we just released our 2014 schedule. I am thinking of manually posting each class on the various event sites on the web (zvents, eventbrite, yelp, etc.) Should I worry about any sort of penalty if the content of these events are exactly the same? Also, some allow links within the description, my plan was to have 1-3 links going back to my product page with varying anchor text. Is there anything I should worry about with this plan? Thanks in advance for any help
Link Building | | CleanEdisonInc0 -
SEO Powersuite
SEO PowerSuite Link Assitant Anyone use this tool? May I ask if possible tips about this tool? Just purchased an Enterprise edition, but Im afraid I dont have enough ample time to go over the instructions. Any tips you have will be appreciated..thank you.
Link Building | | SkyHigh810 -
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 -
Links from Related Sites with Low PR or semi-related sites with High PR?
Is it better to get a link from a site with lower PR but related content or higher PR but semi-related or unrelated content? For example, if I sell shoes, would a link from a PR1 or PR2 shoe or apparel site be better or a link from PR4 website that sells books be better? I'm not talking about sites with completely unrelated content, but how relevant is PR in obtaining relevant links if I am trying to raise the PR and rankings of my own site?
Link Building | | applesofgold0 -
Promoting a Technical Site
I have to promote a manufacturer's rep site. They deal in process control instruments,and they don't have much original content. Creating it is hard for me due to the technical nature of the business. If any Mozzers have an idea I'd love to hear it.
Link Building | | waynekolenchuk0