Writing cornerstone content for a shop (eCommerce) website

[Clojobobo]

Hi there

I am trying to optimise my site to the best that it can be. Since the most recent Google updates, everything that I reading is saying cornerstone content with lots of valuable content is a really good strategy as it tells Google what is the most important content on your site. Writing articles that are well structured and have give the user a detailed overview of that subject. Lots of top SEO's are saying 3000 words plus on these pages.

My question is, how do I go about this with and eCommerce site? Obviously that majority of the keywords that I want to target are product related and these are the pages that I want to come up in the search. How do I go about creating cornerstone content for these pages? I am thinking that one of my cornerstone pieces of content would be "The Ultimate Guide to [my main product category]". But that product has numerous products related to it, all of which have their own keywords, so how would this help the products to rank?

The site had two main product categories, with numerous products under each of those categories. The two main categories are targeting my best performing keywords, but currently the landing page for these is the main product category pages.

I am really struggling to work out the best strategy here. The content that I have on my actual products pages is comprehensive and covers a lot of detail about that particular product and has started to rank for product keywords, but I am guessing Google wouldn't consider that to be cornerstone content.

I hope this make sense.

Any advice anyone can give would be really useful.

Many thanks in advance

[EGOL]

For a retail site, fewer things are more killer than.... "help the visitor learn about the product, decide what to buy, learn how to use the product, learn how to fix the product, and how to enjoy".

[Clojobobo]

The issue is getting the customers in the first place. The only thing we can rely on is producing great content as at the moment we don’t have the customer base or the traffic, which is why I think producing the killer content is what we need to do.

[EGOL]

Questions received from customers by email and phone are the most important driver of the content plan.   At the same time, you must know the products well enough that you can identify the things that the customer needs to know, but is not asking.

We pay no attention to content length, other than telling enough to convey the information.  I bet we don't have a single 3000 word article on our retail sites.

[Clojobobo]

Yes. This is exactly what we have done.  We have great products and put huge efforts into researching everything about them.  We have reviewed them. Fixed them. And most of all enjoyed them. Every product we have we tested and know inside out. Naturally we have then written reviews on the products and other articles relating to the subject, but possibly the issue here is that it’s not enough? Maybe the structure is not right, which I what I am really wanting get to.

You say don’t focus on blogs or articles (content), or length, but naturally this is one thing google loves. The key content on your site. The cornerstone or x10 content. I guess what you mean is that by doing all of the above and being at one with the product the content will flow naturally. But surely there has to be some kind of keyword strategy which then leads to a content strategy or, vice versa. This surely is the basis of on page SEO?

[EGOL]

I would step away from the idea of blogs and blog posts and 3k articles.

Instead decide how you can build a website designed to help the visitor learn about the product, decide what to buy, learn how to use the product, learn how to fix the product, and how to enjoy.  This requires authors who have deep product knowledge and experience, and who also understand the customer.   Targeting keywords is natural if you have the knowledge and experience to do the above.

[Clojobobo]

Thanks for your response. Yes, you don’t see this often. Most traffic from organic is driven to the product pages. Obviously we are a young site and competing with people who have been in it longer and ranking well. Having said that, the niche is relatively uncompetitive. With regard to content, do you mean that you should write about your product or to you target audience in extensive blog posts. 3k plus words. With good structure and answering the questions that the user wants answered. With a table of contents etc.

I guess the main issue I am having with these pages is choosing the keywords to target as ultimately I will be competing with my product/product category pages.

Does that make sense?

[EGOL]

An effective way for a small business to succeed in search is to build an ecommerce site with an extensive content library or build a large information site with a store.  This should be done without concern for which type of page gets the top ranking, and with a plan to direct content-consuming visitors to sales pages.  Most businesses do not take this route because they  fear of paying two rain-makers for each order-packer.