SEO for e-commerce, linking, brand mentions, insights diagnostics

[BiltHamber1]

Hi,

I run the seo for www.bilthamber.com

It is an e-commerce site selling car care products, and we also manufacture our own products.

I was wondering how the seo for an e-commerce site might compare to the seo for a blog or information based site, or other types of site. And also how the seo for a particular product page on my site might compare to a information based page on my site. Are the tactics the same? Should you try and rank for similar terms, the same generic terms, or complelty unique terms for the best seo? Or should every page try and rank for different terms, to ensure that the engines dont rank 2 or more different pages for the same search term? And how many keywords or search terms should I try and rank a particular product page for? Or an information page, or blog page? Is there a minimum or maximum that is recommomended? Does the more terms you try and rank for on a page take the weight out of each of them? So having 4 really good search terms might be better than having 10 ok generic ones?

How do I find out what are my best, most highly converting, most profitable keywords overtime for Google? I can find some information like this, but it is showing the stats for Bing UK, not Google, even though Google UK is my main engine in Moz.

My domain authority has decreased by 3 this week, this is the first time it has gone down since I started with Moz a few months back, can anyone explain why? And how this will affect the rankings ect, and how I can get it back up higher agian?

And for linking and brand mentions, what are the goals of this feature? Should I find my mentions and ask them to talk about us more and link to us properly? I'm not sure if this is right.

Should I be asking other websites to make links to our pages, or should it be organic?

And for the insights section, I am recieveing tons of issues a lot to do with duplicate content, will having the rel=carnocial tag fix these issues?

I know thats a lot for 1 question, but its been building up in my head!

Thanks in advance!

Max

[Andy.Drinkwater]

...if a serious amount of content on our site was to change, even if the new content was better, more informative and uses better keywords for our site, how dramatically could it affect our rankings? For better or worse...

There is no way to tell for sure, but if the proposed content is better, then in theory, you should see positive movements.

That said, don't ignore the user experience. You want people to perform an action on your pages, so perform some user testing or heat-mapping (Crazy Egg) to see how people are using your pages. This can often be a huge eye-opener because the worst person to ever try and evaluate how good a page is, is yourself. What you think is good is not always what others think is good.

Tracking clicks from the mouse can tell you a lot about where key components of the page should exist.

-Andy

[ClaytonJ]

Max

There is no science to what about I am to tell you. Or I have not seen it. It is my personal observation.  I think that the better quality the content is written, the better english and the more your site is updated - the better you rank. If you regularly add pages with good quality content you get improved rankings. Simple as that.

I have seen it on too many sites. As I said no science but it happens too often to sites I work on.

On dramatic changes to ranking - no such thing. That said if you can do it, and just by virtue you can by talking about it you can - you should do it.  I have no doubt it will improve your rankings. Every now and then - you get a big uplift but there is usually something incidental that also occurs, some above the line advertising works etc.

My belief is that you have the website perfect and ready to catch that "halo" or "ripple"  effect from the marketing campaign. If the site is not optimized the effects of the marketing campaign vanish and you are back to square 1.

Hope that helps. In short urging you do it, but no promises - but that is SEO!

[BiltHamber1]

Hi Andy and John,

Indeed Andy has posted a great reply there! Thank you very much! Some of your words have put my mind to ease, so thank you!

I can certainly agree with the content is king concept, it has proven to work for us. Which does remind me, if a serious amount of content on our site was to change, even if the new content was better, more informative and uses better keywords for our site, how dramatically could it affect our rankings? For better or worse...

Nice link on domain authority, John.

I feel much more knowledable now, so thank you very much guys!

Max

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Thanks John

[ClaytonJ]

Andy has created a cracking response.

I will add that recently 9 June 2015 there was an update on the mozscape calculator.  Alot of DA's dropped. SO unless you have seen a drop in rankings for keywords do not concern yourself. See link below that may assist on that issue.

http://moz.com/community/q/big-drop-in-domain-authority

Great email Andy!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Max,

That's one helluva question!

OK, so breaking it up...

I was wondering how the seo for an e-commerce site might compare to the seo for a blog or information based site

SEO is SEO, no matter what type of site you have, and the key is sticking with best practice at every step of the way. Aside from the issues the e-commerce sites send to fall foul of (duplication, cannibalisation, et al), then it is really just a case of making sure every 'i' is dotted and 't' is crossed. Your content on the site looks to be pretty unique, so you have this going for you. I haven't run a crawl on the site, so not sure if there are issues lurking beneath the hood or not. Keep a close eye on use of canonicals to help avoid duplication.

Should you try and rank for similar terms, the same generic terms, or complelty unique terms for the best seo? Or should every page try and rank for different terms,

Every page on the site needs to target its own unique phrase to avoid keyword duplication / cannibilisation and to ensure you don't have different pages trying to compete for the same phrases.

And how many keywords or search terms should I try and rank a particular product page for?

Just one per page. Keep it descriptive but remember to tag it with your brand. This will indicate to Google that you are focussed clearly on that phrase for that page. In the page itself, don't spam that phrase though. Make use of synonyms, explanations and tech specs where needed. Go all out on content as this will be one of your biggest winners.

How do I find out what are my best, most highly converting, most profitable keywords overtime for Google?

You can use the Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush to give you an idea on what you should target. There is a very good article here on MOZ that explains about undertaking Keyword Research and another here on Backlinko. Keyword Spy is another good one that is free with paid options, as is Keyword Eye.

My domain authority has decreased by 3 this week, this is the first time it has gone down since I started with Moz a few months back, can anyone explain why? And how this will affect the rankings ect, and how I can get it back up higher agian?

Start by reading how MOZ calculate these scores. But I suspect back-links are going to be the biggest factor here. Someone might chip in with more precise details on this.

**And for linking and brand mentions, what are the goals of this feature? Should I find my mentions and ask them to talk about us more and link to us properly? I'm not sure if this is right. **Should I be asking other websites to make links to our pages, or should it be organic?

Link building / Outreach / Link Acquisition - whatever you want to call it, it amounts to the same - getting a link from another site. The ideal solution here is look at your product and think who would be interested in this, then make contact with them.

Linkbuilding is a huge subject that I could write a small book on, but you need to keep it clean - don't beg for links and make sure a link has a good reason to be sat on another site, and never buy links - you will come unstuck.

And for the insights section, I am recieveing tons of issues a lot to do with duplicate content, will having the rel=carnocial tag fix these issues?

It should do, but without looking at the site myself, it's difficult to say with any certainty if this is all that is going on.

Hope this helps

-Andy