Questions created by BeckyKey
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SEO - Ecommerce Small Business Quick Wins
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
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Category Pages & Content
Hi Does anyone have any great examples of an ecommerce site which has great content on category pages or product listing pages? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Pagination & Canonicals
Hi I've been looking at how we paginate our product pages & have a quick question on canonicals. Is this the right way to display.. Or should the canonical point to the main page http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/euro-containers-stacking-containers, so Google doesn't pick up duplicate meta information? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Pagination vs. Scroll for Ecommerce
Hi I wanted to see what opinions were on having a product listings on paginated pages vs. loading as the user scrolls? We use pagination but I have heard scroll may be better for SEO? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Breaks in meta |
Hi Does anyone have an opinion on breaks in meta & whether Google reads what is after the break? For example Tubular Shelves | Easy Store Plus | Heavy Duty Shelving Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Too many on page links
Hi I know previously it was recommended to stick to under 100 links on the page, but I've run a crawl and mine are over this now with 130+ How important is this now? I've read a few articles to say it's not as crucial as before. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Days to transaction - GA
Hi We have noticed a trend with days to transaction being high for May - June for Organic for 28+ days. Does anyone have any helpful articles or ideas on why this is happening for organic?
Reporting & Analytics | | BeckyKey0 -
Status Codes - Deleted URLs
Hi I have a dev team 'cleaning' their database and from what I can tell deleting old URL's - which they say are not in use. I don't have much visibility on how our URLs are managed in the back end of the site, but my concern is these URLs should never be deleted, they should have a 301, 404 or 410. This includes product pages no longer available and category pages - my concern is losing authority. Am I worrying over nothing or is this a big issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Ecommerce SEO help
Hi I'm having difficulty managing our product pages for optimisation, we have over 20,000 products. We do keyword research & optimise product titles/meta of new products - however there's a lot to clean up but we have done a lot. I find we rank/convert better on product pages so they would be great to focus on - however when an old product is discontinued, the page is removed & we lose authority by creating new pages for similar products - does anyone have any ideas for managing this? This is something done automatically on the dev side in France. I then have the issue of trying to rank category pages - these are highly competitive areas competing with big brands. I'm finding it tough to know where to focus, the site is vast and I am the only SEO. I've started looking into low hanging fruit - but these aren't necessarily the areas which bring in much revenue. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Meta Descriptions - Google ignores what we have
Hi I still write meta descriptions to help with CTR. I am currently looking at a page where the CTR needs improving. I check the meta on Google SERPs & it isn't pulling through the meta description we have - but other info on the page. This isn't ideal - why does this happen? Will Google just make the decision and are descriptions not worth writing?
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Optimising for Bing?
Hi I'm looking to try improving our positions on Bing - does anyone have any tools that monitor rankings for Bing? Or provide keyword research? Or is it a case of optimise for Google and Bing should follow?
SERP Trends | | BeckyKey1 -
YouTube Ads - Disable?
Hi everyone I have been looking at removing ads from our videos - I have managed to disable the interest based ones but can't remove the location based ads.Our videos don't have copywritten material either.How can I get these ads removed? Any help would be much appreciated :)Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
SEO - Vimeo vs. YouTube
Hi Does anyone have any good blogs or stats on which video hosting platform is better for SEO? I'm guessing YouTube as it's owned by Google - but I'd love some stats to support this for an internal debate. Thanks Becky
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Importance - meta title keyword
HI I want to find out how important people think it is to have the keyword as the first word in the meta title? Is this something that would even make a difference?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Page Authority
Hi We have a large number of pages, all sitting within various categories. I am struggling to rank a level 3 for example, or increase authority of this page. Apart from putting it in the main menu or trying to build quality links to it, are there any other methods I can try? We have so many pages I find it hard to workout what the best way to internal link these pages for authority. At the moment they're classified in their relevant categories, but these go from level 1 down to 4 - is this too many classification levels?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Product Listing Pages
Hi I had a question regarding product pages and the best way to display the page for SEO. For example, is it best to have a page for - Blue Euro Containers including a table of the capacity options you can buy.. Or, have each product split out so it has it's own product page - 60L Blue Euro Container, etc etc I know a lot of the information will be fairly similar, with the capacity being the one major difference - is this a bad thing? Some of our product tables are too big and the idea was to split them out. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Ecommerce & Outreach
Hey, Does anyone have any advice on how to approach outreach for an ecommerce site? We're in the process of doing user guides, for niche products. I wondered if this was a good angle to approach relevant communities/sites. Or is this too time consuming for little value at the end? Is it PR outreach we should look to focus on? Thank you 🙂
Branding | | BeckyKey0 -
Product descriptions & category pages
Hi I wanted to ask if anyone knew how much, if at all, product page titles/descriptions affected the rankings of the category page they're linked from? I am looking for ways to improve the ranking of category pages, but we don't want to put too much content which overshadows the product listings. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Google Open Graph
Hi I wanted to find out what makes Google select a site to show the answer to a question you type in search? For example, typing What is COSHH, brings up this site http://rospaworkplacesafety.com/2013/01/08/what-is-coshh-about-coshh/ and this answer top of Google SERPs. COSHH stands for 'Control of Substances Hazardous to Health' and under the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002, employers need to either prevent or reduce their workers' exposure to substances that are hazardous to their health.8 Jan 2013 Is it their open graph mark up only? Becky
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
UX & Product Page Design
Hi I have a question regarding UX testing. Is it best when testing a product page to: 1. Redesign and test the new page - if it works, test elements to see what worked. 2. Start testing element by element to see what has a positive impact. We have differing opinions within the company, and I'd like to hear some feedback from others in the industry. Thank you
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Https & Google Updated Guidelines
Hi We have https on aspects of the site which users directly interact with, such as login, basket page. But we don't have https across the whole site. In light of Google adding it to their guidelines - is this something we need to put into action? Also same question on the Accessibility point Ensure that your pages are useful for readers with visual impairments, for example, by testing usability with a screen-reader. Are we going to be penalised if these are not added to our site? Thank you
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Google & Tabbed Content
Hi I wondered if anyone had a case study or more info on how Google treats content under tabs? We have an ecommerce site & I know it is common to put product content under tabs, but will Google ignore this? Becky
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey1 -
Menu Structure & SEO
Hi I have been trying to decide whether we need to change our menu structure http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/ We have a lot of subcategories which are not in the menu structure and for SEO I wonder whether its best to have menu drop downs, so if a customer hovers over one category, it will display all the subcategories within this. I am concerned that sub categories we are trying to rank are many levels away from the homepage e.g If you want to find leather office chairs from the homepage, you have to go to the 'More categories' link, then choose seating > office seating > leather office seating. Users need to do a lot of navigating before seeing what we offer. I would prefer if a user could see these options in the menu when they hover over it. Does anyone think this would help SEO or just customer journey? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Ecommerce & SEO - Conference?
Hi I was wondering if any one can recommend a conference/workshop on ecommerce & SEO In the UK 🙂 Thanks!
Industry Events | | BeckyKey0 -
Internal Linking
Hi I've been looking over my pages and it says for this page for example http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/1-6kw-halogen-heater I have too many links, I think it was about 178. These links are from the menu and bottom of the page - how much of an issue is this for internal linking structure? I wouldn't want to remove the menus or change them too much. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Pagination & SEO
Hi In one of my other Q&A's someone mentioned I may need to look at pagination. For instance, are these pages counted as 'new' pages in Google's eyes when clicking on pagination? http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/plastic-storage-boxes http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/plastic-storage-boxes#productBeginIndex:30&orderBy:5&pageView:list& Does anyone have any advice on what I could do? It's not something I have had much experience with. Thank you Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Targeting KWDs
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
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Rankings Change
Hi I've noticed some ranking drops on 15th Jan, I saw there was an update on Jan 8th - could this have had a knock on effect a week later?
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Display:None
Hi I wanted to ask how Google perceives a page which includes display:none - but doesn't use this to hide content but will use it in other cases such as:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey
Is this dangerous to use in terms of affecting Google rankings?1 -
Google SERPs changes
Hi I wonder if anyone knew of any changes to the Google SERPs appearance in August 2015? We dropped in over a thousand visits to the homepage on brand so I wanted to find out why. Also, our DA went from 36 to 34 - does Google panda affect domain authority at all? Thank you
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Heading Tags & Content Count
Hi everyone I am looking into this page on our site http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/sack-trucks Just comparing it against competitors in SEMRush, the tool shows a wordcount of this page for over 4089 words, compared with http://www.wickes.co.uk/Wickes-Green-General-Purpose-Sack-Truck-200kg/p/500302 which only has 2658 - it has a lot more written content than our page - where is this word count coming from? Also looking at the same page on our site Woorank suggests we have the word 'sack truck' in the h1 and title too many times - it's only there once, but its this showing because its an exact match keyword? I'm just wondering if there is something wrong with the html or how the page is being crawed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
URL Link Counts
Hi Can someone clarify what the URL link counts in the SERP report means? Is this total internal links on this page? My followed internal links are very high compared with sites I am comparing against, some sites only have 1 internal followed link - is this possible? Have they simply no followed all the rest on that page?
Moz Bar | | BeckyKey0 -
Why are they ranking?
Hi I've been looking at domains which rank well for a particular search term - plastic storage boxes to try and see why they rank. http://www.poundstretcher.co.uk/home-furniture/storage-organisation/plastic-storage ranks particularly well. From what I can see, they have about 6 backlinks, 28 DA, and 11 PA - which isn't that high compared to others ranking on the first page. I can't work out why they rank so highly, they also rank for over 100 other storage terms for this page. Am I looking in the wrong place?
Competitive Research | | BeckyKey0 -
Domain Authority
Hi I wanted to find out if anyone knew how to discover why DA may have dropped? Ours has gone from 26 to 25 - I know it's not much, but I wanted to find the reason. One thing which happened was our developer company wiped redirects, which did impact rankings - would this also have affected domain authority or do I need to review our backlinks again? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Menu Structure for Large Ecommerce
Hi We have a large ecommerce site, the menu at the moment is limited by the amount of categories we can display. As our site is so large, the menu at the moment only has the top categories and their immediate subcategories, however we have level 3's which go deeper, as there is such a large range. At the moment, they;re not in the top menu, but I want to put a case forward to say why we should include them - I am however mindful of a menu not being overcrowded with hundreds of links. Has anyone had a similar experience of this? Or a case study on how adding important categories to the menu helped improve things? Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Ecommerce - Product Titles
Hi I want to find out how ecommerce sites optimise their product names: 1. When they have thousands of products 2. When some of their products are identical I notice on some sites, like this for example, they have no key phrases in their product titles http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/6249346.htm How can this help for SEO? At the moment we optimise the titles as best we can for key phrases relevant to the products and differentiating attributes. Where we get stuck is, if their are 2 identical products - how can the content team quickly add a title which is useful for customers and search engines? Some products have no differences for us, but longer tail phrases are where we could get some good returns if the research is put in - it's just very labour intensive. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey2 -
Algorithm Updates
Hi I wanted to ask if anyone had any methods of checking whether you've been affected by a Google refresh? We saw a drop in visits back in July 2015 and I'm trying to pinpoint what from. I saw their was a refresh, but this only affected 2-3% of sites. I wasn't working on the site back then so I'm not fully aware of what was happening Thankyou
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey2 -
Grid view vs. List view
Hi I work on an ecommerce site and wondered if anyone had tested grid view vs. list view on product listing pages? We use list view, but I think grid view might work better. Thanks
Conversion Rate Optimization | | BeckyKey0 -
Finding Long Tail Searches
Hi Does anyone have any useful tools or ways of looking for long tail phrases apart from Google Keyword Planner? Thank you
Keyword Research | | BeckyKey0 -
Blog - subdomain vs. subfolderq
Hi everyone I work on an ecommerce site and I'm trying to get more content together for the site & blog. The development team want to put the blog we have on a subdomain of our site, my question is - what is better for SEO Subfolder vs. subdomain I've read a couple of articles to say subfolder is better and a subdomain needs a lot of management to build up authority itself? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Display:None CSS & SEO
Hi A while back I was told that using the display:none tag to hide content you want minimised is bad for onpage SEO - is this the case? It's not that we want to hide it from Google, we just don't want it taking up a huge amount of space on product pages. I have found some of these on our site, and want to know how bad they are. Is the content under the tag going to be ignored? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Diving into Social Media...
Hi Our company has a Facebook page - it's pretty outdated and barely used. I want to change that, but wondered if anyone had any advice on how to start it up again? It hasn't been used for a while, so how do you start off with your first post? Or do you act like you have been there the whole time... probably not the best idea. We don't want to confuse people or look stupid with the first post. I want it to be regularly used for content, community building and demonstrating the personality of the company. Thank you 🙂
Social Media | | BeckyKey0 -
WMT data vs. Analytics
Hi Each month I export my data from WMT and go through analytics. I also export our non brand queries from analytics and not WMT - I haven't had an issue before, but this month the impression data is quite different. In the hundreds of thousands different for keywords, everything seems to have taken a big jump and it seems strange. However, not everything is different, I've spot checked some and its; consistent in both, I'm not sure what's going on? One example would be: <colgroup><col width="281"> <col width="72"></colgroup>
Reporting & Analytics | | BeckyKey
| industrial shelving | 1016 |
| industrial racking | 999 | These appear as impressions from Query data in analytics, but they appear nowhere in my WMT query data. Analytics query data shows: | industrial equipment | 670 | WMT Data: | industrial equipment | 143 | Anyone have any idea? Perhaps some kind of tracking issue? Also I've triple checked dates etc...0 -
Bad Backlink?
Hi I found this site whilst looking through WMT backlinks to our site: http://www.buildingarena.co.uk/companies/key-industrial-equipment Is this type of iFrame of our site a bad signal to Google? It's not something we've done, so I'd like to know before getting it removed. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
B2B > Social Channels
Hi I work in ecommerce selling mainly B2B - I wanted to find out if anyone could recommend one social channel they've found worked well. We're a generalist, so sell a huge amount of different products, like office supplies, furniture etc to companies. We currently aren't really present on social and this is something I want to push - however with resource I think we'd only be able to focus on one at this point. I was looking at Facebook or Pinterest? Thank you
Branding | | BeckyKey0 -
Onsite SEO vs Offsite SEO
Hey I know the importance of both onsite & offsite, primarily with regard to outreach/content/social. One thing I am trying to determine at the moment, is how much do I invest in offsite. My current focus is to improve our onpage content on product pages, which is taking some time as we have a small team. But I also know our backlinks need to improve. I'm just struggling on where to spend my time. Finish the onsite stuff by section first, or try to do a bit of both onsite/offsite at the same time?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Ecommerce - SEO Quick Wins?
Hi I wanted to find out if anyone had any quick wins for an ecommerce site & SEO. I am the only SEO and we have a small online team and an ecommerce site with thousands of product pages. It's impossible to optimise everything, and we have taken the top 100 products and optimised them - starting from scratch with keyword research. I'm now struggling to prioritize what we need next - I know we need better internal linking, content, social and lots more, but this isn't something I can get through alone. I need a starting point and perhaps something with a quick win initially? Thanks 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Mass Product Page Upload - SEO Issue?
Hi We will be adding a lot of products to our site, in a mass referencing exercise, not all in one go, but 10,000 split into a few loads. This product content won't be duplicate, but the quality of the information may be sparse and not very high. My question is, whether adding a bulk of these pages will reduce the pverall domain authority on our site? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Sitewide Footer Links & Sister Sites
Hi We have a number of sister sites across Europe - the sites are under a different domain name, but have a very similar layout & product offering. When looking at duplicate content, they are flagged as being a moderate risk with similar content - we don't duplicate product content, however it's similar. We also link to them in the footer in a drop down - not anchor text links - however this is still seen by Google. I don't think I'll be able to remove links to our sister companies, but should I implement the Href lang if the sites are slightly different? Or find another way to link to them? Here's an example http://www.key.co.uk/en/key & https://www.manutan.fr/fr/maf
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Product Schema & Google Guidelines
Hi We have product mark up on our site, data-vocab rather than schema. I can't see it showing in Google SERPs, but when testing it appears to be correct. Are Google still selective with what schema they show for a site? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0