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Hi,

What is the methodology for a nation wide e-commerce site to win local searches?

If we take for example Flower Shops...
How do companies like 1800Flowers, ProFlowers compete locally for searches like "Flowers New York", "Flowers Boston" etc.?

Should they create a dedicated page (or pages / articles) per area ?

Thanks

Hi,

Just encountered the following article on Digital Trends: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/lg-z-rumored/

This is a huge and respected site. Notice, that whenever the word "smartphone" or "smartphones" is mentioned, there is a link to Sprint. Needless to say that Sprint has nothing to do directly with the article's subject (a new LG smartphone that may be coming soon).

So, is this an ordered piece? Is this legit? Does it assist Sprint with the article that is not really related? Should I pursue these type of articles (links) for my site or only HUGE companies can get away with it?

Any thoughts?

What do you mean by "In terms of links, alot get linked to the home page as the source and some to the image url."

Do you mean that due to an infographic on an internal page other sites often link to the homepage of the infographic owner?

Also, as I mentioned I was surprised, as you can see from the amount of the social shares this infographic did had ncie buzz (maybe still does). However the amount of links I could locate is ok nothing more and also the PA by MOZ OSE is only 28... Looks weird to me. Makes me wonder...

What about Pinterest? Does it generate links? I would have expected to see 1000 links from Pinterest alone...

Thanks Mat for the reply.

I didn't quite understand what you meant... Can you provide an example of an e-commerce site you feel that implements it well? (doesn't need to be one related to you).

Thanks

Your ending was hilarious:

"hurt you depending on Google guidelines for the given month/week/day"

About nofollow and violating Google:
I think that having a call to action at the end of every post is legit and obvious (for example at the end of "Toshiba Laptops" post having a "Looking for a Toshiba Laptop?" button). It doesn't make sense to me nofollowing it. Doing so will only waste the juice I'm nofollowing - Google stated that no following links that not pass over more juice on the others, it simply wastes it.

Look at Hubspot's blog for example, at the end of each post they offer an ebook or something. All of the links are followed.

What do you think?

Hi,

I don't get it...
I've encountered the following infographic that seemed to do well: http://www.brilliance.com/4cs-of-diamonds-infograph

As you can see, the page has thousands of social shares from Tweets to Facebook and obviously Pinterest. However, when I placed this page on Open Site Explorer (click to view) I see only 9 external links and page authority of 28/100. And this seems to me like a successful infographic.

Any explanations?

Thanks

Hi,

I have an e-commerce site that sells laptops.

My main landing pages and category pages are as follows:
"Toshiba Laptops", "Samsung Laptops", etc.

We also run a WP blog with industry news.
The posts are divided into categories which are basically as our landing pages.
The posts themselves usually link to the appropriate e-commerce landing page.
For example: a post about a new Samsung Laptop which is categorized in the blog under "Samsung Laptops" will naturally link somewhere inside to the "samsung laptops" ecommerce landing page.

Is that good or do the categories on the blog cannibalize my more important e-commerce section landing pages?

Thanks

Thanks Kurt.

If that's the case, how do you build authority with no content...?
I think that it is practically impossible

Looks great, I only knew about Rhino.

Do you think they used the same technology here:
http://www.jamesallen.com/engagement-rings/solitaire/14k-white-gold-2mm-knife-edge-solitaire-engagement-ring-six-prong-item-7990

I understand the Java rotation but it means (I assume) that you had to take dozens of pictures in exactly the same lighting and without moving the item. Its crazy... (though the result is stunning)

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

I see that in Vaja you change the URL only when a metal was changed and not the stone. I do love the 360. May i ask it was done? (36 images per item? How did you rotate it?)

I started looking at them because I saw at Quora someone mentioning that one of their strengths is that they generated THOUSANDS of pages in a way that every combination of gems with a ring design is a different page - when you multiply the options (permutation) the result is an astounding number of pages (even though these pages barely have texts).

What do you think of this method?

I believe that today it is something that only the big companies can get a way with it...

Thanks!

But what about Google's bot? Will he crawl it? Is it considered internal linking?
It is not done by Href's but rather by Javascript and AJAX...

Hi,

I was looking at Gemvara.com which is supposed to be a really great e-commerce site (including SEO wise) and I noticed it changes url as you customize the ring (see product page example).

Do they really change the URL? (I don't see page refresh)

Is it recommended to do so? (for e-commerce sites whenever you change shirt color, customize a computer etc.)

Thanks

Hi,

I'm building a new e-commerce site and I'm conflicting about what to do in my category pages.

If we take for example a computer store.
I have a category of laptops and inside there are filters by brand (Samsung, HP, etc.).

I have two options - either having the brand choice open a new dedicated page - 
i.e. Samsung-Laptops.aspx or simply do a JQuery filter which gives a better and faster user experience (immediate, animated and with no refresh).

**Which should I use? (or does it depend on the keyword it might target)? **
Samsung laptops / dell laptops / hp laptops -  are a great keyword on there own!

By the way, splitting Laptops.aspx to many sub category physical pages might also help by providing the site with many actual pages dealing with laptops altogether.

Hi All,

As I was surfing the net, I recently encountered a beautiful and well known site - indochino.com

An e-commerce site that sells custom made suits and shirts.
They do not have a brick and mortar store, just the site and built an amazing reputation in about two years (maybe less).

The question is....
HOW do they rank high in competitive niches like suits with practically no texts in the website? 
Is it "ONLY" because of the amazing UI and Links?
(I thought texts is the king...)

There is no blog or any other visible content area besides for the product pages and a couple of explanatory sections which are also with not that much texts...

Thanks!

Hi All,

In continuous to Rand's latest WBF where he compared content with link building. I specifically loved the circle he draw in regards to the steps of content marketing. The question is about the first step.

I run an e-commerce site for mid to high end luxury jewelry.
It is quite new so we cannot drill down our own stats.

The question is, How do I find out who my audience is? I understand that it all starts here...

Thanks!

Hi,

Recently I started seeing more and more anchor text with design variations within them.

A noticeable example can be seen in the Distilled top menu.
As you can see there is a part which is in small letters and a part with different fonts.

Meaning that there is either an internal span / div / font / italic / etc. or some other attribute within the link (splitting the anchor text).

Is it a problem?
Keep in mind that it will be used in the top menu on the most important links.

Thanks

Hi,

As I mentioned I'm still playing with it.
But as far as I can see, BigCommerce has a better solution (or at least handle the URLs better).

Without getting into my store, I also have on my site many "collections" - special offers, recommended, etc etc.

The link to the product page is always the same link. It doesn't make sense to link to "store.com/special-offers/product" and then canonical it to "store.com/product"

Which is what Shopify does... After discussing with them on those matters the answers were that everything can be changed but it might be complicated.

We don't have a manual penalty (we had it revoked).
However, it does not mean that we do not have an algorithmic one.

About the disavow tool - New links keep popping up. We have STOPPED working with ANY company for more than a year now. Nevertheless, we run the same tools of link discovery (majestic, OSE, ahrefs and links from the GMWT) and we keep discovering new links. It is an endless cause...

We did not plan to redirect the main pages of which links point too but rather the articles themselves, several hundred good articles. This way, the bad links won't harm us (I assume).

Dear  PedroAndJobu,

As far as I know 70% abandonment for carts of up to $100 is a normal rate. This goes by far higher when the cart's value goes up.

Everett Sizemore - I enjoyed reading your answer very much and I have couple of follow up questions if I may:

1. Section 2 about follow-up email - is there a software you recommend using?
2. Section 5 retargeting - how? and how to do it only to those who actually added products to their cart?
3. What is Sticker Shock?

Thanks!

Hi Brett,

I'm new to Shopify and still playing with it. While I agree with Chris here, I believe that you may have organized your products / product collections badly on Shopify. Ideally, the links will always take you to the same location. Having the same product on many different URLs (even with canonical) is not a good solution.

http://www.sportiqe.com/collections/sportiqe-apparel/products/new-york-shirt-metro-collection
http://www.sportiqe.com/collections/mens-shirts/products/new-york-shirt-metro-collection 

I noticed that on most product pages you do have lots of content repeating itself.

For example - PRODUCT DETAILS, SIZE GUIDE etc.

The product pages are relatively thin with content, and the repeated content (duplicated) is larger than the "new" content. Maybe you should change those to images...?

Thank you both for the answers.

We do not have a manual penalty. I filled another reconsideration and within a week I got the response that even though there was a manual penalty, it has already been revoked.

I was also hoping (based on some articles I read) that it might cause them to re crawl my site and see that many changes were made but I see no such effect (also in the GWMT). For example, the titles of our pages that are in the SERPS are still the ones from before the changes we did.

NOT KNOWING is unbearable. I'm at the stage I don't mind a new domain but if it is simply a matter of waiting two more months then obviously we'll wait.

Is there an eCommerce website (or several) you can recommend to look at?

Thanks but there is no solution there...

I understand that there might be a problem with one of the images but I must recommend that till they resolve it to remove that picture from the emails.

It drives me crazy

Thanks for the detailed answer.

If you are putting a canonical tag then why not simply have one page with a drop down for colors?

Just happened to me again with this new response.
It gets the outlook stuck for approximately 30 seconds.

This is the only mail (or mails) that I noticed that cause it! (including your other emails).

Moz top 10 and rankings reports are working ok.

Hi,

It seems that the MOZ New response to Question emails are getting my mailbox stuck (using outlook).

This does not happen with any other email including your other reports and emails.

Maybe its only me but it happens to me on two active questions I have with you (2 different new response emails I got).

Thanks

Thanks.

So what do you think would happen in the future with exact searches? (Joes Computers).
Also, will I need to rebuild the social media channels or keep as is and just point them to the new domain?

About the old domain's material...

We were thinking of redirecting (301) the deep articles and product pages while neglecting the main landing and category pages.

I fear that the penalty is due to bad links (that un-naturally targeted main landing pages).
This is why redirecting articles shouldn't have bad impact. All of our texts are high quality.

Thanks - joined you there!

Interestingly, I also notice it when I do a site search (using Google's site search).

We do not use a CMS for the main site, only for the blog.
Google seem to have taken the suffix from the blog and pasted it as the suffix in the title for all of our pages. We changed the blog's suffix to "- Brand" about a week ago but it may have not been indexed yet...

Hi,

I've noticed that on many pages Google shows on the SERPS titles that he chose for me and not necessarily the ones coded in the Title tag (usually small difference like adding suffix etc.).

Why is that?

Thanks

Hi,

We are moving to a new domain because our rankings drastically dropped and we want to "start over".

For example - If my company is called Joes Computers and the domain was JoesComputers.com and the new domain which will hold our e-commerce website will be completely different for example - BestComputers.com - which do I brand?

Which do I put as suffix in all titles?
COOL TITLE FOR PRODUCTS | Best Computers
or 
COOL TITLE FOR PRODUCTS | Joes Computers

Which name do I take for social profiles? Company or Domain?
(We currently have for the company since it was the same).

Please note that our company name is already a little bit known... and therefore inside the website it will be labeled in Logos etc. We would also state "Best Computers by Joes Computers" (as if it is a sub brand or daughter company).

Thanks,

Sorry it wasn't clear.

All of our content is unique and we are not in the same industry as they are.

By "copied" I meant concept, structural design, naming conventions  etc.
Copied IDEAS...

Thanks

Hi All,

When I started my site (an eCommerce site) I copied (or tried) a lot of things from the best eCommerce sites I thought were out there.

Sites like Zappos, ZALES, Overstock, BlueNile etc.

I got hit pretty hard with latest algo changes and I posted my question at Google Webmaster Help forum I received answers from Gurus that we are keyword stuffing etc. (mainly with internal links to product pages but other issues as well).

My answer was a link to Zappos and other sites showing that what we do is nothing compared to them. I also showed dozens of SEO "errors" like using H1 tag 10 times per page, not using canonicals and many other issues. The Guru's answer was "LOL" - who am I to compare myself to Zappos.

So the question is... Can we take them for example or are they first simply because they are the biggest?

Hi,

INTRO We were hit pretty bad - first with unnatural links warning and then (we assume) by penguin.

We removed a lot of links and disavowed the removed along with all others we couldn't.
The manual penalization was revoked but the site is still down.

I understand that Penguin and Unnatural links are not the same.
I assume that while our removal and fixes were enough for the manual penalty to be removed the penguin algorithm still disapproves us.

Also, I am not expecting to be where we were but we know our current locations don't make sense (several pages seem to be de-indexed).

AND THE QUESTION... SINCE ALL HAS FAILED, we consider removing the main landing pages (which were the target for link-building) and build new ones with new URLs. In the old ones placing 404 and not 301.

This means that all the spammy links that were built will point to non-existing pages (404)
(besides for those that point to the homepage...)

Do you think it will resolve the problem? Or since the spammy links still point to our domain we are still in a problem? (even if to 404 pages).

The way we see it, it is the last resort prior to dropping the domain!

Thanks

Hi All,

In order to avoid duplication errors we've decided to redirect old categories (merge some categories).
In the past we have been very generous with the number of categories we assigned each post.

One category needs to be redirected back to blog home (removed completely) while a couple others should be merged. Afterwords we will re-categorize some of the old posts.

What is the proper way to do so?
We are not technical, Is there a plugin that can assist?

Thanks

Hi All,

I know (or think I know) that one of the easiest ways to gain followers for my brand on G plus is to add people to our company's circles. Naturally, they often add you back.

However, what does it mean to people who watch my brand (my G Plus page), the fact that I'm following thousands of people? Should I do it? How does it reflect on us?
Is there a better way to gain followers (specifically for G Plus)?

P.S
We obviously have the badge on site but we hardly gain followers that way.

Thanks

Wow. These are very unfortunate news...!

Can you please PM me the old site.
I'm on the same dilemma... I got the approval but nothing happened.

We already spent so much time on it that if in fact we had done what you suggest we could have been way better off. But it is an old site so we hope for the best.
I do know that I need to fix many other things but still...

Thanks

No.

But I have increased the number of products per page...

This may have caused it to appear as more stuffed, Over optimized?

If we would search "Toshiba Laptops" on the now it appears about 40 Times!!!...

Thanks Oleg - it may be over optimization.

If you had a category landing page for Toshiba Laptops.
How would you have linked internally to actual laptops?

Would it be "Toshiba Laptop MODEL X", "Toshiba Laptop Model Y", ...

This is the case with me and I fear it causes the phrase "Toshiba Laptop" to appear dozens of times... - Over Optimization...

Hi All,

I have a main category page, a landing page, that does not appear in the SERPS at all (even if I serach for a whole sentence from it).

This page once ranked high.

What may cause such a punishment for a specific page?

Thanks

Thanks.

I would rather not share my URL at the moment.
We do not have duplicated content at all. All is original.

What do you mean by orphan pages?

We are an e-commerce website and some products that became obsolete are no longer linked to (orphans). Is that a problem?

Also, these orphans have nothing to do with the specific problematic page...

Hi All,

One of my sites was under Unnatural Links Manual Penalization.

Its been over two months since it was revoked and we see no changes at all.

In fact, we still have couple of pages (important landing pages) that are still de-indexed (I checked it by searching in quotes a whole sentence within the page and got no results).

Does it mean that even though the site's penalization was revoked it is not completely over yet and I just need to be patient or is there something else hovering over the website?

Thanks

Hi Stephane,

You are now 2.5 months over. Are you back up? Is it truly over?

On that note, how long did it take you from the penalization to the RR approved?

During the penalization, did you have pages de-indexed?

Thanks

Hi All,

The fun thing about our industry is that unlike poker - most cards are open.

While trying to learn what the big guys are doing I chose to focus on www.Zappos.com - one of the largest sports wear (especially shoes).

I looked how they categories, interlink and on their product pages.

I have a question about duplication in an age where it is SO important.
If you look in their running sneakers category you'd see that they show the same item (in different color) as two separate items - how are these pages no considered duplication?

It gets even worse - If you look inside a shoe page (a product page) in the tab "About the Brand" you'd learn that all shoes from Nike (just an example) the about the brand is exactly the same. This is about 90% of the page for hundreds of Nike shoes pages - and goes the same for all other brands.

How come they are ranked so high and not penalized in the era of Panda?
Is it as always - big brands get away with anything and everything?

Here are two example shoe pages:
Nike Dart 10 (a)
Nike Dart 10 (b)

Thanks!

Hi All,

On one hand, if I follow them they are happy and receive a notice that they are being followed and will probably be more agile to plus my writings.

On the other, it is unreasonable for me to follow everyone... and I think that as a brand I should watch very carefully who I follow.

Thanks

Actually does sound familiar somehow even though I know most people are creating new post stating about the change and point to the old one (if there is enough to cover).

What about poorly written articles? Improving titles?

Please explain what you mean by "IF-MODIFIED-SINCE"?

Thanks