Welcome to the Q&A Forum

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.

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?

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?

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

I have had a look and most people are still landing on our homepage, which is where are key search terms point.

None of it really makes any sense to me. Like you say really strange. The other thing we have noticed over the last couple of days is that we have a floury of visitors and then nothing. So really up and down. No consistency. Maybe we are dropping out of the search altogether and then reappearing, which is why the reporting is picking up the visibility. So for instance this morning we have nothing and this afternoon we seem to be picking up again. It was the same yesterday. Usually there is consistency and it can't just be a coincidence that the update happened at the same time.

I read that possibly Google maybe testing the update (possibly penguin). Some people are reporting that spammy sites are suddenly ranking? http://www.seo21.co.uk/google-algo-update/spam-is-back-the-latest-google-algorithm-update-apparently-loves-link-spam/

I am still scratching my head...ALOT! Lol!

Clojo

Thanks Andy. That's great. I'll have a look.

Well, this is the strange thing, analytics seem to be roughly the same as they were last week. So we having similar amount of hits per day. Plus, like I say, all the stats are showing that we are going up rather than down?

See attached.

It just seems to be fluctuation massively. Site is the same. Just adding posts every few days as always. It is almost like the visitors aren't finding what they are looking for. Like we are coming up for the wrong search terms or something? It is so random.

Clojo

tCh7aIL OU95m82 CddtvUh

Hi there

I wonder if anyone can advise on this.

Since the latest google update on 1st Sept or whenever it rolled out, we noticed an initial spike in hits on our site, which was great. However now we are noticing levels going back to where they were and less people visiting the site. It also seems to be very sporadic. So we have a period of say a couple of hours with no one on the site, then suddenly loads visiting. We have also noticed a big dip in enquiries, despite the site having roughly the same amount of visitors.

All our stats on Moz, Webmaster Tools, Ahrefs, Serpfox and various other rank trackers are showing that we have had an increase in visibility on our tracked keywords. There is a definite spike on all, but where is our traffic and where are our enquiries? Usually we are able to work out where the problem is when updates occur but with this we have no idea.

We are utterly baffled. Is this normal? Is this just fluctuations and will settle down? Has anyone else noticed weird things happening?

If anyone has any ideas or experience of this then would be most grateful for any advice. Feeling rather desperate at the moment.

Many thanks in advance.

Clojo

Hi Martijn

Thanks for your response. That's really useful and makes a lot of sense. I will aim for more relevant links.

For a legal website (no win no fee solicitors - specifically employment) would you have any suggestions? I am relatively new to this and find that with it being a fairly mundane niche, I am struggling to find legitimate links. We have published interesting content and posted youtube videos, but getting the links is proving a tricky task. Completely appreciate that this is tricky for everyone, but if you have any advice I would be really grateful.

Many thanks in advance.

Clojo

Hi there

Just had a quick question about links on Reference.com or Ask.com.

I have been looking at my competitors link profiles to get ideas of who and where I should/could be linking from. One of my main competitors seems to have links on Reference.com and Ask.com which are being listed in there profile. Reference.com are dofollow. Our site is also appearing on these sites, but the links are being listed under our profile. We have been up and running for more that 3 years now. The obviously have high DR and I think must be a contributing factor to their rank, having looked at other links in their profile.

It seems strange because I thought these sites are effectively search engines and therefore wouldn't count towards your backlink profile?

Can anyone explain? Would be most grateful if someone can.

Many thanks in advance.

Clojo

Hi there

Just had a quick question about links on Reference.com or Ask.com.

I have been looking at my competitors link profiles to get ideas of who and where I should/could be linking from. One of my main competitors seems to have links on Reference.com and Ask.com which are being listed in there profile. Reference.com are dofollow. Our site is also appearing on these sites, but the links are being listed under our profile. We have been up and running for more that 3 years now. The obviously have high DR and I think must be a contributing factor to their rank, having looked at other links in their profile.

It seems strange because I thought these sites are effectively search engines and therefore wouldn't count towards your backlink profile?

Can anyone explain? Would be most grateful if someone can.

Many thanks in advance.

Clojo

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?

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?

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

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.