SEO - Ecommerce Small Business Quick Wins

[BeckyKey]

Hi

I have a few hurdles I need some help with.

I work on an ecommerce site, it's huge but I'm the only SEO.

I've identified areas where we can make progress in rankings - we already have pages appearing for those terms, but they still need help to be pushed higher.

My issue is - if it's a product listing page & we have all the SEO foundations here already, how can we push this even further? No one in the company wants too much content on this page taking away from products & I've tried adding a small amount - with no results. I know UX is something to be looked at, but I need support from others so this will be slow.

Does anyone agree that writing user guides, hub pages & articles that this is a good next step? My only worry is - these pages will also be new and take time to rank so will they help the category pages enough? How can I maximise them?

I'm also the only SEO, so really need to pick my battles.

Thanks

Becky

[BeckyKey]

Thanks very much for the advice, spot on as always

[EGOL]

Our first priority is to write content that answers the questions that our customers are asking.  This is usually easy because we tell this information by phone and by email everyday.

The next priority is to write content that explains how to use a product, how to fix it, how to select it.  These articles can take a couple days for the author to research and write.  A second person will be working on images or photos or data to illustrate the article.  The people who enter the site through these article page often purchase consumable supplies, replacement parts or the primary item described in the article.

Although the cost of these articles are very high, they are usually evergreen and can be on your site attracting traffic and referring sales for a long time.  But these are the articles that give your site a reputation for being a great source of content and a trusted place to do business.  They are not "quick wins".

They are long term investments.  Most business owners would balk if they saw how much time can go into the articles and the average weekly sales.  They got to consider that there are 52 weeks in a year and the article will produce its results over time.

[BeckyKey]

Thanks for your reply

I'm definitely not looking to write rubbish content and put it up for rankings.

I think where I struggle is, know where to prioritise & actually understanding the areas I'm writing about and what the customer may want - some are niche and technical, so a lot of research and work needs to go into them.

But you're right, management need to understand writing good content is very time consuming

Thanks!

[EGOL]

**Content isn't king, the User is. **

Nice!  This is the first time I have seen this type of statement, yet it is so obvious.  Content that doesn't meet the mark is a waste of your money and ignored by the visitor.

At our office a little under 50% of staff time is spent on customer service and filling the order.  A little over 50% of staff time is spent making the content.  A lot of businesses that can't get traction think that 10% or even 5% spent on content is out of balance.

Management at too many businesses don't realize that they are in a competitive environment where there are only ten positions on the first page of Google and only about the top three get viable traffic after Google slaps four ads at the top and eight shopping results on the right.

[Deacyde]

This is by far the best advice you could have given, tricks and tactics only serve part of an issue while strategic planning and a forceful hand can prove to blanket the issue in solution + results.

More straight forward advice needs to be given like this, and I'm glad there are folks like yourself on here speaking about such.

Thanks!

Also to add on a bit,

Most SEOs would never have many issues if they would step back away from the " latest & greatest tactics " and applied more effort towards the user. Plan and fulfill their needs and think through the eyes of your customers. You won't have to devise clever content, you'll already know what is needed and even how to target it.

Content isn't king, the User is.

[EGOL]

A lot of people think that organic rankings and sales happen through tricks and tweaks.  They instead are wrested away from competitors through planning, skill and force.  It comes down to a battle of resources.  If a company wants to succeed, they need to put up enough resources to become competitive and at the same time apply them smartly.  The more force you put into it and the earlier it is applied, the greater the chances of success.  If I was management at your company, you would be getting a lot more help and we would be hiring authors and illustrators.

[Tymen]

Hi Becky,

The company wants sales I presume? Content=traffic=sales. As you correctly mention you should add more content. You can also do this with a small introduction text and than a Read More which unfolds when clicked on. A different way is to put a small introduction at the top and the whole story down the page. This way you are not hiding the text and it does help you rank better.

There's a good Q&A about it here on:  Moz

Furthermore I would indeed go for extra pages. In my industry ( Garden And Wood building materials) it works really well to write "how to" pages. You get good traffic, they stay on your site for a long time and it influences the overall ranking in a good way.

Hope it helps, Good luck!

Tymen