Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Ashley & Kerri. Thanks for getting back to me and for the great resource links. I'll dive into those.

Hi,

I've no background knowledge of affiliate programs and am wondering if this would be a good idea for our company, www.vintageheirloom.com?

We sell for the most part expensive, vintage bags and jewellery. Would an affiliates program be appropriate or possibly annoy and hinder customer loyalty rather than promote it?

I'm using WP with Woocommerce and have seen a plugin that connects Woocommerce with Ambassador. Does anyone have any previous experience with this company, worked well, any things to watch out for etc.

One issue that puzzles me if that I get the idea that you can put a tracking code on say a 3rd party blog banner, person clicks and buy product, that gets tracked. But what if customer abandons sale, comes back later directly to site and purchases? I'm guessing this isn't tracked. Is that right?

As an aside I've a blogger friend who I'd like to pay for sending traffic that leads to sales. Is this the best way to track? Would the addition of 'How did you hear about us' question during 'Add to cart' process be a back up method? Any downsides to that, other than customer ignoring it?

Thanks a lot for looking & any suggestions you may have!

Kevin

Hi Peter,

I very much like the look of your suggested URL, many thanks. More elegant, simple...

Good point about the search phrase. I think I was going down the wrong road with this. I know that 'authentic bags', 'designer bags' and 'vintage bags' are all very popular search phrases. I was trying, clumsily, to string these together. Not a good idea?

I'll email Woocommerce again but I've been told not to try to remove 'product-category' even though it is possible. The 'World will disappear'...

Thanks again Peter for your insight.

Kevin

Hi & thanks for looking,

I'm not sure if I've adopted the best SEO URL structure for my site, www.vintageheirloom.com

For instance, www.vintageheirloom.com/product-category/authentic-designer-vintage-bags/

Works great for the top level category 'All bags', as I'm trying to keyword authentic designer vintage bags.

However the sub categories for instance 'Clutch bags' appears as, www.vintageheirloom.com/product-category/authentic-designer-vintage-bags/vintage-clutch-bags/.

As you can see at the moment this URL contains duplicate terms vintage & bags. I'm guessing that duplicate keywords in a url isn't too smart, but should amend with Option 1, 2, 3 or something completely different?

Option 1 - keep the top level category url the same, change the subcategory: www.vintageheirloom.com/product-category/authentic-designer-vintage-bags/clutch/

Option 2 - amend the top level category: www.vintageheirloom.com/product-category/authentic-designer/vintage-clutch-bags/

Option 3 - amend the top level category as this: www.vintageheirloom.com/product-category/bags/authentic-designer-vintage-clutch/

By the way I'm using WordPress with Woocommerce. I've asked but it's not possible with some technical issues to remove the /product-category/ section. But each product is for example just: www.vintageheirloom.com/shop/vintage-coach-yellow-duffel-sac-bag/ .... sweet.

Thanks again !!

Joshua,

Many thanks, that really is helpful.

When you mention a prefix for the blog, would simply adding blog be ok?

http://vintageheirloom.biz/blog/2013/08/vintage-heirloom-turns-4/

Thanks for the links I'm off to have a look !

Cheers !

Thanks Jon,

We get vintage bags, mostly unique but not always, e.g. we get several vintage Celine box bags over the year,  so we do get duplicate titles and do need to add a serial number.

Biz is my dev area, but thanks for the info !

Thanks for this Jon,

I tweaked the perma links and now have this for a product:

http://vintageheirloom.biz/shop/vintage-chanel-caviar-skin-2-55-bag/

It's a bit closer to the so named 'flat structure' and I think the URL still contains the reference that it is a 2.55 bag, hopefully this works. I'll get around duplications by adding a serial number or unique database number at the end.

We are blogging too so it might be worth keeping these categories, could avoid potential issues down the road.

I did notice I have a very flat structure for our blogs e.g.

http://vintageheirloom.biz/vintage-bamboo-gucci-bags/

This looks like it could lead to duplicates, so I've changed it to:

http://vintageheirloom.biz/2013/07/vintage-bamboo-gucci-bags/

Would you agree this is better?

Thanks

Hi Mozzers !

Thanks for looking.

I have a new shop in development (http://www.vintageheirloom.biz), I'm now using WordPress & Woocommerce.

I've asked Woocommerce whether it is possible to remove the 'shop' and 'product-category' categories. They say it is, but it isn't recommended, it can slow site speed & create possible duplicate pages.

I'm wondering what seasoned SEO experts opinions are on my particular structure? I've heard that a flat structure is recommended, but ecommerce shops as I understand pose their own issues, so any feedback would be appreciated.. Here's some URL examples:

http://vintageheirloom.biz/shop/bags/ - this for the category bags

http://vintageheirloom.biz/product-category/bags/shoulder-bags/ - this for shoulder bags a child of bags category

http://vintageheirloom.biz/shop/2-55-bags/vintage-chanel-caviar-skin-2-55-bag/ - a product

The last URL contains the category 2-55 bags. The products name also includes the phrases 2-55 bag. Should this level of repetition be avoided or is it best to keep the whole phrase 'vintage-chanel-caviar-skin-2-55-bag/' for SEO purposes?

Thanks for any help you can give me around this issue!

Kevin

Hi Chris,

I'll definitely give that a look. I'm sure my snippets could be improved, I'm moving to Wordpress before Christmas so I'm hoping that platform has better support for this than my current OpenCart cart.

Thanks for the heads up...

Kevin

Hi Moz,

My very humble attempts at SEO has been doing very well for over a year with the keyword phrase 'vintage chanel bags'.

Recently, about 3-4 months ago I noticed it dropped from rank 1 to rank 5.

I've slowly but steadily been building up more social marketing interaction (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram mostly), brand awareness in company is increasing more searches for 'Vintage Heirloom', great in-links from reputable companies & bloggers.

What I'm confused about is that one of our competitors Rewindvintage now appears as no.1 for this keyword but tracking with Moz every metric we outperform them on, namely domain authority & Page Authority.

I have noticed they have 4 anchor text links (dubious quality wordpress comments), with the anchor term vintage chanel bags and we have none despite ranking no. 1 for so long??

I'm trying to use the Moz science here, just a bit confused.

Any help, insights, similar experience would be much appreciated.

I engage only in white hat and look for slow & honest SEO growth (as far as I'm aware ! ).

Thanks for looking Kevin

Hi Donald

Thanks for speedy response.

Yes you're right, I can see the repetition of phrase 'Vintage Chanel', report is a little misleading. These mostly come from the product names all prefixed with 'Vintage Chanel...'

Feel a bit stuck with the idea of removing 'Vintage Chanel...' from the titles of products though, seems a legitimate phrase and valid if I want to SEO for this phrase. But I'm happy if I'm wrong...

Thanks...

Hi Everett,

Wow, thanks for the comprehensive reply, it's really helped especially how honing in on the purpose dictates strategy, easy to overlook.

As you say I have an eCommerce site so getting people to buy is really my purpose, hopefully with added interesting articles along the way.

I like your idea of adding Free Shipping, which we do but don't advertise in SERPs, very helpful.

It's slowly dawning on me that I can with a bit of thought incorporate popular keywords into titles. Maybe the keywords aren't always the 1st 3 words in the the title, but hey you can't have everything.

You really given me some food for thought, thank you!

Kevin

Hi Everett,

Thank you for your considered response.

Choice wise, I feel fairly constrained by my shopping cart (Opencart, and lack of technical ability !

So am I correct in thinking that Google reads the rel canonical, not what appears in the URL? I've checked the generated rel canonical & by default it takes just the product name, probably as products, as you say, can be in more than 1 category. So I get: www.vintageheirloom.com/red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag-1362483150

As you say this omits the term chanel & vintage.

With no understanding of how to implement your suggestion of putting all products into a 'products' category I think it might be safer for me to leave as is... for now. I'll certainly bear this in mind when I next rebuild the website, all good food for thought.

Thanks!

Thanks Donford

Although I've got a Grade C page optimisation score, I've just checked and in the UK our site appears on page 1 rank 1 for Vintage Chanel bags (Google) which did surprise me somewhat.

Our products are transient, staying around for 2-6 weeks on average. Each item is unique, so no real time to build links to products / page authority etc. So I think your right to mention concentrating on the category SEO rather than the products (especially for us).

But... if I search for a more long tail term 'vintage chanel pink shoulder bag' we also appear page 1, rank 1, so I feel a bit like 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'.

The link to previous discussions isn't specifically about Ecommerce sites. I've checked a few competitors and they use 'Vintage' too, not that this means it is correct.

However I'm always open to change, my gut (not factual) feeling is that dropping Vintage from products would affect adversely the longer tailed search mentioned 'vintage chanel pink shoulder bag'.

Dana

I like it, I like it a lot!

This makes a lot of sense, hadn't thought of that.

My ecommerce site allows me to keep the product 'Active' but I just remove the Links to category so it doesn't appear by default and voila, problem solved.

For example this product: http://www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-designers/bottega-veneta/silk-rafia-style-bag-1347390241

Isn't visible in this category anymore: http://www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-designers/bottega-veneta

Perfect solution