Attract Links & Influence Buyers
By Matthew Jackson, Head of SEO Strategy
@M4Jackson
Apologies
≠
What are we talking about?
Ecommerce sites have a difficult task in the modern search landscape.
Selling a product does not make you link-worthy
• How it has worked in the past
• How it works now
• What can we do to make you link-worthy?
Category
Links
Rankings
Ecommerce SEO In 2002-2011
It worked #1
Google is was stupid
Everybody was doing it
But mainly, it was cheap!
#2
#3
#4
This categorically does not work anymore
If this is your strategy, please STOP.
Unnatural Links
Bad Strategy Penguin 2.0
But also because….. • Disavow data
• Devaluation of other signals
• Network discovery
• Webmasters are more inclined to report
The current
CITATIONS
BUILD
CONVERSATIONS
NEWS
Sentiment
SOCIAL
Authority Relevance
Freshness
is listening to…
DESIGN
CONTENT
BLOG
Engagement
Satisfaction
Structure Quality
The Future (& present) of SEO
Google’s thoughts Want to sell products? - Adwords
- Google shopping
- AKA: You pay us for it
Want to rank organically?
- Add value
- Become a brand (the result people want)
- AKA: Pay someone else for it
Put your site at the centre of
Feeds the
This gives you two key benefits
#1 Gets you in the conversation
#2 Makes you worth talking about
You have to promote
Your new link strategy
• Create something to talk about
• Promote to a relevant audience
• Be a part of the conversation
Don’t worry about… • Anchor text
• If the content is related to commercial products, the anchor text will generate itself
• Keyword relevance • Create content to be proud of sharing, not content to boost rankings
• Target pages (unless it’s based on link worthiness) • Build your brand, build overall site authority, rankings will come
Biggest challenge for ecommerce
You need a new
approach
Publishers are becoming retailers & vice versa
A few tips…
Pay a popular writer #1
Paid media = Earned links #2
Work with the right people #3
