Targeting KWDs

[BeckyKey]

Hi

I'm looking into competitors for a high volume keyword and reviewing their top ranked page to see what else they rank for in this category.

How is it possible that one page of theirs ranks for over 500 key phrases?

They have a little bit of content at the bottom http://www.homebase.co.uk/en/homebaseuk/homeware/storage-and-shelving/storage-boxes-and-drawers

[BeckyKey]

Hi Andrew

This is very helpful thank you, I have already put together a case for improving our page speed so it's something I'll push harder with the developers.

I am also working on a section for the site which will include user guides and helpful articles so this is great

Thank you!

[BeckyKey]

Just to add, I had thought Google did not class anything after # in the URL as new page?

[BeckyKey]

Thanks again, I am putting together some ideas for quality articles so I am glad I'm on the right track with this

[BeckyKey]

Hi Everette

This is great feedback so thank you, pagination isn't something I have gone into detail with so it's definitely something I will look into a lot more.

Are there any other articles you'd recommend I read?

Becky

[SafeNet_Interactive_Marketing]

You have some great feedback already from the group. I'd start with the article writing and non-aggressive link building mentioned already.

If you do write articles, you might want to also consider doing a stylized RSS feed pointing back to the storage container posts you make. A small section like Helpful Articles might be useful for customers. That's really more about looking at UX than the rankings though.

For http://www.poundstretcher.co.uk/home-furniture/storage-organisation/plastic-storage vs. http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/plastic-storage-boxes, I'm wondering how much the content at the top of Poundstretcher is helping them. While the Key page is much better in terms of UX with the way it displays the content, my thought is that the content could be discounted by Google a little bit because of how low it is on a page. I would consider testing that by maybe bringing it to the top of the page if you can. Maybe try putting some content above-the-fold in a UX-friendly way and see if that helps, even if it's just some bullet points. Or move the content you have now to the top, show an abridged version, and give the user a More button to expand the section to read the full content.

Lastly, I ran the URLs through https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights, and you might want to look at their recommendations. Just comparing the two URLs mentioned above, it looks like http://www.poundstretcher.co.uk/home-furniture/storage-organisation/plastic-storage is faster on Desktop by about 20 points.

Again, I'd start with the content generation and link building tactics mentioned already, but that's some additional food for thought.

Best of luck.

• Andrew

[Everett]

Also, both pages have similar metrics. Yours has higher page authority because you have far more internal links (mostly from those paginated pages, which are very low value internal links). Your competitor has higher domain authority though.

Neither page has any external links found by Open Site Explorer. In addition to figuring out the pagination for your site as a whole, I would work on getting a few high-quality, organic links into that page. Here's an idea:

Write an awesome article about Home Organization Strategies and pitch it to some Home Organization blogs that rank well on Google. Only place it on 1 site though. This is not an article distribution situation. Place it on the highest quality site you can get it on. I'd start by pitching it to the top three, wait for a response, and then move down the list.

This article should be about Home Organizing Strategies in general. It should mention several great ideas that have nothing at all to do with this page, other than being about organizing and/or storage. However, ONE of your tips should be about storage containers, which will give you the opportunity to provide a meaningful, helpful link to this page. Don't use anchor text. Just the domain name or "click here" will do.

You don't need many external links to this page to compete. It's a category page, and your competitors don't have a lot of links into those deep category pages either. So don't go overboard. If it works and you move up a page or two, don't assume that repeating the same tactic will make you rank even better if you do it over and over again. There are plenty of other eCommerce link building strategies and tactics you can use.

[Everett]

Becky,

Your competitor uses a javascript framework of some sort to change the products on the page when you click pagination links. There is only ONE page, as far as the URL is concerned (the only think that changes is addition of #2 in the URL, which isn't considered a new "page") by Google.

There are pros and cons to this approach, but the cons can be alleviated with solutions like those discussed in Built Visible's guide to javascrpt framework SEO.

On the other hand, your site uses standard pagination in which each paginated set is a new URL. There are pros and cons to this as well, but the way you have it set up will magnify the cons. For example, each paginated URL has their own self-referencing rel = canonical tags. This is fine, but if you're going to allow them to represent themselves as completely new pages, you need to get rid of that SEO text at the bottom of all but the very first page. Otherwise it's duplicate content.

Furthermore, I would mark all paginated pages with a Robots Noindex,Follow tag so they don't bloat Google's index.

[BeckyKey]

Great thanks for the feedback

[EGOL]

I don't worry about "ranking them".  I worry about creating a fantastic article that people will share.  I try to make it the best on the web for its topic.  I don't promote these articles, I just display them on my site and they slowly get shared, tweeted, linked to... and that is what powers my sites.

I forget about metrics, and worry about making a good website.

[BeckyKey]

I can start writing articles, but if they're based around popular topics aren't they going to be just as hard to rank?

[EGOL]

why aren't these sites doing these kinds of articles?

Maybe because most managers think that they are "expenses" instead of viewing them as "advertising" or "customer support investments".

I guess their domain authority means they don't have to

Maybe, but when (if) they figure it out and start doing it in a big way, their competitors are going to feel it.

[BeckyKey]

Thank you,

Yes this is one of my recommendations, I am also wondering whether it's worth working on outreach/PR to the main domain/ also.

The question I have is why aren't these sites doing these kinds of articles? I guess their domain authority means they don't have to

[EGOL]

If I wanted to improve the traffic into these kinds of pages, I would be writing articles with lots of good photos that give ideas for how to use these products.  For me, articles get my site into the difficult short tail rankings, pull in lots of traffic, help my product pages rank better, and some of the traffic that enters them goes to product or category pages that convert the customer.  That's what I do, it takes lots of work that some managers might not consider to be "retail".

[BeckyKey]

Thanks for the feedback.

This example is a little more specific in it being plastic storage with 33 products, but they still rank for about 136 keywords on page 1-2 of Google

http://www.poundstretcher.co.uk/home-furniture/storage-organisation/plastic-storage

Ours is similar to this in that it focuses on plastic storage, we show 30 products and have 51 in the category.

We stuggle to rank and I am trying to research what we can do, I know we can add content but ultimately do we need to work on our Domain Authority to ever have a chance?

http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/plastic-storage-boxes

[EGOL]

I am not surprised that this page ranks for a lot of different keywords because there is a tremendous diversity of search for boxes, drawers, baskets, etc.   SEMrush reports that it ranks in the top 100 for about 1100 keywords.  Going down 100 queries deep is a bit excessive but if you compare Page A to Page B it can be a good relative metric.

There are lots of pages on the web that appear in the top 100 for several thousand keywords.  These tend to be long-content pages that blend a lot of different topics.

If you have your retail category pages set to show 10 items at a time that will rank for a certain number of keywords.  However, if you change that to 30 or 50 items at a time the number of keywords will go up dramatically if there is a lot of word diversity in your product names.  So, I am all about showing a LOT of items on a page.  I like that as a shopper but I like it even better as an website owner.