SEO Strategy help
-
Hi, I run a B2B 3rd party retail ecommerce site and I am kind of stuck on how to implement my SEO strategy.
So I learned from AdWords data that the best converting words to my site is the (Brand name, Model Number). Many of my B2B customers already know what they want/are looking for. Now this is all fine and dandy for adwords, but I don't really know how to implement this strategy on the SEO side. I do rank decent for some of these product keywords, but 99% of them I do not (which confuses me because some of the brands I rank high for are the more popular brands eg. more competition.) When I do keyword research on SEMRush or another site, it tells me that the competition for this type of keyword strategy is extremely high.Any Help, Advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
-
Keyword research will be key, and that's really going to be where you want to focus down. Find related terms, long tail, and opportunities you may not have considered in the past. Don't get too held up on the head terms to start - Optimize for long tails (with head terms in them), then once those get traction you'll see progress on the head term. You really need a process/strategy around keyword research. It's not as simple as going to Keyword Planner and picking a few; competitive analysis and proper research is key to the whole process.
When I talked about page depth, there is only so many clicks a user will take on a site before they move on. Basically what I meant is to organize the architecture of the site (navigation) so that the user needs as few clicks as possible to reach the products. Fewer clicks (hops) for the user also means fewer hops for Googlebot. Fewer hops between products means more quality pages indexed, more quality pages indexed means a wider spread of keywords to be found on, more keyword rankings = more traffic. Optimize for the customer first, since that's how you make money. Make the site easy to navigate, and you'll see a lot of benefit from that.
-
I actually do have content writers and video creators that create tutorial content on my products, but I am worried because the lack of views that my efforts in this aspect are futile. I am not sure how to make this work for me. I create new content every week. I do plan on creating product reviews for the products as well as providing the actual product manuals. My competitors actually do none of this at all.
Surprisingly many of my competitors do not have a higher DA than me and many of their backlinks seem blackhat and have many no-follow links.
I wrote this in my reply to Eric and I guess the thing that bewilders me with the specific keywords is that I don't understand how I do better for some specific brand/model keywords than others when I am not promoting one more than the other. For some phones I can show up on page 1 as the 4th/5th result and then for others, I don't even show up on page 5, and my competitors which i previously ranked higher for for the other keywords are on page 1 instead. And some of these products are not very popular which adds to the confusion even more.
-
Thanks Eric. I do plan on running Screaming Frog soon. We are about to go through a site redesign so even though I know there are errors on the website, I know many of them will be fixed in a couple weeks. Can you explain what you mean when you say "Pay attention how deep the product pages are within the site?" Thanks
I do have general category pages with some content written, but I am not sure how to target long tail keywords. I am in the phone reseller industry so I have general categories such as business phone handsets, which then draw down to brands/models, but I am kind of at a loss on how to promote something so generic? I don't see myself beating out office depot, bestbuy, amazon, staples, etc. Even with keywords like these the competition is high. Any ideas on this would be greatly appreciated.
I guess the thing that bewilders me with the specific keywords is that I don't understand how I do better for some specific brand/model keywords than others when I am not promoting one more than the other. For some phones I can show up on page 1 as the 4th/5th result and then for others, I don't even show up on page 5, and my competitors which i previously ranked higher for for the other keywords are on page 1 instead. And some of these products are not very popular which adds to the confusion even more.
-
If you have the resources, creating unique content around those product keywords can help you win. Re-sellers of products often just use the default manufacturer description, so if you can create unique content for your site you can stand out from the site. Adding additional content like product reviews, FAQs, instructions, etc. can also help with your rankings as well.
When evaluating competition, I would step outside of SEMRush and actually take a look at the pages that are outranking you. Do they have higher domain authority than you? Do they have more backlinks? Do they have more content? If you think you can do better on those metrics, then you have a shot.
-
product specific keywords will be very competitive, because someone searching for those terms are very likely to convert to a purchase. You need to layer your approach a little bit when trying to drive customers in. The product pages will have the specific brand + model numbers, but then you will need to layer those under family/category pages that are more general. Those category pages should be optimized for slightly less competitive keywords (longer tail) which can catch users at the top of the funnel. Using remarketing can help bring those users back to the site at a later time when they're more likely to purchase.
Another thing to look at is navigation structure and internal linking. I would suggest running a tool like screaming frog or the Moz site audit to get an idea what might be going wrong. Fix the technical issues that might be holding you back. Screaming Frog is an awesome tool to get a really good idea what's going right, and what's bombing (tech wise). Some product pages may be more optimized than others, or they may have a better navigation path which could explain how they're ranking well (linked directly from homepage or another authoritative page). There's a lot of scenarios to why, but without knowing the site I'll say to take a good look with Screaming Frog. Pay attention how deep the product pages are within the site.
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
-
SEO page descriptions on mobile - how to hide while preserving the juice for SEO?
Hi everybody, On our pages we have crafted good text paragraphs for SEO purposes. On desktop everything is fine but on mobile the paragraph of text pushes the main content really low on the page. Is there a way of hiding the text while preserving the SEO juices and not getting penalised by Google for spamming techniques? I'd appreciate any recommendations on how to deal with this. Thanks very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Firebox0 -
Video SERP Help
Hello Friends,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KINQDOM
I try to appear on search results of property related search terms with my property videos. Here is a sample property video
http://www.antalyahomes.com/videositemap.asp May you please check it and tell me what I do wrong? Thanks in advance for your time.0 -
Need help for new website!
I want to a make new website. Can you please advise me what all things are involved which I should keep in mind before and during the website preparation. Like how to make pages, what to include in website, best way to create pages etc. Please provide me the link where I can study all the above information. I am planning to create global printing website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexanderWhite0 -
Any SEO value in gTLD redirect?
So, my client is thinking of purchasing several gTLDs with second level keywords important to us. Stuff like this...we don't want .popsicles, just the domain with the second level keyword. Those cost anywhere from $20-30 right now: grape.popsicles cherry.popsicles rocket.popsicles companyname.popsicles The thinking is that it's best to be defensive, not let a competitor get the gTLD with our name in it (agreed) and not let them capitalize on a keyword-rich gTLD (hmm). The theory was that we or a competitor could buy this gTLD and redirect it to our relevant page for, say, cherry popsicles. They wonder if that would help that gTLD page rank well - and sort of work in lieu of AdWords for pages that are not ranking well. I don't think this will work. A redirected page shouldn't rank better that the page it links to...unless Google gave it points for Exact Match in the URL. Do you think they will -- does Google grade any part of a URL that redirects? Viewing this video from Matt Cutts, I surmise that a gTLD would be ranked like any other page -- if its content, inbound links, etc. support a high DA, well, ok then, you get graded like every domain. In the case of a redirect, the page would not be indexed as a standalone so that is a moot point, right? So, any competitor buying a gTLD with the hopes of ranking well against us would have to build up pagerank in that new domain...and for our purposes I see that being hugely difficult for anyone - even us. Still, a defensive purchase of some of these might not be a bad idea since it's a fairly low cost investment. Other thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jen_Floyd0 -
How do I Syndicating Content for SEO Benefit?
Right now, I am working on one E-Commerce website. I have found same content on that E-Commerce website from manufacturer website. You can visit following pages to know more about it. http://www.vistastores.com/casablanca-sectional-sofa-with-ottoman-ci-1236-moc.html http://www.abbyson.com/room/contemporary/casablanca-detail http://www.vistastores.com/contemporary-coffee-table-in-american-white-oak-with-black-lacquer-element-ft55cfa.html http://www.furnitech.com/ft55cfa.html I don't want to go with Robots.txt, Meta Robots NOINDEX & Canonical tag. Because, There are 5000+ products available on website with duplicate content. So, I am thinking to add Source URL on each product page with Do follow attribute. Do you think? That will help me to save my website from duplicate content penalty? OR How do I Syndicating Content for SEO Benefit?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
DMOZ help
So yesterday I got a DMOZ editor account. I would like to know if Google indexes the editor profile pages on DMOZ: http://www.dmoz.org/public/profile?editor= here are some examples http://www.dmoz.org/public/profile?editor=thehelper http://www.dmoz.org/public/profile?editor=raph3988 http://www.dmoz.org/public/profile?editor=skasselea I would like to know if it is worth while to build up this page so it will pass link juice. And can anyone tell me how frequently Google crawls for new editors (if that's possible?)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | raph39880 -
I am not a SEO expert , need a gentleman to help me
I have been hit by Latest google update . dont have enough money to pay seo consultants , just wondering if anyone expert can off a free analysis of my site and can point problems. Its not a adsence site . My living depends on this site so cant just keep on doing experiments , by the looks I have been hit hard by negative seo by competitor . I give url in private . Is there any one kind here who can help in private . Would really appreciate .
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HateDoingSEO0 -
Does a 'Certified Domain' help SEO?
I see that GoDaddy offer a 'Certified Domain' option. Does this help SEO at all?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Techboy0