ecommerce seo guide€¦ · thousands of backlinks to your online store. creating remarkable...
TRANSCRIPT
ECOMMERCE SEO GUIDE
Your Questions Answered
Table of Contents
Who contributed to this guide
Itrsquos hard to get people to link to my store What are link building strategies that work for ecommerce stores
How much copy should you have on a category or collection page in your ecommerce store What should it be about
Itrsquos not feasible to have 1000 word descriptions of each of my products How long should my product descriptions really be
What are SEO best practices for handling dozens of variations of the same product
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store Top 10 Ecommerce Blogs
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
RICHARD LAZAZZERA | A BETTER LEMONADE STAND
Richard Lazazzera is an ecommerce entrepreneur and founder of A Better Lemonade Stand an ecommerce blog and incubator for early stage entrepreneurs Learn more about Richard or get more from him on Twitter
KENNY ROSENBERG | BVACCEL
Kenny Rosenberg is VP of Design and Development at Brand Value Accelerator the fastest growing Shopify Agency in the world BVAccel is strategically aligned with the best platforms in the business and laser focused on the 3 pillars of eCommerce - conversion retention and acquisitionWhen BVAccelrsquos team of diverse leaders work on a project together they focus on problem solving superb UX and scalability - the result is beautiful online storefronts and steadfast lasting relationships
DAVE HERMANSEN | STORECOACH
Dave Hermansen is a world renowned ecommerce expert who has received national media attention for his unique approach to building amp marketing online niche stores Since 2003 he has built dozens of 6-figure profit ecommerce stores and has consulted on hundreds of others He is considered one of the pioneers of dropship ecommerce and currently coaches ecommerce entrepreneurs at his online community StoreCoachcom
RONEN AMIT | SELLERACT
Ronen Amit is a senior eCommerce strategist and the founder of SellerActcom an eCommerce marketing powerhouse focused on results Ronen is an award winning eCommerce marketer who has been helping companies to succeed online since 1999 and an eCommerce consultant for Mackenzie amp Company AlphaSights among others
DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
Diane Ellis Scalisi is an eCommerce Strategist with CanIRank an SEO tool suite that helps ecommerce stores improve their visibility online and attract new customers Previously she ran a $15Myr eCommerce business in the wedding and event decorations industry
JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
As Content Manager at ecommerce marketing agency Gorilla 360 - James tells stories for a living Sometimes they are true Always they are crafted to help brands delight educate and funny-bone-tickle their audiences into coming back for more Hersquos super passionate (read obsessive) about ecommerce content marketing and dedicated to teaching online retailers how to create their own repeat-customer-generating machine Make sure you subscribe for a weekly package of ecommerce learning from James and the rest of the Gorilla 360 team
AUTHOR RICHARD LAZAZZERA | A BETTER LEMONADE STAND
ANSWER Depending on your products different link building strategies will work for
different businesses and niches Outlined below is one of the most effective and popular methods to get you started
Create Remarkable Content
Without a doubt this is one of the best ways to get dozens hundreds and maybe even thousands of backlinks to your online store Creating remarkable content means content thatrsquos so good so interesting and so comprehensive that people feel compelled to share it with someone or with their social networks Even Neil Patel agrees
ldquoCreate a site with high value information that elicits links by virtue of its awesomeness That my friends is content marketingrdquo- Neil Patel Wendyrsquos Lookbook is a popular fashion blog and online store A while ago Wendy created an extremely comprehensive and entertaining YouTube video on 25 Ways to Tie a Scarf (and I thought there were only 2 ways) This video alone has netted Wendy over 35 million views Looking at SEMrush we can also see shersquos earned over 100 backlinks to her blog because of it (I tend to find SEMrush under-reports backlinks as well) This video long after it was created continues to get views drive traffic and earns Wendy ongoing backlinks Like the one in this article
Take a look at the video below How could you create a comprehensive video in your niche
QUESTION
Its hard to get people to link to my store What are link building strategies that work for ecommerce stores
Keep in mind it doesnrsquot have to be a polished video like Wendyrsquos Even a comprehensive blog post can earn you dozens of backlinks Thatrsquos exactly what Emil from SnackNation a subscription snack delivery service did
On Emilrsquos first day of work his boss sat him down and said ldquoget us some backlinksrdquo
To do that Emil wrote a comprehensive post on employee wellness programs After reaching out by email to some people who he thought would be interested in his post he began getting a few backlinks which rose their position for the article in Google This in turn got their site more visibility more sales and more backlinks A self perpetuating cycle
Read the full case study here
Hundreds of Way to Get Backlinks
There are literally hundreds of ways to get backlinks to your store If yoursquore looking for some low-hanging fruit to get started try sending out some products for reviews ask manufacturers and suppliers to link to you from their sites write a guest blog post for a popular blog email your local newspaper about your business and create relevant and interesting conversations on Reddit (after a certain number of upvotes Reddit links in threads become DoFollow links from a very valuable 90+DA website)
For more ways to build backlinks to your store check out Point Blankrsquos comprehensive list of link building strategies
Additional resources on link-building for ecommerce
Brian Dean | Quicksprout How to Build Links to Your Ecommerce Site [VIDEO]
Andrew Dennis | Linkarati E-commerce Link Building Strategies
Shabbir Nooruddin | Bootstrapping Ecommerce 50 Actionable Ways to Build Links to Your eCommerce Store
Eric Ward | Search Engine Land E-Commerce Link Building - The Challenge That Wont Go Away
Stephanie Chang | MOZ Creative Link Building for Ecommerce Sites
Pawel Grabowski | SERPS Killer Ways to Build Links in Ecommerce
AUTHOR KENNY ROSENBERG | BVAACCEL
ANSWER Itrsquos a marketerrsquos dream to have built in SEO functionality however online store
owners need to carefully assess their site as well to develop a customized action plan in order to enhance their search engine presence and traffic -- And with Shopify Plus itrsquos easy to do so Here are a couple of SEO tips to help kickstart your categorycollection page in your eCommerce store
Tips To Enhance SEO CategoryCollection Page
1 Ensure A Viable Ranking At the bare minimum your collection page content should include a title (set within an lth1gt tag and consistent with anchor links used for navigation) introductory description and unique copy to ensure a top ranking within search results Make sure to keep it short and sweet as we recommend using no more than 150-250 words
2 Have A Strong Introductory Description Your introductory description should be at least 2-3 sentences long and should primarily communicate the types of products found in the collection as itrsquos important to educate your customers through the entire shopping process The introductory description can also include value propositions or promotional messaging to further engage your shoppers (you may place this above your product list)
3 Add Details About Products Near the bottom of your collection pages (below the product list) you should add unique and descriptive details about the products within the collection Remember to
QUESTION
How much copy should you have on a categorycollection page in your ecommerce store What should it be about (Where should you put it)
use several words people are most likely to search for
4 Include Primary Keywords You will want to include primary keywords (only once) within this content block and any other copy that may have been used in your Meta Titles or Descriptions (Shopify themes can automatically generate meta descriptions for each page) This unique copy is placed below your product list so it doesnrsquot impact conversions by pushing products below the fold
WANT TO WORK WITH BVA ACCELAt BVAccel we believe that that every portion of an eCommerce strategy is important From building your webstore to acquiring customers through marketing strategies
CONTACT USVIEW PORTFOLIO
Additional Resources on SEO for Category Pages
Simon Habtemariam | Groove Four SEO Tips for eCommerce Category Pages
Linda Bustos | GetElastic 3 Ninja Ways to Boost Your Category Page SEO
Everett Sizemore | Volusion How to Increase SEO by Adding Content on Category Pages
FuturePay How to Optimize Your Product Category Pages
AUTHOR DAVE HERMANSEN | STORECOACH
ANSWER
One of the biggest problems that eCommerce store owners face is writing
unique compelling content for their product pages - especially if they have hundreds or even thousands of products What compounds the problem is that when a great number of products are very similar you run the risk of repeating virtually the same content on every single product page and creating a great deal of on-site duplicate content Although it certainly helps to have a lot of relevant content on a page writing long form 1000+ word product descriptions is nearly impossible for most product niches and frankly it is rarely necessary More important is providing the type of content that informs customers answering questions they may have and helping them see how the product can make their life better We tackle product pages with a two-pronged approach First we want to get our websites up and running as quickly as possible and not get bogged down for months writing hundreds of ultra unique product pages After our site is launched and we have begun marketing it we will go back into our product pages one by one and re-write them adding additional information During the pre-launch stage we typically write several sentences of unique content attempting to create a why reason for buying any given product The key here is to put yourself in a customers shoes and create a mental image of how that product will make them better smarter more likable more popular more attractive happier etc After that we will include the typical manufacturer bullet point features but we try re-write them slightly to make them a little more unique We will also include what we call templated copy that is essentially the same on every product page but with the product name inserted within the copy This templated copy will include why buy from us information like our satisfaction guarantee free shipping (if applicable) and warranty information
QUESTION
Its not feasible to have 1000 word descriptions of each of my products How long should my product descriptions really be
Templated copy might look something like this
You can rest assured that you are making an excellent decision when you buy our Acme Roadrunner Repellent It is backed by our 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee as well as a One Year Manufacturers Warranty Better still all Acme Roadrunner Repellent orders SHIP FREE If you have any questions about whether this proven roadrunner repellent will work for your particular situation please dont hesitate to get in touch with us via our Contact Us form or give us a call toll free at 1-800-555-1234 We love helping people get the exact product for their needs
After the store is launched and we are working on getting backlinks and perhaps running ads for the website we go back in and add additional content to our product pages This is where we take a look at the manufacturers bullet point features and write sentences that explain the benefits of those features We also make sure that every who what where when why and how question that we can think of has been answered If we have access to assembly instructions or owners manuals well add those in a tab on the product page too I assure you that after you have done all of that your product pages will be vastly superior to what the majority of your competitors are doing and youll have far more content than you ever thought you could create for each product Over time customers will hopefully be supplying even more content to your product pages in the form of reviews or even testimonials If you are working with shopping cart software that has a product-specific FAQs module that will add a great deal of additional super relevant copy to your product pages as well While it is true that the more content there is on a page the better chance it has at ranking well the most important thing with product pages is converting visitors into buyers We always think of the customer first and the search engines second Fortunately if you follow our method of creating product pages youll get positive results from both
CREATE AND MARKET AN ECOMMERCE STOREFree step-by-step guidance on how to create and market an online store
TAKE THE COURSE
Additional Resources on Copywriting for Product Pages
Laura Serino | eCommerceFuel Boring Products No Problem How to Write Compelling Copy for Anything
Pulkit Rastogi | I Love Fashion Retail Fashion Copywriting 13 Tips for Writing Product Descriptions That Will Get Your Customers to Say Yes
Mark Macdonald | Shopify 9 Simple Ways to Write Product Descriptions that Sell
Craig Anderson | Smashing Magazine E-Commerce Copywriting The Guide to Selling More
Khalid Saleh | MOZ 4 Ways Copywriting Can Help Your Ecommerce Conversion Rates
AUTHOR RONEN AMIT | SELLER ACT
ANSWER
The Options for Approaching Product Variants Product variants --the different variations in color size scent and so on --of a certain product can be incorporated into your online store in two ways 1 Single product page enabling your customers to choose the right size preferred color scent etc2 Multiple product pages each page for each variants or for a group of variants Which is better for SEO and what other factors may you want to take into account
Single Product Page
Creating a single page for all product variants is pretty straightforward on most modern ecommerce platforms If you decide to go with a single page make sure to apply SEO best practices as you would on any content page integrating keywords into the product title and description meta tags and so on Important Note If your platform creates a new URL for each variant make sure you use canonical URL to signal Google that all variant URLs are pointing to a single core product Otherwise you risk Google considering these URLs as duplicates and penalizing your product pages or even your whole website Use the following tag on your product page between ltheadgt and ltheadgt ltlink rel=canonical href=your core product url here gt
QUESTION
What are SEO best practices for handling dozens of variations of the same product
The Canonical URL signals the search engine your preferred core product URL For further information see httpssupportgooglecomwebmastersanswer139066
In addition you may want to consider using Schemaorg Here is an example how to deal with variants
ltdiv itemprop=model itemscope itemtype=httpschemaorgProductModelgtltspan itemprop=namegtVariant Product Nameltspangtltmeta itemprop=productID content=Variant Product SKU or Catalog gtltmeta itemprop=isVariantOf content=Core Product SKU or Catalog gtltdivgtltdivgt For further information please refer to httpschemaorgProductModel
Multiple Product Pages
In case you decide to create different page for each variant (see more considerations and recommendations below) you will need to set the content of each variant page apart so Googles algorithm will not consider those pages as duplicates Unless you have only several core products this could be a tedious task For example if you have only 5 colors and 5 sizes for each core product 100 products turns into 2500 product pages each should be optimized separately with a unique content
Usability and conversion
Beyond SEO there are many factors --and chief among these usability and conversion
Variant 1 Variant 2 - Note the URL is different than variant
-- to consider when yoursquore working with an eCommerce site Even if you were able to generate more organic traffic by creating different pages for each product variant rather than featuring all variants on a single page does that mean you are making more sales If a potential customer were to find your store and see the blue product would she be aware that you also have the same product in red When a customer arrives at your web store regardless of whether they came through a search engine how easy is it for them to find the product they are interested in Having 25x more product pages or even just 5x more product pages for each core product may possibly help you generate more organic traffic but at the same time it will almost certainly make it more difficult for your customers to find products in your store Is the tradeoff worth it
Best Practice It is very clear that Google does not like duplicate pages And if you try to find loopholes in Googles algorithm you risk facing massive penalties for your entire web store We recommend creating a single page with all your variants in one place For best results apply on-page SEO to create an optimized product page which ranks well on search engines and converts your visitors into buyers with attractive design hi-res images persuasive content and clear a call-to-action
BUILD AN ONLINE STORELearn about how Ronen Amit and SellerAct can help you build an online store that creates revenue and growth
START BUILDING
Additional Resources on Product Variants
Katey Ferenzi | BigCommerce Product Options The Most Commonly Overlooked Ecommerce Element Likely Affecting Your SEO and Conversions
Jill Kocher | Practical Ecommerce SEO When Product Facets and Filters Fail
Google Webmaster | Faceted Navigation Best (and 5 of the Worst) Practices
QUESTION
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like
AUTHOR JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
ANSWER
When we SEO folk talk architecture wersquore referring to the way your content
is organized on your website Site architecture matters to search engines especially for ecommerce websites
If you have a lsquodeeprsquo architecture it takes your customers a bunch of clicks to find their information Google Bing and friends are no different Search engines find it hard to navigate through different levels of your website So in the simple terms that you wished your business teacher could have used to save you an entire semester worth of study
The easier it is for search engines to find your content the better your presence in SERPs will be
The difference between deep and flat site architecture On the left is a flat architecture with a homepage 8 category pages and 6 product pages within each category On the right is a deep architecture with a homepage four category pages two layers of sub category pages and just one or two product pages within each sub category
A ldquoflat architecturerdquo is best for SEO purposes But as always customer first Google second
Why a flat site architecture is (usually) better A flat page hierarchy allows users to navigate through your site quickly with no need to make 6 or 7 clicks to get to their destination So most times flat is best for your customers too However if your potential customer canrsquot understand where to find information within a category you might need to add a sub category to make things easier
If itrsquos fashion apparel yoursquore pedaling you could break out menrsquos and womenrsquos shoes into categories rather than forcing your visitors to search through both on the same product page
From an SEO point of view a flat structure ensures your page rank is less diluted across the site Pages will get more rankings juice from each other
The more clicks you have to get to the lower pages the more link juice (technical term promisehellip) you are filtering This means less juice is left for your deeper pages and that Google will have a harder time finding them
If a customer needs fewer clicks to get to the bottom of your architecture itrsquos easier for Google to associate your popular home and category pages with your product pages Google doesnrsquot have to search as hard or squeeze the rankings juice as far
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites as you are dealing with lots and lots of categories sub-categories and products pages
SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site
bull Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepagebull All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigatebull Most importantly itrsquos easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex but if yoursquore following a similar pattern to this yoursquove got the right foundations for a flat site architecture
YOU DONT NEED TO PAY AN EXPERTNeed help improving your ecommerce sites SEO With this guide you can do it yourself
DOWNLOAD
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
Table of Contents
Who contributed to this guide
Itrsquos hard to get people to link to my store What are link building strategies that work for ecommerce stores
How much copy should you have on a category or collection page in your ecommerce store What should it be about
Itrsquos not feasible to have 1000 word descriptions of each of my products How long should my product descriptions really be
What are SEO best practices for handling dozens of variations of the same product
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store Top 10 Ecommerce Blogs
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
RICHARD LAZAZZERA | A BETTER LEMONADE STAND
Richard Lazazzera is an ecommerce entrepreneur and founder of A Better Lemonade Stand an ecommerce blog and incubator for early stage entrepreneurs Learn more about Richard or get more from him on Twitter
KENNY ROSENBERG | BVACCEL
Kenny Rosenberg is VP of Design and Development at Brand Value Accelerator the fastest growing Shopify Agency in the world BVAccel is strategically aligned with the best platforms in the business and laser focused on the 3 pillars of eCommerce - conversion retention and acquisitionWhen BVAccelrsquos team of diverse leaders work on a project together they focus on problem solving superb UX and scalability - the result is beautiful online storefronts and steadfast lasting relationships
DAVE HERMANSEN | STORECOACH
Dave Hermansen is a world renowned ecommerce expert who has received national media attention for his unique approach to building amp marketing online niche stores Since 2003 he has built dozens of 6-figure profit ecommerce stores and has consulted on hundreds of others He is considered one of the pioneers of dropship ecommerce and currently coaches ecommerce entrepreneurs at his online community StoreCoachcom
RONEN AMIT | SELLERACT
Ronen Amit is a senior eCommerce strategist and the founder of SellerActcom an eCommerce marketing powerhouse focused on results Ronen is an award winning eCommerce marketer who has been helping companies to succeed online since 1999 and an eCommerce consultant for Mackenzie amp Company AlphaSights among others
DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
Diane Ellis Scalisi is an eCommerce Strategist with CanIRank an SEO tool suite that helps ecommerce stores improve their visibility online and attract new customers Previously she ran a $15Myr eCommerce business in the wedding and event decorations industry
JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
As Content Manager at ecommerce marketing agency Gorilla 360 - James tells stories for a living Sometimes they are true Always they are crafted to help brands delight educate and funny-bone-tickle their audiences into coming back for more Hersquos super passionate (read obsessive) about ecommerce content marketing and dedicated to teaching online retailers how to create their own repeat-customer-generating machine Make sure you subscribe for a weekly package of ecommerce learning from James and the rest of the Gorilla 360 team
AUTHOR RICHARD LAZAZZERA | A BETTER LEMONADE STAND
ANSWER Depending on your products different link building strategies will work for
different businesses and niches Outlined below is one of the most effective and popular methods to get you started
Create Remarkable Content
Without a doubt this is one of the best ways to get dozens hundreds and maybe even thousands of backlinks to your online store Creating remarkable content means content thatrsquos so good so interesting and so comprehensive that people feel compelled to share it with someone or with their social networks Even Neil Patel agrees
ldquoCreate a site with high value information that elicits links by virtue of its awesomeness That my friends is content marketingrdquo- Neil Patel Wendyrsquos Lookbook is a popular fashion blog and online store A while ago Wendy created an extremely comprehensive and entertaining YouTube video on 25 Ways to Tie a Scarf (and I thought there were only 2 ways) This video alone has netted Wendy over 35 million views Looking at SEMrush we can also see shersquos earned over 100 backlinks to her blog because of it (I tend to find SEMrush under-reports backlinks as well) This video long after it was created continues to get views drive traffic and earns Wendy ongoing backlinks Like the one in this article
Take a look at the video below How could you create a comprehensive video in your niche
QUESTION
Its hard to get people to link to my store What are link building strategies that work for ecommerce stores
Keep in mind it doesnrsquot have to be a polished video like Wendyrsquos Even a comprehensive blog post can earn you dozens of backlinks Thatrsquos exactly what Emil from SnackNation a subscription snack delivery service did
On Emilrsquos first day of work his boss sat him down and said ldquoget us some backlinksrdquo
To do that Emil wrote a comprehensive post on employee wellness programs After reaching out by email to some people who he thought would be interested in his post he began getting a few backlinks which rose their position for the article in Google This in turn got their site more visibility more sales and more backlinks A self perpetuating cycle
Read the full case study here
Hundreds of Way to Get Backlinks
There are literally hundreds of ways to get backlinks to your store If yoursquore looking for some low-hanging fruit to get started try sending out some products for reviews ask manufacturers and suppliers to link to you from their sites write a guest blog post for a popular blog email your local newspaper about your business and create relevant and interesting conversations on Reddit (after a certain number of upvotes Reddit links in threads become DoFollow links from a very valuable 90+DA website)
For more ways to build backlinks to your store check out Point Blankrsquos comprehensive list of link building strategies
Additional resources on link-building for ecommerce
Brian Dean | Quicksprout How to Build Links to Your Ecommerce Site [VIDEO]
Andrew Dennis | Linkarati E-commerce Link Building Strategies
Shabbir Nooruddin | Bootstrapping Ecommerce 50 Actionable Ways to Build Links to Your eCommerce Store
Eric Ward | Search Engine Land E-Commerce Link Building - The Challenge That Wont Go Away
Stephanie Chang | MOZ Creative Link Building for Ecommerce Sites
Pawel Grabowski | SERPS Killer Ways to Build Links in Ecommerce
AUTHOR KENNY ROSENBERG | BVAACCEL
ANSWER Itrsquos a marketerrsquos dream to have built in SEO functionality however online store
owners need to carefully assess their site as well to develop a customized action plan in order to enhance their search engine presence and traffic -- And with Shopify Plus itrsquos easy to do so Here are a couple of SEO tips to help kickstart your categorycollection page in your eCommerce store
Tips To Enhance SEO CategoryCollection Page
1 Ensure A Viable Ranking At the bare minimum your collection page content should include a title (set within an lth1gt tag and consistent with anchor links used for navigation) introductory description and unique copy to ensure a top ranking within search results Make sure to keep it short and sweet as we recommend using no more than 150-250 words
2 Have A Strong Introductory Description Your introductory description should be at least 2-3 sentences long and should primarily communicate the types of products found in the collection as itrsquos important to educate your customers through the entire shopping process The introductory description can also include value propositions or promotional messaging to further engage your shoppers (you may place this above your product list)
3 Add Details About Products Near the bottom of your collection pages (below the product list) you should add unique and descriptive details about the products within the collection Remember to
QUESTION
How much copy should you have on a categorycollection page in your ecommerce store What should it be about (Where should you put it)
use several words people are most likely to search for
4 Include Primary Keywords You will want to include primary keywords (only once) within this content block and any other copy that may have been used in your Meta Titles or Descriptions (Shopify themes can automatically generate meta descriptions for each page) This unique copy is placed below your product list so it doesnrsquot impact conversions by pushing products below the fold
WANT TO WORK WITH BVA ACCELAt BVAccel we believe that that every portion of an eCommerce strategy is important From building your webstore to acquiring customers through marketing strategies
CONTACT USVIEW PORTFOLIO
Additional Resources on SEO for Category Pages
Simon Habtemariam | Groove Four SEO Tips for eCommerce Category Pages
Linda Bustos | GetElastic 3 Ninja Ways to Boost Your Category Page SEO
Everett Sizemore | Volusion How to Increase SEO by Adding Content on Category Pages
FuturePay How to Optimize Your Product Category Pages
AUTHOR DAVE HERMANSEN | STORECOACH
ANSWER
One of the biggest problems that eCommerce store owners face is writing
unique compelling content for their product pages - especially if they have hundreds or even thousands of products What compounds the problem is that when a great number of products are very similar you run the risk of repeating virtually the same content on every single product page and creating a great deal of on-site duplicate content Although it certainly helps to have a lot of relevant content on a page writing long form 1000+ word product descriptions is nearly impossible for most product niches and frankly it is rarely necessary More important is providing the type of content that informs customers answering questions they may have and helping them see how the product can make their life better We tackle product pages with a two-pronged approach First we want to get our websites up and running as quickly as possible and not get bogged down for months writing hundreds of ultra unique product pages After our site is launched and we have begun marketing it we will go back into our product pages one by one and re-write them adding additional information During the pre-launch stage we typically write several sentences of unique content attempting to create a why reason for buying any given product The key here is to put yourself in a customers shoes and create a mental image of how that product will make them better smarter more likable more popular more attractive happier etc After that we will include the typical manufacturer bullet point features but we try re-write them slightly to make them a little more unique We will also include what we call templated copy that is essentially the same on every product page but with the product name inserted within the copy This templated copy will include why buy from us information like our satisfaction guarantee free shipping (if applicable) and warranty information
QUESTION
Its not feasible to have 1000 word descriptions of each of my products How long should my product descriptions really be
Templated copy might look something like this
You can rest assured that you are making an excellent decision when you buy our Acme Roadrunner Repellent It is backed by our 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee as well as a One Year Manufacturers Warranty Better still all Acme Roadrunner Repellent orders SHIP FREE If you have any questions about whether this proven roadrunner repellent will work for your particular situation please dont hesitate to get in touch with us via our Contact Us form or give us a call toll free at 1-800-555-1234 We love helping people get the exact product for their needs
After the store is launched and we are working on getting backlinks and perhaps running ads for the website we go back in and add additional content to our product pages This is where we take a look at the manufacturers bullet point features and write sentences that explain the benefits of those features We also make sure that every who what where when why and how question that we can think of has been answered If we have access to assembly instructions or owners manuals well add those in a tab on the product page too I assure you that after you have done all of that your product pages will be vastly superior to what the majority of your competitors are doing and youll have far more content than you ever thought you could create for each product Over time customers will hopefully be supplying even more content to your product pages in the form of reviews or even testimonials If you are working with shopping cart software that has a product-specific FAQs module that will add a great deal of additional super relevant copy to your product pages as well While it is true that the more content there is on a page the better chance it has at ranking well the most important thing with product pages is converting visitors into buyers We always think of the customer first and the search engines second Fortunately if you follow our method of creating product pages youll get positive results from both
CREATE AND MARKET AN ECOMMERCE STOREFree step-by-step guidance on how to create and market an online store
TAKE THE COURSE
Additional Resources on Copywriting for Product Pages
Laura Serino | eCommerceFuel Boring Products No Problem How to Write Compelling Copy for Anything
Pulkit Rastogi | I Love Fashion Retail Fashion Copywriting 13 Tips for Writing Product Descriptions That Will Get Your Customers to Say Yes
Mark Macdonald | Shopify 9 Simple Ways to Write Product Descriptions that Sell
Craig Anderson | Smashing Magazine E-Commerce Copywriting The Guide to Selling More
Khalid Saleh | MOZ 4 Ways Copywriting Can Help Your Ecommerce Conversion Rates
AUTHOR RONEN AMIT | SELLER ACT
ANSWER
The Options for Approaching Product Variants Product variants --the different variations in color size scent and so on --of a certain product can be incorporated into your online store in two ways 1 Single product page enabling your customers to choose the right size preferred color scent etc2 Multiple product pages each page for each variants or for a group of variants Which is better for SEO and what other factors may you want to take into account
Single Product Page
Creating a single page for all product variants is pretty straightforward on most modern ecommerce platforms If you decide to go with a single page make sure to apply SEO best practices as you would on any content page integrating keywords into the product title and description meta tags and so on Important Note If your platform creates a new URL for each variant make sure you use canonical URL to signal Google that all variant URLs are pointing to a single core product Otherwise you risk Google considering these URLs as duplicates and penalizing your product pages or even your whole website Use the following tag on your product page between ltheadgt and ltheadgt ltlink rel=canonical href=your core product url here gt
QUESTION
What are SEO best practices for handling dozens of variations of the same product
The Canonical URL signals the search engine your preferred core product URL For further information see httpssupportgooglecomwebmastersanswer139066
In addition you may want to consider using Schemaorg Here is an example how to deal with variants
ltdiv itemprop=model itemscope itemtype=httpschemaorgProductModelgtltspan itemprop=namegtVariant Product Nameltspangtltmeta itemprop=productID content=Variant Product SKU or Catalog gtltmeta itemprop=isVariantOf content=Core Product SKU or Catalog gtltdivgtltdivgt For further information please refer to httpschemaorgProductModel
Multiple Product Pages
In case you decide to create different page for each variant (see more considerations and recommendations below) you will need to set the content of each variant page apart so Googles algorithm will not consider those pages as duplicates Unless you have only several core products this could be a tedious task For example if you have only 5 colors and 5 sizes for each core product 100 products turns into 2500 product pages each should be optimized separately with a unique content
Usability and conversion
Beyond SEO there are many factors --and chief among these usability and conversion
Variant 1 Variant 2 - Note the URL is different than variant
-- to consider when yoursquore working with an eCommerce site Even if you were able to generate more organic traffic by creating different pages for each product variant rather than featuring all variants on a single page does that mean you are making more sales If a potential customer were to find your store and see the blue product would she be aware that you also have the same product in red When a customer arrives at your web store regardless of whether they came through a search engine how easy is it for them to find the product they are interested in Having 25x more product pages or even just 5x more product pages for each core product may possibly help you generate more organic traffic but at the same time it will almost certainly make it more difficult for your customers to find products in your store Is the tradeoff worth it
Best Practice It is very clear that Google does not like duplicate pages And if you try to find loopholes in Googles algorithm you risk facing massive penalties for your entire web store We recommend creating a single page with all your variants in one place For best results apply on-page SEO to create an optimized product page which ranks well on search engines and converts your visitors into buyers with attractive design hi-res images persuasive content and clear a call-to-action
BUILD AN ONLINE STORELearn about how Ronen Amit and SellerAct can help you build an online store that creates revenue and growth
START BUILDING
Additional Resources on Product Variants
Katey Ferenzi | BigCommerce Product Options The Most Commonly Overlooked Ecommerce Element Likely Affecting Your SEO and Conversions
Jill Kocher | Practical Ecommerce SEO When Product Facets and Filters Fail
Google Webmaster | Faceted Navigation Best (and 5 of the Worst) Practices
QUESTION
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like
AUTHOR JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
ANSWER
When we SEO folk talk architecture wersquore referring to the way your content
is organized on your website Site architecture matters to search engines especially for ecommerce websites
If you have a lsquodeeprsquo architecture it takes your customers a bunch of clicks to find their information Google Bing and friends are no different Search engines find it hard to navigate through different levels of your website So in the simple terms that you wished your business teacher could have used to save you an entire semester worth of study
The easier it is for search engines to find your content the better your presence in SERPs will be
The difference between deep and flat site architecture On the left is a flat architecture with a homepage 8 category pages and 6 product pages within each category On the right is a deep architecture with a homepage four category pages two layers of sub category pages and just one or two product pages within each sub category
A ldquoflat architecturerdquo is best for SEO purposes But as always customer first Google second
Why a flat site architecture is (usually) better A flat page hierarchy allows users to navigate through your site quickly with no need to make 6 or 7 clicks to get to their destination So most times flat is best for your customers too However if your potential customer canrsquot understand where to find information within a category you might need to add a sub category to make things easier
If itrsquos fashion apparel yoursquore pedaling you could break out menrsquos and womenrsquos shoes into categories rather than forcing your visitors to search through both on the same product page
From an SEO point of view a flat structure ensures your page rank is less diluted across the site Pages will get more rankings juice from each other
The more clicks you have to get to the lower pages the more link juice (technical term promisehellip) you are filtering This means less juice is left for your deeper pages and that Google will have a harder time finding them
If a customer needs fewer clicks to get to the bottom of your architecture itrsquos easier for Google to associate your popular home and category pages with your product pages Google doesnrsquot have to search as hard or squeeze the rankings juice as far
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites as you are dealing with lots and lots of categories sub-categories and products pages
SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site
bull Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepagebull All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigatebull Most importantly itrsquos easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex but if yoursquore following a similar pattern to this yoursquove got the right foundations for a flat site architecture
YOU DONT NEED TO PAY AN EXPERTNeed help improving your ecommerce sites SEO With this guide you can do it yourself
DOWNLOAD
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
RICHARD LAZAZZERA | A BETTER LEMONADE STAND
Richard Lazazzera is an ecommerce entrepreneur and founder of A Better Lemonade Stand an ecommerce blog and incubator for early stage entrepreneurs Learn more about Richard or get more from him on Twitter
KENNY ROSENBERG | BVACCEL
Kenny Rosenberg is VP of Design and Development at Brand Value Accelerator the fastest growing Shopify Agency in the world BVAccel is strategically aligned with the best platforms in the business and laser focused on the 3 pillars of eCommerce - conversion retention and acquisitionWhen BVAccelrsquos team of diverse leaders work on a project together they focus on problem solving superb UX and scalability - the result is beautiful online storefronts and steadfast lasting relationships
DAVE HERMANSEN | STORECOACH
Dave Hermansen is a world renowned ecommerce expert who has received national media attention for his unique approach to building amp marketing online niche stores Since 2003 he has built dozens of 6-figure profit ecommerce stores and has consulted on hundreds of others He is considered one of the pioneers of dropship ecommerce and currently coaches ecommerce entrepreneurs at his online community StoreCoachcom
RONEN AMIT | SELLERACT
Ronen Amit is a senior eCommerce strategist and the founder of SellerActcom an eCommerce marketing powerhouse focused on results Ronen is an award winning eCommerce marketer who has been helping companies to succeed online since 1999 and an eCommerce consultant for Mackenzie amp Company AlphaSights among others
DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
Diane Ellis Scalisi is an eCommerce Strategist with CanIRank an SEO tool suite that helps ecommerce stores improve their visibility online and attract new customers Previously she ran a $15Myr eCommerce business in the wedding and event decorations industry
JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
As Content Manager at ecommerce marketing agency Gorilla 360 - James tells stories for a living Sometimes they are true Always they are crafted to help brands delight educate and funny-bone-tickle their audiences into coming back for more Hersquos super passionate (read obsessive) about ecommerce content marketing and dedicated to teaching online retailers how to create their own repeat-customer-generating machine Make sure you subscribe for a weekly package of ecommerce learning from James and the rest of the Gorilla 360 team
AUTHOR RICHARD LAZAZZERA | A BETTER LEMONADE STAND
ANSWER Depending on your products different link building strategies will work for
different businesses and niches Outlined below is one of the most effective and popular methods to get you started
Create Remarkable Content
Without a doubt this is one of the best ways to get dozens hundreds and maybe even thousands of backlinks to your online store Creating remarkable content means content thatrsquos so good so interesting and so comprehensive that people feel compelled to share it with someone or with their social networks Even Neil Patel agrees
ldquoCreate a site with high value information that elicits links by virtue of its awesomeness That my friends is content marketingrdquo- Neil Patel Wendyrsquos Lookbook is a popular fashion blog and online store A while ago Wendy created an extremely comprehensive and entertaining YouTube video on 25 Ways to Tie a Scarf (and I thought there were only 2 ways) This video alone has netted Wendy over 35 million views Looking at SEMrush we can also see shersquos earned over 100 backlinks to her blog because of it (I tend to find SEMrush under-reports backlinks as well) This video long after it was created continues to get views drive traffic and earns Wendy ongoing backlinks Like the one in this article
Take a look at the video below How could you create a comprehensive video in your niche
QUESTION
Its hard to get people to link to my store What are link building strategies that work for ecommerce stores
Keep in mind it doesnrsquot have to be a polished video like Wendyrsquos Even a comprehensive blog post can earn you dozens of backlinks Thatrsquos exactly what Emil from SnackNation a subscription snack delivery service did
On Emilrsquos first day of work his boss sat him down and said ldquoget us some backlinksrdquo
To do that Emil wrote a comprehensive post on employee wellness programs After reaching out by email to some people who he thought would be interested in his post he began getting a few backlinks which rose their position for the article in Google This in turn got their site more visibility more sales and more backlinks A self perpetuating cycle
Read the full case study here
Hundreds of Way to Get Backlinks
There are literally hundreds of ways to get backlinks to your store If yoursquore looking for some low-hanging fruit to get started try sending out some products for reviews ask manufacturers and suppliers to link to you from their sites write a guest blog post for a popular blog email your local newspaper about your business and create relevant and interesting conversations on Reddit (after a certain number of upvotes Reddit links in threads become DoFollow links from a very valuable 90+DA website)
For more ways to build backlinks to your store check out Point Blankrsquos comprehensive list of link building strategies
Additional resources on link-building for ecommerce
Brian Dean | Quicksprout How to Build Links to Your Ecommerce Site [VIDEO]
Andrew Dennis | Linkarati E-commerce Link Building Strategies
Shabbir Nooruddin | Bootstrapping Ecommerce 50 Actionable Ways to Build Links to Your eCommerce Store
Eric Ward | Search Engine Land E-Commerce Link Building - The Challenge That Wont Go Away
Stephanie Chang | MOZ Creative Link Building for Ecommerce Sites
Pawel Grabowski | SERPS Killer Ways to Build Links in Ecommerce
AUTHOR KENNY ROSENBERG | BVAACCEL
ANSWER Itrsquos a marketerrsquos dream to have built in SEO functionality however online store
owners need to carefully assess their site as well to develop a customized action plan in order to enhance their search engine presence and traffic -- And with Shopify Plus itrsquos easy to do so Here are a couple of SEO tips to help kickstart your categorycollection page in your eCommerce store
Tips To Enhance SEO CategoryCollection Page
1 Ensure A Viable Ranking At the bare minimum your collection page content should include a title (set within an lth1gt tag and consistent with anchor links used for navigation) introductory description and unique copy to ensure a top ranking within search results Make sure to keep it short and sweet as we recommend using no more than 150-250 words
2 Have A Strong Introductory Description Your introductory description should be at least 2-3 sentences long and should primarily communicate the types of products found in the collection as itrsquos important to educate your customers through the entire shopping process The introductory description can also include value propositions or promotional messaging to further engage your shoppers (you may place this above your product list)
3 Add Details About Products Near the bottom of your collection pages (below the product list) you should add unique and descriptive details about the products within the collection Remember to
QUESTION
How much copy should you have on a categorycollection page in your ecommerce store What should it be about (Where should you put it)
use several words people are most likely to search for
4 Include Primary Keywords You will want to include primary keywords (only once) within this content block and any other copy that may have been used in your Meta Titles or Descriptions (Shopify themes can automatically generate meta descriptions for each page) This unique copy is placed below your product list so it doesnrsquot impact conversions by pushing products below the fold
WANT TO WORK WITH BVA ACCELAt BVAccel we believe that that every portion of an eCommerce strategy is important From building your webstore to acquiring customers through marketing strategies
CONTACT USVIEW PORTFOLIO
Additional Resources on SEO for Category Pages
Simon Habtemariam | Groove Four SEO Tips for eCommerce Category Pages
Linda Bustos | GetElastic 3 Ninja Ways to Boost Your Category Page SEO
Everett Sizemore | Volusion How to Increase SEO by Adding Content on Category Pages
FuturePay How to Optimize Your Product Category Pages
AUTHOR DAVE HERMANSEN | STORECOACH
ANSWER
One of the biggest problems that eCommerce store owners face is writing
unique compelling content for their product pages - especially if they have hundreds or even thousands of products What compounds the problem is that when a great number of products are very similar you run the risk of repeating virtually the same content on every single product page and creating a great deal of on-site duplicate content Although it certainly helps to have a lot of relevant content on a page writing long form 1000+ word product descriptions is nearly impossible for most product niches and frankly it is rarely necessary More important is providing the type of content that informs customers answering questions they may have and helping them see how the product can make their life better We tackle product pages with a two-pronged approach First we want to get our websites up and running as quickly as possible and not get bogged down for months writing hundreds of ultra unique product pages After our site is launched and we have begun marketing it we will go back into our product pages one by one and re-write them adding additional information During the pre-launch stage we typically write several sentences of unique content attempting to create a why reason for buying any given product The key here is to put yourself in a customers shoes and create a mental image of how that product will make them better smarter more likable more popular more attractive happier etc After that we will include the typical manufacturer bullet point features but we try re-write them slightly to make them a little more unique We will also include what we call templated copy that is essentially the same on every product page but with the product name inserted within the copy This templated copy will include why buy from us information like our satisfaction guarantee free shipping (if applicable) and warranty information
QUESTION
Its not feasible to have 1000 word descriptions of each of my products How long should my product descriptions really be
Templated copy might look something like this
You can rest assured that you are making an excellent decision when you buy our Acme Roadrunner Repellent It is backed by our 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee as well as a One Year Manufacturers Warranty Better still all Acme Roadrunner Repellent orders SHIP FREE If you have any questions about whether this proven roadrunner repellent will work for your particular situation please dont hesitate to get in touch with us via our Contact Us form or give us a call toll free at 1-800-555-1234 We love helping people get the exact product for their needs
After the store is launched and we are working on getting backlinks and perhaps running ads for the website we go back in and add additional content to our product pages This is where we take a look at the manufacturers bullet point features and write sentences that explain the benefits of those features We also make sure that every who what where when why and how question that we can think of has been answered If we have access to assembly instructions or owners manuals well add those in a tab on the product page too I assure you that after you have done all of that your product pages will be vastly superior to what the majority of your competitors are doing and youll have far more content than you ever thought you could create for each product Over time customers will hopefully be supplying even more content to your product pages in the form of reviews or even testimonials If you are working with shopping cart software that has a product-specific FAQs module that will add a great deal of additional super relevant copy to your product pages as well While it is true that the more content there is on a page the better chance it has at ranking well the most important thing with product pages is converting visitors into buyers We always think of the customer first and the search engines second Fortunately if you follow our method of creating product pages youll get positive results from both
CREATE AND MARKET AN ECOMMERCE STOREFree step-by-step guidance on how to create and market an online store
TAKE THE COURSE
Additional Resources on Copywriting for Product Pages
Laura Serino | eCommerceFuel Boring Products No Problem How to Write Compelling Copy for Anything
Pulkit Rastogi | I Love Fashion Retail Fashion Copywriting 13 Tips for Writing Product Descriptions That Will Get Your Customers to Say Yes
Mark Macdonald | Shopify 9 Simple Ways to Write Product Descriptions that Sell
Craig Anderson | Smashing Magazine E-Commerce Copywriting The Guide to Selling More
Khalid Saleh | MOZ 4 Ways Copywriting Can Help Your Ecommerce Conversion Rates
AUTHOR RONEN AMIT | SELLER ACT
ANSWER
The Options for Approaching Product Variants Product variants --the different variations in color size scent and so on --of a certain product can be incorporated into your online store in two ways 1 Single product page enabling your customers to choose the right size preferred color scent etc2 Multiple product pages each page for each variants or for a group of variants Which is better for SEO and what other factors may you want to take into account
Single Product Page
Creating a single page for all product variants is pretty straightforward on most modern ecommerce platforms If you decide to go with a single page make sure to apply SEO best practices as you would on any content page integrating keywords into the product title and description meta tags and so on Important Note If your platform creates a new URL for each variant make sure you use canonical URL to signal Google that all variant URLs are pointing to a single core product Otherwise you risk Google considering these URLs as duplicates and penalizing your product pages or even your whole website Use the following tag on your product page between ltheadgt and ltheadgt ltlink rel=canonical href=your core product url here gt
QUESTION
What are SEO best practices for handling dozens of variations of the same product
The Canonical URL signals the search engine your preferred core product URL For further information see httpssupportgooglecomwebmastersanswer139066
In addition you may want to consider using Schemaorg Here is an example how to deal with variants
ltdiv itemprop=model itemscope itemtype=httpschemaorgProductModelgtltspan itemprop=namegtVariant Product Nameltspangtltmeta itemprop=productID content=Variant Product SKU or Catalog gtltmeta itemprop=isVariantOf content=Core Product SKU or Catalog gtltdivgtltdivgt For further information please refer to httpschemaorgProductModel
Multiple Product Pages
In case you decide to create different page for each variant (see more considerations and recommendations below) you will need to set the content of each variant page apart so Googles algorithm will not consider those pages as duplicates Unless you have only several core products this could be a tedious task For example if you have only 5 colors and 5 sizes for each core product 100 products turns into 2500 product pages each should be optimized separately with a unique content
Usability and conversion
Beyond SEO there are many factors --and chief among these usability and conversion
Variant 1 Variant 2 - Note the URL is different than variant
-- to consider when yoursquore working with an eCommerce site Even if you were able to generate more organic traffic by creating different pages for each product variant rather than featuring all variants on a single page does that mean you are making more sales If a potential customer were to find your store and see the blue product would she be aware that you also have the same product in red When a customer arrives at your web store regardless of whether they came through a search engine how easy is it for them to find the product they are interested in Having 25x more product pages or even just 5x more product pages for each core product may possibly help you generate more organic traffic but at the same time it will almost certainly make it more difficult for your customers to find products in your store Is the tradeoff worth it
Best Practice It is very clear that Google does not like duplicate pages And if you try to find loopholes in Googles algorithm you risk facing massive penalties for your entire web store We recommend creating a single page with all your variants in one place For best results apply on-page SEO to create an optimized product page which ranks well on search engines and converts your visitors into buyers with attractive design hi-res images persuasive content and clear a call-to-action
BUILD AN ONLINE STORELearn about how Ronen Amit and SellerAct can help you build an online store that creates revenue and growth
START BUILDING
Additional Resources on Product Variants
Katey Ferenzi | BigCommerce Product Options The Most Commonly Overlooked Ecommerce Element Likely Affecting Your SEO and Conversions
Jill Kocher | Practical Ecommerce SEO When Product Facets and Filters Fail
Google Webmaster | Faceted Navigation Best (and 5 of the Worst) Practices
QUESTION
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like
AUTHOR JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
ANSWER
When we SEO folk talk architecture wersquore referring to the way your content
is organized on your website Site architecture matters to search engines especially for ecommerce websites
If you have a lsquodeeprsquo architecture it takes your customers a bunch of clicks to find their information Google Bing and friends are no different Search engines find it hard to navigate through different levels of your website So in the simple terms that you wished your business teacher could have used to save you an entire semester worth of study
The easier it is for search engines to find your content the better your presence in SERPs will be
The difference between deep and flat site architecture On the left is a flat architecture with a homepage 8 category pages and 6 product pages within each category On the right is a deep architecture with a homepage four category pages two layers of sub category pages and just one or two product pages within each sub category
A ldquoflat architecturerdquo is best for SEO purposes But as always customer first Google second
Why a flat site architecture is (usually) better A flat page hierarchy allows users to navigate through your site quickly with no need to make 6 or 7 clicks to get to their destination So most times flat is best for your customers too However if your potential customer canrsquot understand where to find information within a category you might need to add a sub category to make things easier
If itrsquos fashion apparel yoursquore pedaling you could break out menrsquos and womenrsquos shoes into categories rather than forcing your visitors to search through both on the same product page
From an SEO point of view a flat structure ensures your page rank is less diluted across the site Pages will get more rankings juice from each other
The more clicks you have to get to the lower pages the more link juice (technical term promisehellip) you are filtering This means less juice is left for your deeper pages and that Google will have a harder time finding them
If a customer needs fewer clicks to get to the bottom of your architecture itrsquos easier for Google to associate your popular home and category pages with your product pages Google doesnrsquot have to search as hard or squeeze the rankings juice as far
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites as you are dealing with lots and lots of categories sub-categories and products pages
SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site
bull Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepagebull All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigatebull Most importantly itrsquos easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex but if yoursquore following a similar pattern to this yoursquove got the right foundations for a flat site architecture
YOU DONT NEED TO PAY AN EXPERTNeed help improving your ecommerce sites SEO With this guide you can do it yourself
DOWNLOAD
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
RONEN AMIT | SELLERACT
Ronen Amit is a senior eCommerce strategist and the founder of SellerActcom an eCommerce marketing powerhouse focused on results Ronen is an award winning eCommerce marketer who has been helping companies to succeed online since 1999 and an eCommerce consultant for Mackenzie amp Company AlphaSights among others
DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
Diane Ellis Scalisi is an eCommerce Strategist with CanIRank an SEO tool suite that helps ecommerce stores improve their visibility online and attract new customers Previously she ran a $15Myr eCommerce business in the wedding and event decorations industry
JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
As Content Manager at ecommerce marketing agency Gorilla 360 - James tells stories for a living Sometimes they are true Always they are crafted to help brands delight educate and funny-bone-tickle their audiences into coming back for more Hersquos super passionate (read obsessive) about ecommerce content marketing and dedicated to teaching online retailers how to create their own repeat-customer-generating machine Make sure you subscribe for a weekly package of ecommerce learning from James and the rest of the Gorilla 360 team
AUTHOR RICHARD LAZAZZERA | A BETTER LEMONADE STAND
ANSWER Depending on your products different link building strategies will work for
different businesses and niches Outlined below is one of the most effective and popular methods to get you started
Create Remarkable Content
Without a doubt this is one of the best ways to get dozens hundreds and maybe even thousands of backlinks to your online store Creating remarkable content means content thatrsquos so good so interesting and so comprehensive that people feel compelled to share it with someone or with their social networks Even Neil Patel agrees
ldquoCreate a site with high value information that elicits links by virtue of its awesomeness That my friends is content marketingrdquo- Neil Patel Wendyrsquos Lookbook is a popular fashion blog and online store A while ago Wendy created an extremely comprehensive and entertaining YouTube video on 25 Ways to Tie a Scarf (and I thought there were only 2 ways) This video alone has netted Wendy over 35 million views Looking at SEMrush we can also see shersquos earned over 100 backlinks to her blog because of it (I tend to find SEMrush under-reports backlinks as well) This video long after it was created continues to get views drive traffic and earns Wendy ongoing backlinks Like the one in this article
Take a look at the video below How could you create a comprehensive video in your niche
QUESTION
Its hard to get people to link to my store What are link building strategies that work for ecommerce stores
Keep in mind it doesnrsquot have to be a polished video like Wendyrsquos Even a comprehensive blog post can earn you dozens of backlinks Thatrsquos exactly what Emil from SnackNation a subscription snack delivery service did
On Emilrsquos first day of work his boss sat him down and said ldquoget us some backlinksrdquo
To do that Emil wrote a comprehensive post on employee wellness programs After reaching out by email to some people who he thought would be interested in his post he began getting a few backlinks which rose their position for the article in Google This in turn got their site more visibility more sales and more backlinks A self perpetuating cycle
Read the full case study here
Hundreds of Way to Get Backlinks
There are literally hundreds of ways to get backlinks to your store If yoursquore looking for some low-hanging fruit to get started try sending out some products for reviews ask manufacturers and suppliers to link to you from their sites write a guest blog post for a popular blog email your local newspaper about your business and create relevant and interesting conversations on Reddit (after a certain number of upvotes Reddit links in threads become DoFollow links from a very valuable 90+DA website)
For more ways to build backlinks to your store check out Point Blankrsquos comprehensive list of link building strategies
Additional resources on link-building for ecommerce
Brian Dean | Quicksprout How to Build Links to Your Ecommerce Site [VIDEO]
Andrew Dennis | Linkarati E-commerce Link Building Strategies
Shabbir Nooruddin | Bootstrapping Ecommerce 50 Actionable Ways to Build Links to Your eCommerce Store
Eric Ward | Search Engine Land E-Commerce Link Building - The Challenge That Wont Go Away
Stephanie Chang | MOZ Creative Link Building for Ecommerce Sites
Pawel Grabowski | SERPS Killer Ways to Build Links in Ecommerce
AUTHOR KENNY ROSENBERG | BVAACCEL
ANSWER Itrsquos a marketerrsquos dream to have built in SEO functionality however online store
owners need to carefully assess their site as well to develop a customized action plan in order to enhance their search engine presence and traffic -- And with Shopify Plus itrsquos easy to do so Here are a couple of SEO tips to help kickstart your categorycollection page in your eCommerce store
Tips To Enhance SEO CategoryCollection Page
1 Ensure A Viable Ranking At the bare minimum your collection page content should include a title (set within an lth1gt tag and consistent with anchor links used for navigation) introductory description and unique copy to ensure a top ranking within search results Make sure to keep it short and sweet as we recommend using no more than 150-250 words
2 Have A Strong Introductory Description Your introductory description should be at least 2-3 sentences long and should primarily communicate the types of products found in the collection as itrsquos important to educate your customers through the entire shopping process The introductory description can also include value propositions or promotional messaging to further engage your shoppers (you may place this above your product list)
3 Add Details About Products Near the bottom of your collection pages (below the product list) you should add unique and descriptive details about the products within the collection Remember to
QUESTION
How much copy should you have on a categorycollection page in your ecommerce store What should it be about (Where should you put it)
use several words people are most likely to search for
4 Include Primary Keywords You will want to include primary keywords (only once) within this content block and any other copy that may have been used in your Meta Titles or Descriptions (Shopify themes can automatically generate meta descriptions for each page) This unique copy is placed below your product list so it doesnrsquot impact conversions by pushing products below the fold
WANT TO WORK WITH BVA ACCELAt BVAccel we believe that that every portion of an eCommerce strategy is important From building your webstore to acquiring customers through marketing strategies
CONTACT USVIEW PORTFOLIO
Additional Resources on SEO for Category Pages
Simon Habtemariam | Groove Four SEO Tips for eCommerce Category Pages
Linda Bustos | GetElastic 3 Ninja Ways to Boost Your Category Page SEO
Everett Sizemore | Volusion How to Increase SEO by Adding Content on Category Pages
FuturePay How to Optimize Your Product Category Pages
AUTHOR DAVE HERMANSEN | STORECOACH
ANSWER
One of the biggest problems that eCommerce store owners face is writing
unique compelling content for their product pages - especially if they have hundreds or even thousands of products What compounds the problem is that when a great number of products are very similar you run the risk of repeating virtually the same content on every single product page and creating a great deal of on-site duplicate content Although it certainly helps to have a lot of relevant content on a page writing long form 1000+ word product descriptions is nearly impossible for most product niches and frankly it is rarely necessary More important is providing the type of content that informs customers answering questions they may have and helping them see how the product can make their life better We tackle product pages with a two-pronged approach First we want to get our websites up and running as quickly as possible and not get bogged down for months writing hundreds of ultra unique product pages After our site is launched and we have begun marketing it we will go back into our product pages one by one and re-write them adding additional information During the pre-launch stage we typically write several sentences of unique content attempting to create a why reason for buying any given product The key here is to put yourself in a customers shoes and create a mental image of how that product will make them better smarter more likable more popular more attractive happier etc After that we will include the typical manufacturer bullet point features but we try re-write them slightly to make them a little more unique We will also include what we call templated copy that is essentially the same on every product page but with the product name inserted within the copy This templated copy will include why buy from us information like our satisfaction guarantee free shipping (if applicable) and warranty information
QUESTION
Its not feasible to have 1000 word descriptions of each of my products How long should my product descriptions really be
Templated copy might look something like this
You can rest assured that you are making an excellent decision when you buy our Acme Roadrunner Repellent It is backed by our 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee as well as a One Year Manufacturers Warranty Better still all Acme Roadrunner Repellent orders SHIP FREE If you have any questions about whether this proven roadrunner repellent will work for your particular situation please dont hesitate to get in touch with us via our Contact Us form or give us a call toll free at 1-800-555-1234 We love helping people get the exact product for their needs
After the store is launched and we are working on getting backlinks and perhaps running ads for the website we go back in and add additional content to our product pages This is where we take a look at the manufacturers bullet point features and write sentences that explain the benefits of those features We also make sure that every who what where when why and how question that we can think of has been answered If we have access to assembly instructions or owners manuals well add those in a tab on the product page too I assure you that after you have done all of that your product pages will be vastly superior to what the majority of your competitors are doing and youll have far more content than you ever thought you could create for each product Over time customers will hopefully be supplying even more content to your product pages in the form of reviews or even testimonials If you are working with shopping cart software that has a product-specific FAQs module that will add a great deal of additional super relevant copy to your product pages as well While it is true that the more content there is on a page the better chance it has at ranking well the most important thing with product pages is converting visitors into buyers We always think of the customer first and the search engines second Fortunately if you follow our method of creating product pages youll get positive results from both
CREATE AND MARKET AN ECOMMERCE STOREFree step-by-step guidance on how to create and market an online store
TAKE THE COURSE
Additional Resources on Copywriting for Product Pages
Laura Serino | eCommerceFuel Boring Products No Problem How to Write Compelling Copy for Anything
Pulkit Rastogi | I Love Fashion Retail Fashion Copywriting 13 Tips for Writing Product Descriptions That Will Get Your Customers to Say Yes
Mark Macdonald | Shopify 9 Simple Ways to Write Product Descriptions that Sell
Craig Anderson | Smashing Magazine E-Commerce Copywriting The Guide to Selling More
Khalid Saleh | MOZ 4 Ways Copywriting Can Help Your Ecommerce Conversion Rates
AUTHOR RONEN AMIT | SELLER ACT
ANSWER
The Options for Approaching Product Variants Product variants --the different variations in color size scent and so on --of a certain product can be incorporated into your online store in two ways 1 Single product page enabling your customers to choose the right size preferred color scent etc2 Multiple product pages each page for each variants or for a group of variants Which is better for SEO and what other factors may you want to take into account
Single Product Page
Creating a single page for all product variants is pretty straightforward on most modern ecommerce platforms If you decide to go with a single page make sure to apply SEO best practices as you would on any content page integrating keywords into the product title and description meta tags and so on Important Note If your platform creates a new URL for each variant make sure you use canonical URL to signal Google that all variant URLs are pointing to a single core product Otherwise you risk Google considering these URLs as duplicates and penalizing your product pages or even your whole website Use the following tag on your product page between ltheadgt and ltheadgt ltlink rel=canonical href=your core product url here gt
QUESTION
What are SEO best practices for handling dozens of variations of the same product
The Canonical URL signals the search engine your preferred core product URL For further information see httpssupportgooglecomwebmastersanswer139066
In addition you may want to consider using Schemaorg Here is an example how to deal with variants
ltdiv itemprop=model itemscope itemtype=httpschemaorgProductModelgtltspan itemprop=namegtVariant Product Nameltspangtltmeta itemprop=productID content=Variant Product SKU or Catalog gtltmeta itemprop=isVariantOf content=Core Product SKU or Catalog gtltdivgtltdivgt For further information please refer to httpschemaorgProductModel
Multiple Product Pages
In case you decide to create different page for each variant (see more considerations and recommendations below) you will need to set the content of each variant page apart so Googles algorithm will not consider those pages as duplicates Unless you have only several core products this could be a tedious task For example if you have only 5 colors and 5 sizes for each core product 100 products turns into 2500 product pages each should be optimized separately with a unique content
Usability and conversion
Beyond SEO there are many factors --and chief among these usability and conversion
Variant 1 Variant 2 - Note the URL is different than variant
-- to consider when yoursquore working with an eCommerce site Even if you were able to generate more organic traffic by creating different pages for each product variant rather than featuring all variants on a single page does that mean you are making more sales If a potential customer were to find your store and see the blue product would she be aware that you also have the same product in red When a customer arrives at your web store regardless of whether they came through a search engine how easy is it for them to find the product they are interested in Having 25x more product pages or even just 5x more product pages for each core product may possibly help you generate more organic traffic but at the same time it will almost certainly make it more difficult for your customers to find products in your store Is the tradeoff worth it
Best Practice It is very clear that Google does not like duplicate pages And if you try to find loopholes in Googles algorithm you risk facing massive penalties for your entire web store We recommend creating a single page with all your variants in one place For best results apply on-page SEO to create an optimized product page which ranks well on search engines and converts your visitors into buyers with attractive design hi-res images persuasive content and clear a call-to-action
BUILD AN ONLINE STORELearn about how Ronen Amit and SellerAct can help you build an online store that creates revenue and growth
START BUILDING
Additional Resources on Product Variants
Katey Ferenzi | BigCommerce Product Options The Most Commonly Overlooked Ecommerce Element Likely Affecting Your SEO and Conversions
Jill Kocher | Practical Ecommerce SEO When Product Facets and Filters Fail
Google Webmaster | Faceted Navigation Best (and 5 of the Worst) Practices
QUESTION
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like
AUTHOR JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
ANSWER
When we SEO folk talk architecture wersquore referring to the way your content
is organized on your website Site architecture matters to search engines especially for ecommerce websites
If you have a lsquodeeprsquo architecture it takes your customers a bunch of clicks to find their information Google Bing and friends are no different Search engines find it hard to navigate through different levels of your website So in the simple terms that you wished your business teacher could have used to save you an entire semester worth of study
The easier it is for search engines to find your content the better your presence in SERPs will be
The difference between deep and flat site architecture On the left is a flat architecture with a homepage 8 category pages and 6 product pages within each category On the right is a deep architecture with a homepage four category pages two layers of sub category pages and just one or two product pages within each sub category
A ldquoflat architecturerdquo is best for SEO purposes But as always customer first Google second
Why a flat site architecture is (usually) better A flat page hierarchy allows users to navigate through your site quickly with no need to make 6 or 7 clicks to get to their destination So most times flat is best for your customers too However if your potential customer canrsquot understand where to find information within a category you might need to add a sub category to make things easier
If itrsquos fashion apparel yoursquore pedaling you could break out menrsquos and womenrsquos shoes into categories rather than forcing your visitors to search through both on the same product page
From an SEO point of view a flat structure ensures your page rank is less diluted across the site Pages will get more rankings juice from each other
The more clicks you have to get to the lower pages the more link juice (technical term promisehellip) you are filtering This means less juice is left for your deeper pages and that Google will have a harder time finding them
If a customer needs fewer clicks to get to the bottom of your architecture itrsquos easier for Google to associate your popular home and category pages with your product pages Google doesnrsquot have to search as hard or squeeze the rankings juice as far
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites as you are dealing with lots and lots of categories sub-categories and products pages
SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site
bull Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepagebull All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigatebull Most importantly itrsquos easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex but if yoursquore following a similar pattern to this yoursquove got the right foundations for a flat site architecture
YOU DONT NEED TO PAY AN EXPERTNeed help improving your ecommerce sites SEO With this guide you can do it yourself
DOWNLOAD
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
AUTHOR RICHARD LAZAZZERA | A BETTER LEMONADE STAND
ANSWER Depending on your products different link building strategies will work for
different businesses and niches Outlined below is one of the most effective and popular methods to get you started
Create Remarkable Content
Without a doubt this is one of the best ways to get dozens hundreds and maybe even thousands of backlinks to your online store Creating remarkable content means content thatrsquos so good so interesting and so comprehensive that people feel compelled to share it with someone or with their social networks Even Neil Patel agrees
ldquoCreate a site with high value information that elicits links by virtue of its awesomeness That my friends is content marketingrdquo- Neil Patel Wendyrsquos Lookbook is a popular fashion blog and online store A while ago Wendy created an extremely comprehensive and entertaining YouTube video on 25 Ways to Tie a Scarf (and I thought there were only 2 ways) This video alone has netted Wendy over 35 million views Looking at SEMrush we can also see shersquos earned over 100 backlinks to her blog because of it (I tend to find SEMrush under-reports backlinks as well) This video long after it was created continues to get views drive traffic and earns Wendy ongoing backlinks Like the one in this article
Take a look at the video below How could you create a comprehensive video in your niche
QUESTION
Its hard to get people to link to my store What are link building strategies that work for ecommerce stores
Keep in mind it doesnrsquot have to be a polished video like Wendyrsquos Even a comprehensive blog post can earn you dozens of backlinks Thatrsquos exactly what Emil from SnackNation a subscription snack delivery service did
On Emilrsquos first day of work his boss sat him down and said ldquoget us some backlinksrdquo
To do that Emil wrote a comprehensive post on employee wellness programs After reaching out by email to some people who he thought would be interested in his post he began getting a few backlinks which rose their position for the article in Google This in turn got their site more visibility more sales and more backlinks A self perpetuating cycle
Read the full case study here
Hundreds of Way to Get Backlinks
There are literally hundreds of ways to get backlinks to your store If yoursquore looking for some low-hanging fruit to get started try sending out some products for reviews ask manufacturers and suppliers to link to you from their sites write a guest blog post for a popular blog email your local newspaper about your business and create relevant and interesting conversations on Reddit (after a certain number of upvotes Reddit links in threads become DoFollow links from a very valuable 90+DA website)
For more ways to build backlinks to your store check out Point Blankrsquos comprehensive list of link building strategies
Additional resources on link-building for ecommerce
Brian Dean | Quicksprout How to Build Links to Your Ecommerce Site [VIDEO]
Andrew Dennis | Linkarati E-commerce Link Building Strategies
Shabbir Nooruddin | Bootstrapping Ecommerce 50 Actionable Ways to Build Links to Your eCommerce Store
Eric Ward | Search Engine Land E-Commerce Link Building - The Challenge That Wont Go Away
Stephanie Chang | MOZ Creative Link Building for Ecommerce Sites
Pawel Grabowski | SERPS Killer Ways to Build Links in Ecommerce
AUTHOR KENNY ROSENBERG | BVAACCEL
ANSWER Itrsquos a marketerrsquos dream to have built in SEO functionality however online store
owners need to carefully assess their site as well to develop a customized action plan in order to enhance their search engine presence and traffic -- And with Shopify Plus itrsquos easy to do so Here are a couple of SEO tips to help kickstart your categorycollection page in your eCommerce store
Tips To Enhance SEO CategoryCollection Page
1 Ensure A Viable Ranking At the bare minimum your collection page content should include a title (set within an lth1gt tag and consistent with anchor links used for navigation) introductory description and unique copy to ensure a top ranking within search results Make sure to keep it short and sweet as we recommend using no more than 150-250 words
2 Have A Strong Introductory Description Your introductory description should be at least 2-3 sentences long and should primarily communicate the types of products found in the collection as itrsquos important to educate your customers through the entire shopping process The introductory description can also include value propositions or promotional messaging to further engage your shoppers (you may place this above your product list)
3 Add Details About Products Near the bottom of your collection pages (below the product list) you should add unique and descriptive details about the products within the collection Remember to
QUESTION
How much copy should you have on a categorycollection page in your ecommerce store What should it be about (Where should you put it)
use several words people are most likely to search for
4 Include Primary Keywords You will want to include primary keywords (only once) within this content block and any other copy that may have been used in your Meta Titles or Descriptions (Shopify themes can automatically generate meta descriptions for each page) This unique copy is placed below your product list so it doesnrsquot impact conversions by pushing products below the fold
WANT TO WORK WITH BVA ACCELAt BVAccel we believe that that every portion of an eCommerce strategy is important From building your webstore to acquiring customers through marketing strategies
CONTACT USVIEW PORTFOLIO
Additional Resources on SEO for Category Pages
Simon Habtemariam | Groove Four SEO Tips for eCommerce Category Pages
Linda Bustos | GetElastic 3 Ninja Ways to Boost Your Category Page SEO
Everett Sizemore | Volusion How to Increase SEO by Adding Content on Category Pages
FuturePay How to Optimize Your Product Category Pages
AUTHOR DAVE HERMANSEN | STORECOACH
ANSWER
One of the biggest problems that eCommerce store owners face is writing
unique compelling content for their product pages - especially if they have hundreds or even thousands of products What compounds the problem is that when a great number of products are very similar you run the risk of repeating virtually the same content on every single product page and creating a great deal of on-site duplicate content Although it certainly helps to have a lot of relevant content on a page writing long form 1000+ word product descriptions is nearly impossible for most product niches and frankly it is rarely necessary More important is providing the type of content that informs customers answering questions they may have and helping them see how the product can make their life better We tackle product pages with a two-pronged approach First we want to get our websites up and running as quickly as possible and not get bogged down for months writing hundreds of ultra unique product pages After our site is launched and we have begun marketing it we will go back into our product pages one by one and re-write them adding additional information During the pre-launch stage we typically write several sentences of unique content attempting to create a why reason for buying any given product The key here is to put yourself in a customers shoes and create a mental image of how that product will make them better smarter more likable more popular more attractive happier etc After that we will include the typical manufacturer bullet point features but we try re-write them slightly to make them a little more unique We will also include what we call templated copy that is essentially the same on every product page but with the product name inserted within the copy This templated copy will include why buy from us information like our satisfaction guarantee free shipping (if applicable) and warranty information
QUESTION
Its not feasible to have 1000 word descriptions of each of my products How long should my product descriptions really be
Templated copy might look something like this
You can rest assured that you are making an excellent decision when you buy our Acme Roadrunner Repellent It is backed by our 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee as well as a One Year Manufacturers Warranty Better still all Acme Roadrunner Repellent orders SHIP FREE If you have any questions about whether this proven roadrunner repellent will work for your particular situation please dont hesitate to get in touch with us via our Contact Us form or give us a call toll free at 1-800-555-1234 We love helping people get the exact product for their needs
After the store is launched and we are working on getting backlinks and perhaps running ads for the website we go back in and add additional content to our product pages This is where we take a look at the manufacturers bullet point features and write sentences that explain the benefits of those features We also make sure that every who what where when why and how question that we can think of has been answered If we have access to assembly instructions or owners manuals well add those in a tab on the product page too I assure you that after you have done all of that your product pages will be vastly superior to what the majority of your competitors are doing and youll have far more content than you ever thought you could create for each product Over time customers will hopefully be supplying even more content to your product pages in the form of reviews or even testimonials If you are working with shopping cart software that has a product-specific FAQs module that will add a great deal of additional super relevant copy to your product pages as well While it is true that the more content there is on a page the better chance it has at ranking well the most important thing with product pages is converting visitors into buyers We always think of the customer first and the search engines second Fortunately if you follow our method of creating product pages youll get positive results from both
CREATE AND MARKET AN ECOMMERCE STOREFree step-by-step guidance on how to create and market an online store
TAKE THE COURSE
Additional Resources on Copywriting for Product Pages
Laura Serino | eCommerceFuel Boring Products No Problem How to Write Compelling Copy for Anything
Pulkit Rastogi | I Love Fashion Retail Fashion Copywriting 13 Tips for Writing Product Descriptions That Will Get Your Customers to Say Yes
Mark Macdonald | Shopify 9 Simple Ways to Write Product Descriptions that Sell
Craig Anderson | Smashing Magazine E-Commerce Copywriting The Guide to Selling More
Khalid Saleh | MOZ 4 Ways Copywriting Can Help Your Ecommerce Conversion Rates
AUTHOR RONEN AMIT | SELLER ACT
ANSWER
The Options for Approaching Product Variants Product variants --the different variations in color size scent and so on --of a certain product can be incorporated into your online store in two ways 1 Single product page enabling your customers to choose the right size preferred color scent etc2 Multiple product pages each page for each variants or for a group of variants Which is better for SEO and what other factors may you want to take into account
Single Product Page
Creating a single page for all product variants is pretty straightforward on most modern ecommerce platforms If you decide to go with a single page make sure to apply SEO best practices as you would on any content page integrating keywords into the product title and description meta tags and so on Important Note If your platform creates a new URL for each variant make sure you use canonical URL to signal Google that all variant URLs are pointing to a single core product Otherwise you risk Google considering these URLs as duplicates and penalizing your product pages or even your whole website Use the following tag on your product page between ltheadgt and ltheadgt ltlink rel=canonical href=your core product url here gt
QUESTION
What are SEO best practices for handling dozens of variations of the same product
The Canonical URL signals the search engine your preferred core product URL For further information see httpssupportgooglecomwebmastersanswer139066
In addition you may want to consider using Schemaorg Here is an example how to deal with variants
ltdiv itemprop=model itemscope itemtype=httpschemaorgProductModelgtltspan itemprop=namegtVariant Product Nameltspangtltmeta itemprop=productID content=Variant Product SKU or Catalog gtltmeta itemprop=isVariantOf content=Core Product SKU or Catalog gtltdivgtltdivgt For further information please refer to httpschemaorgProductModel
Multiple Product Pages
In case you decide to create different page for each variant (see more considerations and recommendations below) you will need to set the content of each variant page apart so Googles algorithm will not consider those pages as duplicates Unless you have only several core products this could be a tedious task For example if you have only 5 colors and 5 sizes for each core product 100 products turns into 2500 product pages each should be optimized separately with a unique content
Usability and conversion
Beyond SEO there are many factors --and chief among these usability and conversion
Variant 1 Variant 2 - Note the URL is different than variant
-- to consider when yoursquore working with an eCommerce site Even if you were able to generate more organic traffic by creating different pages for each product variant rather than featuring all variants on a single page does that mean you are making more sales If a potential customer were to find your store and see the blue product would she be aware that you also have the same product in red When a customer arrives at your web store regardless of whether they came through a search engine how easy is it for them to find the product they are interested in Having 25x more product pages or even just 5x more product pages for each core product may possibly help you generate more organic traffic but at the same time it will almost certainly make it more difficult for your customers to find products in your store Is the tradeoff worth it
Best Practice It is very clear that Google does not like duplicate pages And if you try to find loopholes in Googles algorithm you risk facing massive penalties for your entire web store We recommend creating a single page with all your variants in one place For best results apply on-page SEO to create an optimized product page which ranks well on search engines and converts your visitors into buyers with attractive design hi-res images persuasive content and clear a call-to-action
BUILD AN ONLINE STORELearn about how Ronen Amit and SellerAct can help you build an online store that creates revenue and growth
START BUILDING
Additional Resources on Product Variants
Katey Ferenzi | BigCommerce Product Options The Most Commonly Overlooked Ecommerce Element Likely Affecting Your SEO and Conversions
Jill Kocher | Practical Ecommerce SEO When Product Facets and Filters Fail
Google Webmaster | Faceted Navigation Best (and 5 of the Worst) Practices
QUESTION
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like
AUTHOR JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
ANSWER
When we SEO folk talk architecture wersquore referring to the way your content
is organized on your website Site architecture matters to search engines especially for ecommerce websites
If you have a lsquodeeprsquo architecture it takes your customers a bunch of clicks to find their information Google Bing and friends are no different Search engines find it hard to navigate through different levels of your website So in the simple terms that you wished your business teacher could have used to save you an entire semester worth of study
The easier it is for search engines to find your content the better your presence in SERPs will be
The difference between deep and flat site architecture On the left is a flat architecture with a homepage 8 category pages and 6 product pages within each category On the right is a deep architecture with a homepage four category pages two layers of sub category pages and just one or two product pages within each sub category
A ldquoflat architecturerdquo is best for SEO purposes But as always customer first Google second
Why a flat site architecture is (usually) better A flat page hierarchy allows users to navigate through your site quickly with no need to make 6 or 7 clicks to get to their destination So most times flat is best for your customers too However if your potential customer canrsquot understand where to find information within a category you might need to add a sub category to make things easier
If itrsquos fashion apparel yoursquore pedaling you could break out menrsquos and womenrsquos shoes into categories rather than forcing your visitors to search through both on the same product page
From an SEO point of view a flat structure ensures your page rank is less diluted across the site Pages will get more rankings juice from each other
The more clicks you have to get to the lower pages the more link juice (technical term promisehellip) you are filtering This means less juice is left for your deeper pages and that Google will have a harder time finding them
If a customer needs fewer clicks to get to the bottom of your architecture itrsquos easier for Google to associate your popular home and category pages with your product pages Google doesnrsquot have to search as hard or squeeze the rankings juice as far
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites as you are dealing with lots and lots of categories sub-categories and products pages
SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site
bull Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepagebull All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigatebull Most importantly itrsquos easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex but if yoursquore following a similar pattern to this yoursquove got the right foundations for a flat site architecture
YOU DONT NEED TO PAY AN EXPERTNeed help improving your ecommerce sites SEO With this guide you can do it yourself
DOWNLOAD
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
Keep in mind it doesnrsquot have to be a polished video like Wendyrsquos Even a comprehensive blog post can earn you dozens of backlinks Thatrsquos exactly what Emil from SnackNation a subscription snack delivery service did
On Emilrsquos first day of work his boss sat him down and said ldquoget us some backlinksrdquo
To do that Emil wrote a comprehensive post on employee wellness programs After reaching out by email to some people who he thought would be interested in his post he began getting a few backlinks which rose their position for the article in Google This in turn got their site more visibility more sales and more backlinks A self perpetuating cycle
Read the full case study here
Hundreds of Way to Get Backlinks
There are literally hundreds of ways to get backlinks to your store If yoursquore looking for some low-hanging fruit to get started try sending out some products for reviews ask manufacturers and suppliers to link to you from their sites write a guest blog post for a popular blog email your local newspaper about your business and create relevant and interesting conversations on Reddit (after a certain number of upvotes Reddit links in threads become DoFollow links from a very valuable 90+DA website)
For more ways to build backlinks to your store check out Point Blankrsquos comprehensive list of link building strategies
Additional resources on link-building for ecommerce
Brian Dean | Quicksprout How to Build Links to Your Ecommerce Site [VIDEO]
Andrew Dennis | Linkarati E-commerce Link Building Strategies
Shabbir Nooruddin | Bootstrapping Ecommerce 50 Actionable Ways to Build Links to Your eCommerce Store
Eric Ward | Search Engine Land E-Commerce Link Building - The Challenge That Wont Go Away
Stephanie Chang | MOZ Creative Link Building for Ecommerce Sites
Pawel Grabowski | SERPS Killer Ways to Build Links in Ecommerce
AUTHOR KENNY ROSENBERG | BVAACCEL
ANSWER Itrsquos a marketerrsquos dream to have built in SEO functionality however online store
owners need to carefully assess their site as well to develop a customized action plan in order to enhance their search engine presence and traffic -- And with Shopify Plus itrsquos easy to do so Here are a couple of SEO tips to help kickstart your categorycollection page in your eCommerce store
Tips To Enhance SEO CategoryCollection Page
1 Ensure A Viable Ranking At the bare minimum your collection page content should include a title (set within an lth1gt tag and consistent with anchor links used for navigation) introductory description and unique copy to ensure a top ranking within search results Make sure to keep it short and sweet as we recommend using no more than 150-250 words
2 Have A Strong Introductory Description Your introductory description should be at least 2-3 sentences long and should primarily communicate the types of products found in the collection as itrsquos important to educate your customers through the entire shopping process The introductory description can also include value propositions or promotional messaging to further engage your shoppers (you may place this above your product list)
3 Add Details About Products Near the bottom of your collection pages (below the product list) you should add unique and descriptive details about the products within the collection Remember to
QUESTION
How much copy should you have on a categorycollection page in your ecommerce store What should it be about (Where should you put it)
use several words people are most likely to search for
4 Include Primary Keywords You will want to include primary keywords (only once) within this content block and any other copy that may have been used in your Meta Titles or Descriptions (Shopify themes can automatically generate meta descriptions for each page) This unique copy is placed below your product list so it doesnrsquot impact conversions by pushing products below the fold
WANT TO WORK WITH BVA ACCELAt BVAccel we believe that that every portion of an eCommerce strategy is important From building your webstore to acquiring customers through marketing strategies
CONTACT USVIEW PORTFOLIO
Additional Resources on SEO for Category Pages
Simon Habtemariam | Groove Four SEO Tips for eCommerce Category Pages
Linda Bustos | GetElastic 3 Ninja Ways to Boost Your Category Page SEO
Everett Sizemore | Volusion How to Increase SEO by Adding Content on Category Pages
FuturePay How to Optimize Your Product Category Pages
AUTHOR DAVE HERMANSEN | STORECOACH
ANSWER
One of the biggest problems that eCommerce store owners face is writing
unique compelling content for their product pages - especially if they have hundreds or even thousands of products What compounds the problem is that when a great number of products are very similar you run the risk of repeating virtually the same content on every single product page and creating a great deal of on-site duplicate content Although it certainly helps to have a lot of relevant content on a page writing long form 1000+ word product descriptions is nearly impossible for most product niches and frankly it is rarely necessary More important is providing the type of content that informs customers answering questions they may have and helping them see how the product can make their life better We tackle product pages with a two-pronged approach First we want to get our websites up and running as quickly as possible and not get bogged down for months writing hundreds of ultra unique product pages After our site is launched and we have begun marketing it we will go back into our product pages one by one and re-write them adding additional information During the pre-launch stage we typically write several sentences of unique content attempting to create a why reason for buying any given product The key here is to put yourself in a customers shoes and create a mental image of how that product will make them better smarter more likable more popular more attractive happier etc After that we will include the typical manufacturer bullet point features but we try re-write them slightly to make them a little more unique We will also include what we call templated copy that is essentially the same on every product page but with the product name inserted within the copy This templated copy will include why buy from us information like our satisfaction guarantee free shipping (if applicable) and warranty information
QUESTION
Its not feasible to have 1000 word descriptions of each of my products How long should my product descriptions really be
Templated copy might look something like this
You can rest assured that you are making an excellent decision when you buy our Acme Roadrunner Repellent It is backed by our 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee as well as a One Year Manufacturers Warranty Better still all Acme Roadrunner Repellent orders SHIP FREE If you have any questions about whether this proven roadrunner repellent will work for your particular situation please dont hesitate to get in touch with us via our Contact Us form or give us a call toll free at 1-800-555-1234 We love helping people get the exact product for their needs
After the store is launched and we are working on getting backlinks and perhaps running ads for the website we go back in and add additional content to our product pages This is where we take a look at the manufacturers bullet point features and write sentences that explain the benefits of those features We also make sure that every who what where when why and how question that we can think of has been answered If we have access to assembly instructions or owners manuals well add those in a tab on the product page too I assure you that after you have done all of that your product pages will be vastly superior to what the majority of your competitors are doing and youll have far more content than you ever thought you could create for each product Over time customers will hopefully be supplying even more content to your product pages in the form of reviews or even testimonials If you are working with shopping cart software that has a product-specific FAQs module that will add a great deal of additional super relevant copy to your product pages as well While it is true that the more content there is on a page the better chance it has at ranking well the most important thing with product pages is converting visitors into buyers We always think of the customer first and the search engines second Fortunately if you follow our method of creating product pages youll get positive results from both
CREATE AND MARKET AN ECOMMERCE STOREFree step-by-step guidance on how to create and market an online store
TAKE THE COURSE
Additional Resources on Copywriting for Product Pages
Laura Serino | eCommerceFuel Boring Products No Problem How to Write Compelling Copy for Anything
Pulkit Rastogi | I Love Fashion Retail Fashion Copywriting 13 Tips for Writing Product Descriptions That Will Get Your Customers to Say Yes
Mark Macdonald | Shopify 9 Simple Ways to Write Product Descriptions that Sell
Craig Anderson | Smashing Magazine E-Commerce Copywriting The Guide to Selling More
Khalid Saleh | MOZ 4 Ways Copywriting Can Help Your Ecommerce Conversion Rates
AUTHOR RONEN AMIT | SELLER ACT
ANSWER
The Options for Approaching Product Variants Product variants --the different variations in color size scent and so on --of a certain product can be incorporated into your online store in two ways 1 Single product page enabling your customers to choose the right size preferred color scent etc2 Multiple product pages each page for each variants or for a group of variants Which is better for SEO and what other factors may you want to take into account
Single Product Page
Creating a single page for all product variants is pretty straightforward on most modern ecommerce platforms If you decide to go with a single page make sure to apply SEO best practices as you would on any content page integrating keywords into the product title and description meta tags and so on Important Note If your platform creates a new URL for each variant make sure you use canonical URL to signal Google that all variant URLs are pointing to a single core product Otherwise you risk Google considering these URLs as duplicates and penalizing your product pages or even your whole website Use the following tag on your product page between ltheadgt and ltheadgt ltlink rel=canonical href=your core product url here gt
QUESTION
What are SEO best practices for handling dozens of variations of the same product
The Canonical URL signals the search engine your preferred core product URL For further information see httpssupportgooglecomwebmastersanswer139066
In addition you may want to consider using Schemaorg Here is an example how to deal with variants
ltdiv itemprop=model itemscope itemtype=httpschemaorgProductModelgtltspan itemprop=namegtVariant Product Nameltspangtltmeta itemprop=productID content=Variant Product SKU or Catalog gtltmeta itemprop=isVariantOf content=Core Product SKU or Catalog gtltdivgtltdivgt For further information please refer to httpschemaorgProductModel
Multiple Product Pages
In case you decide to create different page for each variant (see more considerations and recommendations below) you will need to set the content of each variant page apart so Googles algorithm will not consider those pages as duplicates Unless you have only several core products this could be a tedious task For example if you have only 5 colors and 5 sizes for each core product 100 products turns into 2500 product pages each should be optimized separately with a unique content
Usability and conversion
Beyond SEO there are many factors --and chief among these usability and conversion
Variant 1 Variant 2 - Note the URL is different than variant
-- to consider when yoursquore working with an eCommerce site Even if you were able to generate more organic traffic by creating different pages for each product variant rather than featuring all variants on a single page does that mean you are making more sales If a potential customer were to find your store and see the blue product would she be aware that you also have the same product in red When a customer arrives at your web store regardless of whether they came through a search engine how easy is it for them to find the product they are interested in Having 25x more product pages or even just 5x more product pages for each core product may possibly help you generate more organic traffic but at the same time it will almost certainly make it more difficult for your customers to find products in your store Is the tradeoff worth it
Best Practice It is very clear that Google does not like duplicate pages And if you try to find loopholes in Googles algorithm you risk facing massive penalties for your entire web store We recommend creating a single page with all your variants in one place For best results apply on-page SEO to create an optimized product page which ranks well on search engines and converts your visitors into buyers with attractive design hi-res images persuasive content and clear a call-to-action
BUILD AN ONLINE STORELearn about how Ronen Amit and SellerAct can help you build an online store that creates revenue and growth
START BUILDING
Additional Resources on Product Variants
Katey Ferenzi | BigCommerce Product Options The Most Commonly Overlooked Ecommerce Element Likely Affecting Your SEO and Conversions
Jill Kocher | Practical Ecommerce SEO When Product Facets and Filters Fail
Google Webmaster | Faceted Navigation Best (and 5 of the Worst) Practices
QUESTION
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like
AUTHOR JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
ANSWER
When we SEO folk talk architecture wersquore referring to the way your content
is organized on your website Site architecture matters to search engines especially for ecommerce websites
If you have a lsquodeeprsquo architecture it takes your customers a bunch of clicks to find their information Google Bing and friends are no different Search engines find it hard to navigate through different levels of your website So in the simple terms that you wished your business teacher could have used to save you an entire semester worth of study
The easier it is for search engines to find your content the better your presence in SERPs will be
The difference between deep and flat site architecture On the left is a flat architecture with a homepage 8 category pages and 6 product pages within each category On the right is a deep architecture with a homepage four category pages two layers of sub category pages and just one or two product pages within each sub category
A ldquoflat architecturerdquo is best for SEO purposes But as always customer first Google second
Why a flat site architecture is (usually) better A flat page hierarchy allows users to navigate through your site quickly with no need to make 6 or 7 clicks to get to their destination So most times flat is best for your customers too However if your potential customer canrsquot understand where to find information within a category you might need to add a sub category to make things easier
If itrsquos fashion apparel yoursquore pedaling you could break out menrsquos and womenrsquos shoes into categories rather than forcing your visitors to search through both on the same product page
From an SEO point of view a flat structure ensures your page rank is less diluted across the site Pages will get more rankings juice from each other
The more clicks you have to get to the lower pages the more link juice (technical term promisehellip) you are filtering This means less juice is left for your deeper pages and that Google will have a harder time finding them
If a customer needs fewer clicks to get to the bottom of your architecture itrsquos easier for Google to associate your popular home and category pages with your product pages Google doesnrsquot have to search as hard or squeeze the rankings juice as far
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites as you are dealing with lots and lots of categories sub-categories and products pages
SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site
bull Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepagebull All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigatebull Most importantly itrsquos easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex but if yoursquore following a similar pattern to this yoursquove got the right foundations for a flat site architecture
YOU DONT NEED TO PAY AN EXPERTNeed help improving your ecommerce sites SEO With this guide you can do it yourself
DOWNLOAD
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
Additional resources on link-building for ecommerce
Brian Dean | Quicksprout How to Build Links to Your Ecommerce Site [VIDEO]
Andrew Dennis | Linkarati E-commerce Link Building Strategies
Shabbir Nooruddin | Bootstrapping Ecommerce 50 Actionable Ways to Build Links to Your eCommerce Store
Eric Ward | Search Engine Land E-Commerce Link Building - The Challenge That Wont Go Away
Stephanie Chang | MOZ Creative Link Building for Ecommerce Sites
Pawel Grabowski | SERPS Killer Ways to Build Links in Ecommerce
AUTHOR KENNY ROSENBERG | BVAACCEL
ANSWER Itrsquos a marketerrsquos dream to have built in SEO functionality however online store
owners need to carefully assess their site as well to develop a customized action plan in order to enhance their search engine presence and traffic -- And with Shopify Plus itrsquos easy to do so Here are a couple of SEO tips to help kickstart your categorycollection page in your eCommerce store
Tips To Enhance SEO CategoryCollection Page
1 Ensure A Viable Ranking At the bare minimum your collection page content should include a title (set within an lth1gt tag and consistent with anchor links used for navigation) introductory description and unique copy to ensure a top ranking within search results Make sure to keep it short and sweet as we recommend using no more than 150-250 words
2 Have A Strong Introductory Description Your introductory description should be at least 2-3 sentences long and should primarily communicate the types of products found in the collection as itrsquos important to educate your customers through the entire shopping process The introductory description can also include value propositions or promotional messaging to further engage your shoppers (you may place this above your product list)
3 Add Details About Products Near the bottom of your collection pages (below the product list) you should add unique and descriptive details about the products within the collection Remember to
QUESTION
How much copy should you have on a categorycollection page in your ecommerce store What should it be about (Where should you put it)
use several words people are most likely to search for
4 Include Primary Keywords You will want to include primary keywords (only once) within this content block and any other copy that may have been used in your Meta Titles or Descriptions (Shopify themes can automatically generate meta descriptions for each page) This unique copy is placed below your product list so it doesnrsquot impact conversions by pushing products below the fold
WANT TO WORK WITH BVA ACCELAt BVAccel we believe that that every portion of an eCommerce strategy is important From building your webstore to acquiring customers through marketing strategies
CONTACT USVIEW PORTFOLIO
Additional Resources on SEO for Category Pages
Simon Habtemariam | Groove Four SEO Tips for eCommerce Category Pages
Linda Bustos | GetElastic 3 Ninja Ways to Boost Your Category Page SEO
Everett Sizemore | Volusion How to Increase SEO by Adding Content on Category Pages
FuturePay How to Optimize Your Product Category Pages
AUTHOR DAVE HERMANSEN | STORECOACH
ANSWER
One of the biggest problems that eCommerce store owners face is writing
unique compelling content for their product pages - especially if they have hundreds or even thousands of products What compounds the problem is that when a great number of products are very similar you run the risk of repeating virtually the same content on every single product page and creating a great deal of on-site duplicate content Although it certainly helps to have a lot of relevant content on a page writing long form 1000+ word product descriptions is nearly impossible for most product niches and frankly it is rarely necessary More important is providing the type of content that informs customers answering questions they may have and helping them see how the product can make their life better We tackle product pages with a two-pronged approach First we want to get our websites up and running as quickly as possible and not get bogged down for months writing hundreds of ultra unique product pages After our site is launched and we have begun marketing it we will go back into our product pages one by one and re-write them adding additional information During the pre-launch stage we typically write several sentences of unique content attempting to create a why reason for buying any given product The key here is to put yourself in a customers shoes and create a mental image of how that product will make them better smarter more likable more popular more attractive happier etc After that we will include the typical manufacturer bullet point features but we try re-write them slightly to make them a little more unique We will also include what we call templated copy that is essentially the same on every product page but with the product name inserted within the copy This templated copy will include why buy from us information like our satisfaction guarantee free shipping (if applicable) and warranty information
QUESTION
Its not feasible to have 1000 word descriptions of each of my products How long should my product descriptions really be
Templated copy might look something like this
You can rest assured that you are making an excellent decision when you buy our Acme Roadrunner Repellent It is backed by our 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee as well as a One Year Manufacturers Warranty Better still all Acme Roadrunner Repellent orders SHIP FREE If you have any questions about whether this proven roadrunner repellent will work for your particular situation please dont hesitate to get in touch with us via our Contact Us form or give us a call toll free at 1-800-555-1234 We love helping people get the exact product for their needs
After the store is launched and we are working on getting backlinks and perhaps running ads for the website we go back in and add additional content to our product pages This is where we take a look at the manufacturers bullet point features and write sentences that explain the benefits of those features We also make sure that every who what where when why and how question that we can think of has been answered If we have access to assembly instructions or owners manuals well add those in a tab on the product page too I assure you that after you have done all of that your product pages will be vastly superior to what the majority of your competitors are doing and youll have far more content than you ever thought you could create for each product Over time customers will hopefully be supplying even more content to your product pages in the form of reviews or even testimonials If you are working with shopping cart software that has a product-specific FAQs module that will add a great deal of additional super relevant copy to your product pages as well While it is true that the more content there is on a page the better chance it has at ranking well the most important thing with product pages is converting visitors into buyers We always think of the customer first and the search engines second Fortunately if you follow our method of creating product pages youll get positive results from both
CREATE AND MARKET AN ECOMMERCE STOREFree step-by-step guidance on how to create and market an online store
TAKE THE COURSE
Additional Resources on Copywriting for Product Pages
Laura Serino | eCommerceFuel Boring Products No Problem How to Write Compelling Copy for Anything
Pulkit Rastogi | I Love Fashion Retail Fashion Copywriting 13 Tips for Writing Product Descriptions That Will Get Your Customers to Say Yes
Mark Macdonald | Shopify 9 Simple Ways to Write Product Descriptions that Sell
Craig Anderson | Smashing Magazine E-Commerce Copywriting The Guide to Selling More
Khalid Saleh | MOZ 4 Ways Copywriting Can Help Your Ecommerce Conversion Rates
AUTHOR RONEN AMIT | SELLER ACT
ANSWER
The Options for Approaching Product Variants Product variants --the different variations in color size scent and so on --of a certain product can be incorporated into your online store in two ways 1 Single product page enabling your customers to choose the right size preferred color scent etc2 Multiple product pages each page for each variants or for a group of variants Which is better for SEO and what other factors may you want to take into account
Single Product Page
Creating a single page for all product variants is pretty straightforward on most modern ecommerce platforms If you decide to go with a single page make sure to apply SEO best practices as you would on any content page integrating keywords into the product title and description meta tags and so on Important Note If your platform creates a new URL for each variant make sure you use canonical URL to signal Google that all variant URLs are pointing to a single core product Otherwise you risk Google considering these URLs as duplicates and penalizing your product pages or even your whole website Use the following tag on your product page between ltheadgt and ltheadgt ltlink rel=canonical href=your core product url here gt
QUESTION
What are SEO best practices for handling dozens of variations of the same product
The Canonical URL signals the search engine your preferred core product URL For further information see httpssupportgooglecomwebmastersanswer139066
In addition you may want to consider using Schemaorg Here is an example how to deal with variants
ltdiv itemprop=model itemscope itemtype=httpschemaorgProductModelgtltspan itemprop=namegtVariant Product Nameltspangtltmeta itemprop=productID content=Variant Product SKU or Catalog gtltmeta itemprop=isVariantOf content=Core Product SKU or Catalog gtltdivgtltdivgt For further information please refer to httpschemaorgProductModel
Multiple Product Pages
In case you decide to create different page for each variant (see more considerations and recommendations below) you will need to set the content of each variant page apart so Googles algorithm will not consider those pages as duplicates Unless you have only several core products this could be a tedious task For example if you have only 5 colors and 5 sizes for each core product 100 products turns into 2500 product pages each should be optimized separately with a unique content
Usability and conversion
Beyond SEO there are many factors --and chief among these usability and conversion
Variant 1 Variant 2 - Note the URL is different than variant
-- to consider when yoursquore working with an eCommerce site Even if you were able to generate more organic traffic by creating different pages for each product variant rather than featuring all variants on a single page does that mean you are making more sales If a potential customer were to find your store and see the blue product would she be aware that you also have the same product in red When a customer arrives at your web store regardless of whether they came through a search engine how easy is it for them to find the product they are interested in Having 25x more product pages or even just 5x more product pages for each core product may possibly help you generate more organic traffic but at the same time it will almost certainly make it more difficult for your customers to find products in your store Is the tradeoff worth it
Best Practice It is very clear that Google does not like duplicate pages And if you try to find loopholes in Googles algorithm you risk facing massive penalties for your entire web store We recommend creating a single page with all your variants in one place For best results apply on-page SEO to create an optimized product page which ranks well on search engines and converts your visitors into buyers with attractive design hi-res images persuasive content and clear a call-to-action
BUILD AN ONLINE STORELearn about how Ronen Amit and SellerAct can help you build an online store that creates revenue and growth
START BUILDING
Additional Resources on Product Variants
Katey Ferenzi | BigCommerce Product Options The Most Commonly Overlooked Ecommerce Element Likely Affecting Your SEO and Conversions
Jill Kocher | Practical Ecommerce SEO When Product Facets and Filters Fail
Google Webmaster | Faceted Navigation Best (and 5 of the Worst) Practices
QUESTION
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like
AUTHOR JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
ANSWER
When we SEO folk talk architecture wersquore referring to the way your content
is organized on your website Site architecture matters to search engines especially for ecommerce websites
If you have a lsquodeeprsquo architecture it takes your customers a bunch of clicks to find their information Google Bing and friends are no different Search engines find it hard to navigate through different levels of your website So in the simple terms that you wished your business teacher could have used to save you an entire semester worth of study
The easier it is for search engines to find your content the better your presence in SERPs will be
The difference between deep and flat site architecture On the left is a flat architecture with a homepage 8 category pages and 6 product pages within each category On the right is a deep architecture with a homepage four category pages two layers of sub category pages and just one or two product pages within each sub category
A ldquoflat architecturerdquo is best for SEO purposes But as always customer first Google second
Why a flat site architecture is (usually) better A flat page hierarchy allows users to navigate through your site quickly with no need to make 6 or 7 clicks to get to their destination So most times flat is best for your customers too However if your potential customer canrsquot understand where to find information within a category you might need to add a sub category to make things easier
If itrsquos fashion apparel yoursquore pedaling you could break out menrsquos and womenrsquos shoes into categories rather than forcing your visitors to search through both on the same product page
From an SEO point of view a flat structure ensures your page rank is less diluted across the site Pages will get more rankings juice from each other
The more clicks you have to get to the lower pages the more link juice (technical term promisehellip) you are filtering This means less juice is left for your deeper pages and that Google will have a harder time finding them
If a customer needs fewer clicks to get to the bottom of your architecture itrsquos easier for Google to associate your popular home and category pages with your product pages Google doesnrsquot have to search as hard or squeeze the rankings juice as far
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites as you are dealing with lots and lots of categories sub-categories and products pages
SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site
bull Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepagebull All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigatebull Most importantly itrsquos easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex but if yoursquore following a similar pattern to this yoursquove got the right foundations for a flat site architecture
YOU DONT NEED TO PAY AN EXPERTNeed help improving your ecommerce sites SEO With this guide you can do it yourself
DOWNLOAD
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
AUTHOR KENNY ROSENBERG | BVAACCEL
ANSWER Itrsquos a marketerrsquos dream to have built in SEO functionality however online store
owners need to carefully assess their site as well to develop a customized action plan in order to enhance their search engine presence and traffic -- And with Shopify Plus itrsquos easy to do so Here are a couple of SEO tips to help kickstart your categorycollection page in your eCommerce store
Tips To Enhance SEO CategoryCollection Page
1 Ensure A Viable Ranking At the bare minimum your collection page content should include a title (set within an lth1gt tag and consistent with anchor links used for navigation) introductory description and unique copy to ensure a top ranking within search results Make sure to keep it short and sweet as we recommend using no more than 150-250 words
2 Have A Strong Introductory Description Your introductory description should be at least 2-3 sentences long and should primarily communicate the types of products found in the collection as itrsquos important to educate your customers through the entire shopping process The introductory description can also include value propositions or promotional messaging to further engage your shoppers (you may place this above your product list)
3 Add Details About Products Near the bottom of your collection pages (below the product list) you should add unique and descriptive details about the products within the collection Remember to
QUESTION
How much copy should you have on a categorycollection page in your ecommerce store What should it be about (Where should you put it)
use several words people are most likely to search for
4 Include Primary Keywords You will want to include primary keywords (only once) within this content block and any other copy that may have been used in your Meta Titles or Descriptions (Shopify themes can automatically generate meta descriptions for each page) This unique copy is placed below your product list so it doesnrsquot impact conversions by pushing products below the fold
WANT TO WORK WITH BVA ACCELAt BVAccel we believe that that every portion of an eCommerce strategy is important From building your webstore to acquiring customers through marketing strategies
CONTACT USVIEW PORTFOLIO
Additional Resources on SEO for Category Pages
Simon Habtemariam | Groove Four SEO Tips for eCommerce Category Pages
Linda Bustos | GetElastic 3 Ninja Ways to Boost Your Category Page SEO
Everett Sizemore | Volusion How to Increase SEO by Adding Content on Category Pages
FuturePay How to Optimize Your Product Category Pages
AUTHOR DAVE HERMANSEN | STORECOACH
ANSWER
One of the biggest problems that eCommerce store owners face is writing
unique compelling content for their product pages - especially if they have hundreds or even thousands of products What compounds the problem is that when a great number of products are very similar you run the risk of repeating virtually the same content on every single product page and creating a great deal of on-site duplicate content Although it certainly helps to have a lot of relevant content on a page writing long form 1000+ word product descriptions is nearly impossible for most product niches and frankly it is rarely necessary More important is providing the type of content that informs customers answering questions they may have and helping them see how the product can make their life better We tackle product pages with a two-pronged approach First we want to get our websites up and running as quickly as possible and not get bogged down for months writing hundreds of ultra unique product pages After our site is launched and we have begun marketing it we will go back into our product pages one by one and re-write them adding additional information During the pre-launch stage we typically write several sentences of unique content attempting to create a why reason for buying any given product The key here is to put yourself in a customers shoes and create a mental image of how that product will make them better smarter more likable more popular more attractive happier etc After that we will include the typical manufacturer bullet point features but we try re-write them slightly to make them a little more unique We will also include what we call templated copy that is essentially the same on every product page but with the product name inserted within the copy This templated copy will include why buy from us information like our satisfaction guarantee free shipping (if applicable) and warranty information
QUESTION
Its not feasible to have 1000 word descriptions of each of my products How long should my product descriptions really be
Templated copy might look something like this
You can rest assured that you are making an excellent decision when you buy our Acme Roadrunner Repellent It is backed by our 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee as well as a One Year Manufacturers Warranty Better still all Acme Roadrunner Repellent orders SHIP FREE If you have any questions about whether this proven roadrunner repellent will work for your particular situation please dont hesitate to get in touch with us via our Contact Us form or give us a call toll free at 1-800-555-1234 We love helping people get the exact product for their needs
After the store is launched and we are working on getting backlinks and perhaps running ads for the website we go back in and add additional content to our product pages This is where we take a look at the manufacturers bullet point features and write sentences that explain the benefits of those features We also make sure that every who what where when why and how question that we can think of has been answered If we have access to assembly instructions or owners manuals well add those in a tab on the product page too I assure you that after you have done all of that your product pages will be vastly superior to what the majority of your competitors are doing and youll have far more content than you ever thought you could create for each product Over time customers will hopefully be supplying even more content to your product pages in the form of reviews or even testimonials If you are working with shopping cart software that has a product-specific FAQs module that will add a great deal of additional super relevant copy to your product pages as well While it is true that the more content there is on a page the better chance it has at ranking well the most important thing with product pages is converting visitors into buyers We always think of the customer first and the search engines second Fortunately if you follow our method of creating product pages youll get positive results from both
CREATE AND MARKET AN ECOMMERCE STOREFree step-by-step guidance on how to create and market an online store
TAKE THE COURSE
Additional Resources on Copywriting for Product Pages
Laura Serino | eCommerceFuel Boring Products No Problem How to Write Compelling Copy for Anything
Pulkit Rastogi | I Love Fashion Retail Fashion Copywriting 13 Tips for Writing Product Descriptions That Will Get Your Customers to Say Yes
Mark Macdonald | Shopify 9 Simple Ways to Write Product Descriptions that Sell
Craig Anderson | Smashing Magazine E-Commerce Copywriting The Guide to Selling More
Khalid Saleh | MOZ 4 Ways Copywriting Can Help Your Ecommerce Conversion Rates
AUTHOR RONEN AMIT | SELLER ACT
ANSWER
The Options for Approaching Product Variants Product variants --the different variations in color size scent and so on --of a certain product can be incorporated into your online store in two ways 1 Single product page enabling your customers to choose the right size preferred color scent etc2 Multiple product pages each page for each variants or for a group of variants Which is better for SEO and what other factors may you want to take into account
Single Product Page
Creating a single page for all product variants is pretty straightforward on most modern ecommerce platforms If you decide to go with a single page make sure to apply SEO best practices as you would on any content page integrating keywords into the product title and description meta tags and so on Important Note If your platform creates a new URL for each variant make sure you use canonical URL to signal Google that all variant URLs are pointing to a single core product Otherwise you risk Google considering these URLs as duplicates and penalizing your product pages or even your whole website Use the following tag on your product page between ltheadgt and ltheadgt ltlink rel=canonical href=your core product url here gt
QUESTION
What are SEO best practices for handling dozens of variations of the same product
The Canonical URL signals the search engine your preferred core product URL For further information see httpssupportgooglecomwebmastersanswer139066
In addition you may want to consider using Schemaorg Here is an example how to deal with variants
ltdiv itemprop=model itemscope itemtype=httpschemaorgProductModelgtltspan itemprop=namegtVariant Product Nameltspangtltmeta itemprop=productID content=Variant Product SKU or Catalog gtltmeta itemprop=isVariantOf content=Core Product SKU or Catalog gtltdivgtltdivgt For further information please refer to httpschemaorgProductModel
Multiple Product Pages
In case you decide to create different page for each variant (see more considerations and recommendations below) you will need to set the content of each variant page apart so Googles algorithm will not consider those pages as duplicates Unless you have only several core products this could be a tedious task For example if you have only 5 colors and 5 sizes for each core product 100 products turns into 2500 product pages each should be optimized separately with a unique content
Usability and conversion
Beyond SEO there are many factors --and chief among these usability and conversion
Variant 1 Variant 2 - Note the URL is different than variant
-- to consider when yoursquore working with an eCommerce site Even if you were able to generate more organic traffic by creating different pages for each product variant rather than featuring all variants on a single page does that mean you are making more sales If a potential customer were to find your store and see the blue product would she be aware that you also have the same product in red When a customer arrives at your web store regardless of whether they came through a search engine how easy is it for them to find the product they are interested in Having 25x more product pages or even just 5x more product pages for each core product may possibly help you generate more organic traffic but at the same time it will almost certainly make it more difficult for your customers to find products in your store Is the tradeoff worth it
Best Practice It is very clear that Google does not like duplicate pages And if you try to find loopholes in Googles algorithm you risk facing massive penalties for your entire web store We recommend creating a single page with all your variants in one place For best results apply on-page SEO to create an optimized product page which ranks well on search engines and converts your visitors into buyers with attractive design hi-res images persuasive content and clear a call-to-action
BUILD AN ONLINE STORELearn about how Ronen Amit and SellerAct can help you build an online store that creates revenue and growth
START BUILDING
Additional Resources on Product Variants
Katey Ferenzi | BigCommerce Product Options The Most Commonly Overlooked Ecommerce Element Likely Affecting Your SEO and Conversions
Jill Kocher | Practical Ecommerce SEO When Product Facets and Filters Fail
Google Webmaster | Faceted Navigation Best (and 5 of the Worst) Practices
QUESTION
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like
AUTHOR JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
ANSWER
When we SEO folk talk architecture wersquore referring to the way your content
is organized on your website Site architecture matters to search engines especially for ecommerce websites
If you have a lsquodeeprsquo architecture it takes your customers a bunch of clicks to find their information Google Bing and friends are no different Search engines find it hard to navigate through different levels of your website So in the simple terms that you wished your business teacher could have used to save you an entire semester worth of study
The easier it is for search engines to find your content the better your presence in SERPs will be
The difference between deep and flat site architecture On the left is a flat architecture with a homepage 8 category pages and 6 product pages within each category On the right is a deep architecture with a homepage four category pages two layers of sub category pages and just one or two product pages within each sub category
A ldquoflat architecturerdquo is best for SEO purposes But as always customer first Google second
Why a flat site architecture is (usually) better A flat page hierarchy allows users to navigate through your site quickly with no need to make 6 or 7 clicks to get to their destination So most times flat is best for your customers too However if your potential customer canrsquot understand where to find information within a category you might need to add a sub category to make things easier
If itrsquos fashion apparel yoursquore pedaling you could break out menrsquos and womenrsquos shoes into categories rather than forcing your visitors to search through both on the same product page
From an SEO point of view a flat structure ensures your page rank is less diluted across the site Pages will get more rankings juice from each other
The more clicks you have to get to the lower pages the more link juice (technical term promisehellip) you are filtering This means less juice is left for your deeper pages and that Google will have a harder time finding them
If a customer needs fewer clicks to get to the bottom of your architecture itrsquos easier for Google to associate your popular home and category pages with your product pages Google doesnrsquot have to search as hard or squeeze the rankings juice as far
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites as you are dealing with lots and lots of categories sub-categories and products pages
SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site
bull Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepagebull All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigatebull Most importantly itrsquos easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex but if yoursquore following a similar pattern to this yoursquove got the right foundations for a flat site architecture
YOU DONT NEED TO PAY AN EXPERTNeed help improving your ecommerce sites SEO With this guide you can do it yourself
DOWNLOAD
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
use several words people are most likely to search for
4 Include Primary Keywords You will want to include primary keywords (only once) within this content block and any other copy that may have been used in your Meta Titles or Descriptions (Shopify themes can automatically generate meta descriptions for each page) This unique copy is placed below your product list so it doesnrsquot impact conversions by pushing products below the fold
WANT TO WORK WITH BVA ACCELAt BVAccel we believe that that every portion of an eCommerce strategy is important From building your webstore to acquiring customers through marketing strategies
CONTACT USVIEW PORTFOLIO
Additional Resources on SEO for Category Pages
Simon Habtemariam | Groove Four SEO Tips for eCommerce Category Pages
Linda Bustos | GetElastic 3 Ninja Ways to Boost Your Category Page SEO
Everett Sizemore | Volusion How to Increase SEO by Adding Content on Category Pages
FuturePay How to Optimize Your Product Category Pages
AUTHOR DAVE HERMANSEN | STORECOACH
ANSWER
One of the biggest problems that eCommerce store owners face is writing
unique compelling content for their product pages - especially if they have hundreds or even thousands of products What compounds the problem is that when a great number of products are very similar you run the risk of repeating virtually the same content on every single product page and creating a great deal of on-site duplicate content Although it certainly helps to have a lot of relevant content on a page writing long form 1000+ word product descriptions is nearly impossible for most product niches and frankly it is rarely necessary More important is providing the type of content that informs customers answering questions they may have and helping them see how the product can make their life better We tackle product pages with a two-pronged approach First we want to get our websites up and running as quickly as possible and not get bogged down for months writing hundreds of ultra unique product pages After our site is launched and we have begun marketing it we will go back into our product pages one by one and re-write them adding additional information During the pre-launch stage we typically write several sentences of unique content attempting to create a why reason for buying any given product The key here is to put yourself in a customers shoes and create a mental image of how that product will make them better smarter more likable more popular more attractive happier etc After that we will include the typical manufacturer bullet point features but we try re-write them slightly to make them a little more unique We will also include what we call templated copy that is essentially the same on every product page but with the product name inserted within the copy This templated copy will include why buy from us information like our satisfaction guarantee free shipping (if applicable) and warranty information
QUESTION
Its not feasible to have 1000 word descriptions of each of my products How long should my product descriptions really be
Templated copy might look something like this
You can rest assured that you are making an excellent decision when you buy our Acme Roadrunner Repellent It is backed by our 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee as well as a One Year Manufacturers Warranty Better still all Acme Roadrunner Repellent orders SHIP FREE If you have any questions about whether this proven roadrunner repellent will work for your particular situation please dont hesitate to get in touch with us via our Contact Us form or give us a call toll free at 1-800-555-1234 We love helping people get the exact product for their needs
After the store is launched and we are working on getting backlinks and perhaps running ads for the website we go back in and add additional content to our product pages This is where we take a look at the manufacturers bullet point features and write sentences that explain the benefits of those features We also make sure that every who what where when why and how question that we can think of has been answered If we have access to assembly instructions or owners manuals well add those in a tab on the product page too I assure you that after you have done all of that your product pages will be vastly superior to what the majority of your competitors are doing and youll have far more content than you ever thought you could create for each product Over time customers will hopefully be supplying even more content to your product pages in the form of reviews or even testimonials If you are working with shopping cart software that has a product-specific FAQs module that will add a great deal of additional super relevant copy to your product pages as well While it is true that the more content there is on a page the better chance it has at ranking well the most important thing with product pages is converting visitors into buyers We always think of the customer first and the search engines second Fortunately if you follow our method of creating product pages youll get positive results from both
CREATE AND MARKET AN ECOMMERCE STOREFree step-by-step guidance on how to create and market an online store
TAKE THE COURSE
Additional Resources on Copywriting for Product Pages
Laura Serino | eCommerceFuel Boring Products No Problem How to Write Compelling Copy for Anything
Pulkit Rastogi | I Love Fashion Retail Fashion Copywriting 13 Tips for Writing Product Descriptions That Will Get Your Customers to Say Yes
Mark Macdonald | Shopify 9 Simple Ways to Write Product Descriptions that Sell
Craig Anderson | Smashing Magazine E-Commerce Copywriting The Guide to Selling More
Khalid Saleh | MOZ 4 Ways Copywriting Can Help Your Ecommerce Conversion Rates
AUTHOR RONEN AMIT | SELLER ACT
ANSWER
The Options for Approaching Product Variants Product variants --the different variations in color size scent and so on --of a certain product can be incorporated into your online store in two ways 1 Single product page enabling your customers to choose the right size preferred color scent etc2 Multiple product pages each page for each variants or for a group of variants Which is better for SEO and what other factors may you want to take into account
Single Product Page
Creating a single page for all product variants is pretty straightforward on most modern ecommerce platforms If you decide to go with a single page make sure to apply SEO best practices as you would on any content page integrating keywords into the product title and description meta tags and so on Important Note If your platform creates a new URL for each variant make sure you use canonical URL to signal Google that all variant URLs are pointing to a single core product Otherwise you risk Google considering these URLs as duplicates and penalizing your product pages or even your whole website Use the following tag on your product page between ltheadgt and ltheadgt ltlink rel=canonical href=your core product url here gt
QUESTION
What are SEO best practices for handling dozens of variations of the same product
The Canonical URL signals the search engine your preferred core product URL For further information see httpssupportgooglecomwebmastersanswer139066
In addition you may want to consider using Schemaorg Here is an example how to deal with variants
ltdiv itemprop=model itemscope itemtype=httpschemaorgProductModelgtltspan itemprop=namegtVariant Product Nameltspangtltmeta itemprop=productID content=Variant Product SKU or Catalog gtltmeta itemprop=isVariantOf content=Core Product SKU or Catalog gtltdivgtltdivgt For further information please refer to httpschemaorgProductModel
Multiple Product Pages
In case you decide to create different page for each variant (see more considerations and recommendations below) you will need to set the content of each variant page apart so Googles algorithm will not consider those pages as duplicates Unless you have only several core products this could be a tedious task For example if you have only 5 colors and 5 sizes for each core product 100 products turns into 2500 product pages each should be optimized separately with a unique content
Usability and conversion
Beyond SEO there are many factors --and chief among these usability and conversion
Variant 1 Variant 2 - Note the URL is different than variant
-- to consider when yoursquore working with an eCommerce site Even if you were able to generate more organic traffic by creating different pages for each product variant rather than featuring all variants on a single page does that mean you are making more sales If a potential customer were to find your store and see the blue product would she be aware that you also have the same product in red When a customer arrives at your web store regardless of whether they came through a search engine how easy is it for them to find the product they are interested in Having 25x more product pages or even just 5x more product pages for each core product may possibly help you generate more organic traffic but at the same time it will almost certainly make it more difficult for your customers to find products in your store Is the tradeoff worth it
Best Practice It is very clear that Google does not like duplicate pages And if you try to find loopholes in Googles algorithm you risk facing massive penalties for your entire web store We recommend creating a single page with all your variants in one place For best results apply on-page SEO to create an optimized product page which ranks well on search engines and converts your visitors into buyers with attractive design hi-res images persuasive content and clear a call-to-action
BUILD AN ONLINE STORELearn about how Ronen Amit and SellerAct can help you build an online store that creates revenue and growth
START BUILDING
Additional Resources on Product Variants
Katey Ferenzi | BigCommerce Product Options The Most Commonly Overlooked Ecommerce Element Likely Affecting Your SEO and Conversions
Jill Kocher | Practical Ecommerce SEO When Product Facets and Filters Fail
Google Webmaster | Faceted Navigation Best (and 5 of the Worst) Practices
QUESTION
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like
AUTHOR JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
ANSWER
When we SEO folk talk architecture wersquore referring to the way your content
is organized on your website Site architecture matters to search engines especially for ecommerce websites
If you have a lsquodeeprsquo architecture it takes your customers a bunch of clicks to find their information Google Bing and friends are no different Search engines find it hard to navigate through different levels of your website So in the simple terms that you wished your business teacher could have used to save you an entire semester worth of study
The easier it is for search engines to find your content the better your presence in SERPs will be
The difference between deep and flat site architecture On the left is a flat architecture with a homepage 8 category pages and 6 product pages within each category On the right is a deep architecture with a homepage four category pages two layers of sub category pages and just one or two product pages within each sub category
A ldquoflat architecturerdquo is best for SEO purposes But as always customer first Google second
Why a flat site architecture is (usually) better A flat page hierarchy allows users to navigate through your site quickly with no need to make 6 or 7 clicks to get to their destination So most times flat is best for your customers too However if your potential customer canrsquot understand where to find information within a category you might need to add a sub category to make things easier
If itrsquos fashion apparel yoursquore pedaling you could break out menrsquos and womenrsquos shoes into categories rather than forcing your visitors to search through both on the same product page
From an SEO point of view a flat structure ensures your page rank is less diluted across the site Pages will get more rankings juice from each other
The more clicks you have to get to the lower pages the more link juice (technical term promisehellip) you are filtering This means less juice is left for your deeper pages and that Google will have a harder time finding them
If a customer needs fewer clicks to get to the bottom of your architecture itrsquos easier for Google to associate your popular home and category pages with your product pages Google doesnrsquot have to search as hard or squeeze the rankings juice as far
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites as you are dealing with lots and lots of categories sub-categories and products pages
SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site
bull Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepagebull All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigatebull Most importantly itrsquos easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex but if yoursquore following a similar pattern to this yoursquove got the right foundations for a flat site architecture
YOU DONT NEED TO PAY AN EXPERTNeed help improving your ecommerce sites SEO With this guide you can do it yourself
DOWNLOAD
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
AUTHOR DAVE HERMANSEN | STORECOACH
ANSWER
One of the biggest problems that eCommerce store owners face is writing
unique compelling content for their product pages - especially if they have hundreds or even thousands of products What compounds the problem is that when a great number of products are very similar you run the risk of repeating virtually the same content on every single product page and creating a great deal of on-site duplicate content Although it certainly helps to have a lot of relevant content on a page writing long form 1000+ word product descriptions is nearly impossible for most product niches and frankly it is rarely necessary More important is providing the type of content that informs customers answering questions they may have and helping them see how the product can make their life better We tackle product pages with a two-pronged approach First we want to get our websites up and running as quickly as possible and not get bogged down for months writing hundreds of ultra unique product pages After our site is launched and we have begun marketing it we will go back into our product pages one by one and re-write them adding additional information During the pre-launch stage we typically write several sentences of unique content attempting to create a why reason for buying any given product The key here is to put yourself in a customers shoes and create a mental image of how that product will make them better smarter more likable more popular more attractive happier etc After that we will include the typical manufacturer bullet point features but we try re-write them slightly to make them a little more unique We will also include what we call templated copy that is essentially the same on every product page but with the product name inserted within the copy This templated copy will include why buy from us information like our satisfaction guarantee free shipping (if applicable) and warranty information
QUESTION
Its not feasible to have 1000 word descriptions of each of my products How long should my product descriptions really be
Templated copy might look something like this
You can rest assured that you are making an excellent decision when you buy our Acme Roadrunner Repellent It is backed by our 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee as well as a One Year Manufacturers Warranty Better still all Acme Roadrunner Repellent orders SHIP FREE If you have any questions about whether this proven roadrunner repellent will work for your particular situation please dont hesitate to get in touch with us via our Contact Us form or give us a call toll free at 1-800-555-1234 We love helping people get the exact product for their needs
After the store is launched and we are working on getting backlinks and perhaps running ads for the website we go back in and add additional content to our product pages This is where we take a look at the manufacturers bullet point features and write sentences that explain the benefits of those features We also make sure that every who what where when why and how question that we can think of has been answered If we have access to assembly instructions or owners manuals well add those in a tab on the product page too I assure you that after you have done all of that your product pages will be vastly superior to what the majority of your competitors are doing and youll have far more content than you ever thought you could create for each product Over time customers will hopefully be supplying even more content to your product pages in the form of reviews or even testimonials If you are working with shopping cart software that has a product-specific FAQs module that will add a great deal of additional super relevant copy to your product pages as well While it is true that the more content there is on a page the better chance it has at ranking well the most important thing with product pages is converting visitors into buyers We always think of the customer first and the search engines second Fortunately if you follow our method of creating product pages youll get positive results from both
CREATE AND MARKET AN ECOMMERCE STOREFree step-by-step guidance on how to create and market an online store
TAKE THE COURSE
Additional Resources on Copywriting for Product Pages
Laura Serino | eCommerceFuel Boring Products No Problem How to Write Compelling Copy for Anything
Pulkit Rastogi | I Love Fashion Retail Fashion Copywriting 13 Tips for Writing Product Descriptions That Will Get Your Customers to Say Yes
Mark Macdonald | Shopify 9 Simple Ways to Write Product Descriptions that Sell
Craig Anderson | Smashing Magazine E-Commerce Copywriting The Guide to Selling More
Khalid Saleh | MOZ 4 Ways Copywriting Can Help Your Ecommerce Conversion Rates
AUTHOR RONEN AMIT | SELLER ACT
ANSWER
The Options for Approaching Product Variants Product variants --the different variations in color size scent and so on --of a certain product can be incorporated into your online store in two ways 1 Single product page enabling your customers to choose the right size preferred color scent etc2 Multiple product pages each page for each variants or for a group of variants Which is better for SEO and what other factors may you want to take into account
Single Product Page
Creating a single page for all product variants is pretty straightforward on most modern ecommerce platforms If you decide to go with a single page make sure to apply SEO best practices as you would on any content page integrating keywords into the product title and description meta tags and so on Important Note If your platform creates a new URL for each variant make sure you use canonical URL to signal Google that all variant URLs are pointing to a single core product Otherwise you risk Google considering these URLs as duplicates and penalizing your product pages or even your whole website Use the following tag on your product page between ltheadgt and ltheadgt ltlink rel=canonical href=your core product url here gt
QUESTION
What are SEO best practices for handling dozens of variations of the same product
The Canonical URL signals the search engine your preferred core product URL For further information see httpssupportgooglecomwebmastersanswer139066
In addition you may want to consider using Schemaorg Here is an example how to deal with variants
ltdiv itemprop=model itemscope itemtype=httpschemaorgProductModelgtltspan itemprop=namegtVariant Product Nameltspangtltmeta itemprop=productID content=Variant Product SKU or Catalog gtltmeta itemprop=isVariantOf content=Core Product SKU or Catalog gtltdivgtltdivgt For further information please refer to httpschemaorgProductModel
Multiple Product Pages
In case you decide to create different page for each variant (see more considerations and recommendations below) you will need to set the content of each variant page apart so Googles algorithm will not consider those pages as duplicates Unless you have only several core products this could be a tedious task For example if you have only 5 colors and 5 sizes for each core product 100 products turns into 2500 product pages each should be optimized separately with a unique content
Usability and conversion
Beyond SEO there are many factors --and chief among these usability and conversion
Variant 1 Variant 2 - Note the URL is different than variant
-- to consider when yoursquore working with an eCommerce site Even if you were able to generate more organic traffic by creating different pages for each product variant rather than featuring all variants on a single page does that mean you are making more sales If a potential customer were to find your store and see the blue product would she be aware that you also have the same product in red When a customer arrives at your web store regardless of whether they came through a search engine how easy is it for them to find the product they are interested in Having 25x more product pages or even just 5x more product pages for each core product may possibly help you generate more organic traffic but at the same time it will almost certainly make it more difficult for your customers to find products in your store Is the tradeoff worth it
Best Practice It is very clear that Google does not like duplicate pages And if you try to find loopholes in Googles algorithm you risk facing massive penalties for your entire web store We recommend creating a single page with all your variants in one place For best results apply on-page SEO to create an optimized product page which ranks well on search engines and converts your visitors into buyers with attractive design hi-res images persuasive content and clear a call-to-action
BUILD AN ONLINE STORELearn about how Ronen Amit and SellerAct can help you build an online store that creates revenue and growth
START BUILDING
Additional Resources on Product Variants
Katey Ferenzi | BigCommerce Product Options The Most Commonly Overlooked Ecommerce Element Likely Affecting Your SEO and Conversions
Jill Kocher | Practical Ecommerce SEO When Product Facets and Filters Fail
Google Webmaster | Faceted Navigation Best (and 5 of the Worst) Practices
QUESTION
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like
AUTHOR JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
ANSWER
When we SEO folk talk architecture wersquore referring to the way your content
is organized on your website Site architecture matters to search engines especially for ecommerce websites
If you have a lsquodeeprsquo architecture it takes your customers a bunch of clicks to find their information Google Bing and friends are no different Search engines find it hard to navigate through different levels of your website So in the simple terms that you wished your business teacher could have used to save you an entire semester worth of study
The easier it is for search engines to find your content the better your presence in SERPs will be
The difference between deep and flat site architecture On the left is a flat architecture with a homepage 8 category pages and 6 product pages within each category On the right is a deep architecture with a homepage four category pages two layers of sub category pages and just one or two product pages within each sub category
A ldquoflat architecturerdquo is best for SEO purposes But as always customer first Google second
Why a flat site architecture is (usually) better A flat page hierarchy allows users to navigate through your site quickly with no need to make 6 or 7 clicks to get to their destination So most times flat is best for your customers too However if your potential customer canrsquot understand where to find information within a category you might need to add a sub category to make things easier
If itrsquos fashion apparel yoursquore pedaling you could break out menrsquos and womenrsquos shoes into categories rather than forcing your visitors to search through both on the same product page
From an SEO point of view a flat structure ensures your page rank is less diluted across the site Pages will get more rankings juice from each other
The more clicks you have to get to the lower pages the more link juice (technical term promisehellip) you are filtering This means less juice is left for your deeper pages and that Google will have a harder time finding them
If a customer needs fewer clicks to get to the bottom of your architecture itrsquos easier for Google to associate your popular home and category pages with your product pages Google doesnrsquot have to search as hard or squeeze the rankings juice as far
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites as you are dealing with lots and lots of categories sub-categories and products pages
SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site
bull Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepagebull All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigatebull Most importantly itrsquos easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex but if yoursquore following a similar pattern to this yoursquove got the right foundations for a flat site architecture
YOU DONT NEED TO PAY AN EXPERTNeed help improving your ecommerce sites SEO With this guide you can do it yourself
DOWNLOAD
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
Templated copy might look something like this
You can rest assured that you are making an excellent decision when you buy our Acme Roadrunner Repellent It is backed by our 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee as well as a One Year Manufacturers Warranty Better still all Acme Roadrunner Repellent orders SHIP FREE If you have any questions about whether this proven roadrunner repellent will work for your particular situation please dont hesitate to get in touch with us via our Contact Us form or give us a call toll free at 1-800-555-1234 We love helping people get the exact product for their needs
After the store is launched and we are working on getting backlinks and perhaps running ads for the website we go back in and add additional content to our product pages This is where we take a look at the manufacturers bullet point features and write sentences that explain the benefits of those features We also make sure that every who what where when why and how question that we can think of has been answered If we have access to assembly instructions or owners manuals well add those in a tab on the product page too I assure you that after you have done all of that your product pages will be vastly superior to what the majority of your competitors are doing and youll have far more content than you ever thought you could create for each product Over time customers will hopefully be supplying even more content to your product pages in the form of reviews or even testimonials If you are working with shopping cart software that has a product-specific FAQs module that will add a great deal of additional super relevant copy to your product pages as well While it is true that the more content there is on a page the better chance it has at ranking well the most important thing with product pages is converting visitors into buyers We always think of the customer first and the search engines second Fortunately if you follow our method of creating product pages youll get positive results from both
CREATE AND MARKET AN ECOMMERCE STOREFree step-by-step guidance on how to create and market an online store
TAKE THE COURSE
Additional Resources on Copywriting for Product Pages
Laura Serino | eCommerceFuel Boring Products No Problem How to Write Compelling Copy for Anything
Pulkit Rastogi | I Love Fashion Retail Fashion Copywriting 13 Tips for Writing Product Descriptions That Will Get Your Customers to Say Yes
Mark Macdonald | Shopify 9 Simple Ways to Write Product Descriptions that Sell
Craig Anderson | Smashing Magazine E-Commerce Copywriting The Guide to Selling More
Khalid Saleh | MOZ 4 Ways Copywriting Can Help Your Ecommerce Conversion Rates
AUTHOR RONEN AMIT | SELLER ACT
ANSWER
The Options for Approaching Product Variants Product variants --the different variations in color size scent and so on --of a certain product can be incorporated into your online store in two ways 1 Single product page enabling your customers to choose the right size preferred color scent etc2 Multiple product pages each page for each variants or for a group of variants Which is better for SEO and what other factors may you want to take into account
Single Product Page
Creating a single page for all product variants is pretty straightforward on most modern ecommerce platforms If you decide to go with a single page make sure to apply SEO best practices as you would on any content page integrating keywords into the product title and description meta tags and so on Important Note If your platform creates a new URL for each variant make sure you use canonical URL to signal Google that all variant URLs are pointing to a single core product Otherwise you risk Google considering these URLs as duplicates and penalizing your product pages or even your whole website Use the following tag on your product page between ltheadgt and ltheadgt ltlink rel=canonical href=your core product url here gt
QUESTION
What are SEO best practices for handling dozens of variations of the same product
The Canonical URL signals the search engine your preferred core product URL For further information see httpssupportgooglecomwebmastersanswer139066
In addition you may want to consider using Schemaorg Here is an example how to deal with variants
ltdiv itemprop=model itemscope itemtype=httpschemaorgProductModelgtltspan itemprop=namegtVariant Product Nameltspangtltmeta itemprop=productID content=Variant Product SKU or Catalog gtltmeta itemprop=isVariantOf content=Core Product SKU or Catalog gtltdivgtltdivgt For further information please refer to httpschemaorgProductModel
Multiple Product Pages
In case you decide to create different page for each variant (see more considerations and recommendations below) you will need to set the content of each variant page apart so Googles algorithm will not consider those pages as duplicates Unless you have only several core products this could be a tedious task For example if you have only 5 colors and 5 sizes for each core product 100 products turns into 2500 product pages each should be optimized separately with a unique content
Usability and conversion
Beyond SEO there are many factors --and chief among these usability and conversion
Variant 1 Variant 2 - Note the URL is different than variant
-- to consider when yoursquore working with an eCommerce site Even if you were able to generate more organic traffic by creating different pages for each product variant rather than featuring all variants on a single page does that mean you are making more sales If a potential customer were to find your store and see the blue product would she be aware that you also have the same product in red When a customer arrives at your web store regardless of whether they came through a search engine how easy is it for them to find the product they are interested in Having 25x more product pages or even just 5x more product pages for each core product may possibly help you generate more organic traffic but at the same time it will almost certainly make it more difficult for your customers to find products in your store Is the tradeoff worth it
Best Practice It is very clear that Google does not like duplicate pages And if you try to find loopholes in Googles algorithm you risk facing massive penalties for your entire web store We recommend creating a single page with all your variants in one place For best results apply on-page SEO to create an optimized product page which ranks well on search engines and converts your visitors into buyers with attractive design hi-res images persuasive content and clear a call-to-action
BUILD AN ONLINE STORELearn about how Ronen Amit and SellerAct can help you build an online store that creates revenue and growth
START BUILDING
Additional Resources on Product Variants
Katey Ferenzi | BigCommerce Product Options The Most Commonly Overlooked Ecommerce Element Likely Affecting Your SEO and Conversions
Jill Kocher | Practical Ecommerce SEO When Product Facets and Filters Fail
Google Webmaster | Faceted Navigation Best (and 5 of the Worst) Practices
QUESTION
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like
AUTHOR JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
ANSWER
When we SEO folk talk architecture wersquore referring to the way your content
is organized on your website Site architecture matters to search engines especially for ecommerce websites
If you have a lsquodeeprsquo architecture it takes your customers a bunch of clicks to find their information Google Bing and friends are no different Search engines find it hard to navigate through different levels of your website So in the simple terms that you wished your business teacher could have used to save you an entire semester worth of study
The easier it is for search engines to find your content the better your presence in SERPs will be
The difference between deep and flat site architecture On the left is a flat architecture with a homepage 8 category pages and 6 product pages within each category On the right is a deep architecture with a homepage four category pages two layers of sub category pages and just one or two product pages within each sub category
A ldquoflat architecturerdquo is best for SEO purposes But as always customer first Google second
Why a flat site architecture is (usually) better A flat page hierarchy allows users to navigate through your site quickly with no need to make 6 or 7 clicks to get to their destination So most times flat is best for your customers too However if your potential customer canrsquot understand where to find information within a category you might need to add a sub category to make things easier
If itrsquos fashion apparel yoursquore pedaling you could break out menrsquos and womenrsquos shoes into categories rather than forcing your visitors to search through both on the same product page
From an SEO point of view a flat structure ensures your page rank is less diluted across the site Pages will get more rankings juice from each other
The more clicks you have to get to the lower pages the more link juice (technical term promisehellip) you are filtering This means less juice is left for your deeper pages and that Google will have a harder time finding them
If a customer needs fewer clicks to get to the bottom of your architecture itrsquos easier for Google to associate your popular home and category pages with your product pages Google doesnrsquot have to search as hard or squeeze the rankings juice as far
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites as you are dealing with lots and lots of categories sub-categories and products pages
SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site
bull Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepagebull All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigatebull Most importantly itrsquos easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex but if yoursquore following a similar pattern to this yoursquove got the right foundations for a flat site architecture
YOU DONT NEED TO PAY AN EXPERTNeed help improving your ecommerce sites SEO With this guide you can do it yourself
DOWNLOAD
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
Additional Resources on Copywriting for Product Pages
Laura Serino | eCommerceFuel Boring Products No Problem How to Write Compelling Copy for Anything
Pulkit Rastogi | I Love Fashion Retail Fashion Copywriting 13 Tips for Writing Product Descriptions That Will Get Your Customers to Say Yes
Mark Macdonald | Shopify 9 Simple Ways to Write Product Descriptions that Sell
Craig Anderson | Smashing Magazine E-Commerce Copywriting The Guide to Selling More
Khalid Saleh | MOZ 4 Ways Copywriting Can Help Your Ecommerce Conversion Rates
AUTHOR RONEN AMIT | SELLER ACT
ANSWER
The Options for Approaching Product Variants Product variants --the different variations in color size scent and so on --of a certain product can be incorporated into your online store in two ways 1 Single product page enabling your customers to choose the right size preferred color scent etc2 Multiple product pages each page for each variants or for a group of variants Which is better for SEO and what other factors may you want to take into account
Single Product Page
Creating a single page for all product variants is pretty straightforward on most modern ecommerce platforms If you decide to go with a single page make sure to apply SEO best practices as you would on any content page integrating keywords into the product title and description meta tags and so on Important Note If your platform creates a new URL for each variant make sure you use canonical URL to signal Google that all variant URLs are pointing to a single core product Otherwise you risk Google considering these URLs as duplicates and penalizing your product pages or even your whole website Use the following tag on your product page between ltheadgt and ltheadgt ltlink rel=canonical href=your core product url here gt
QUESTION
What are SEO best practices for handling dozens of variations of the same product
The Canonical URL signals the search engine your preferred core product URL For further information see httpssupportgooglecomwebmastersanswer139066
In addition you may want to consider using Schemaorg Here is an example how to deal with variants
ltdiv itemprop=model itemscope itemtype=httpschemaorgProductModelgtltspan itemprop=namegtVariant Product Nameltspangtltmeta itemprop=productID content=Variant Product SKU or Catalog gtltmeta itemprop=isVariantOf content=Core Product SKU or Catalog gtltdivgtltdivgt For further information please refer to httpschemaorgProductModel
Multiple Product Pages
In case you decide to create different page for each variant (see more considerations and recommendations below) you will need to set the content of each variant page apart so Googles algorithm will not consider those pages as duplicates Unless you have only several core products this could be a tedious task For example if you have only 5 colors and 5 sizes for each core product 100 products turns into 2500 product pages each should be optimized separately with a unique content
Usability and conversion
Beyond SEO there are many factors --and chief among these usability and conversion
Variant 1 Variant 2 - Note the URL is different than variant
-- to consider when yoursquore working with an eCommerce site Even if you were able to generate more organic traffic by creating different pages for each product variant rather than featuring all variants on a single page does that mean you are making more sales If a potential customer were to find your store and see the blue product would she be aware that you also have the same product in red When a customer arrives at your web store regardless of whether they came through a search engine how easy is it for them to find the product they are interested in Having 25x more product pages or even just 5x more product pages for each core product may possibly help you generate more organic traffic but at the same time it will almost certainly make it more difficult for your customers to find products in your store Is the tradeoff worth it
Best Practice It is very clear that Google does not like duplicate pages And if you try to find loopholes in Googles algorithm you risk facing massive penalties for your entire web store We recommend creating a single page with all your variants in one place For best results apply on-page SEO to create an optimized product page which ranks well on search engines and converts your visitors into buyers with attractive design hi-res images persuasive content and clear a call-to-action
BUILD AN ONLINE STORELearn about how Ronen Amit and SellerAct can help you build an online store that creates revenue and growth
START BUILDING
Additional Resources on Product Variants
Katey Ferenzi | BigCommerce Product Options The Most Commonly Overlooked Ecommerce Element Likely Affecting Your SEO and Conversions
Jill Kocher | Practical Ecommerce SEO When Product Facets and Filters Fail
Google Webmaster | Faceted Navigation Best (and 5 of the Worst) Practices
QUESTION
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like
AUTHOR JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
ANSWER
When we SEO folk talk architecture wersquore referring to the way your content
is organized on your website Site architecture matters to search engines especially for ecommerce websites
If you have a lsquodeeprsquo architecture it takes your customers a bunch of clicks to find their information Google Bing and friends are no different Search engines find it hard to navigate through different levels of your website So in the simple terms that you wished your business teacher could have used to save you an entire semester worth of study
The easier it is for search engines to find your content the better your presence in SERPs will be
The difference between deep and flat site architecture On the left is a flat architecture with a homepage 8 category pages and 6 product pages within each category On the right is a deep architecture with a homepage four category pages two layers of sub category pages and just one or two product pages within each sub category
A ldquoflat architecturerdquo is best for SEO purposes But as always customer first Google second
Why a flat site architecture is (usually) better A flat page hierarchy allows users to navigate through your site quickly with no need to make 6 or 7 clicks to get to their destination So most times flat is best for your customers too However if your potential customer canrsquot understand where to find information within a category you might need to add a sub category to make things easier
If itrsquos fashion apparel yoursquore pedaling you could break out menrsquos and womenrsquos shoes into categories rather than forcing your visitors to search through both on the same product page
From an SEO point of view a flat structure ensures your page rank is less diluted across the site Pages will get more rankings juice from each other
The more clicks you have to get to the lower pages the more link juice (technical term promisehellip) you are filtering This means less juice is left for your deeper pages and that Google will have a harder time finding them
If a customer needs fewer clicks to get to the bottom of your architecture itrsquos easier for Google to associate your popular home and category pages with your product pages Google doesnrsquot have to search as hard or squeeze the rankings juice as far
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites as you are dealing with lots and lots of categories sub-categories and products pages
SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site
bull Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepagebull All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigatebull Most importantly itrsquos easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex but if yoursquore following a similar pattern to this yoursquove got the right foundations for a flat site architecture
YOU DONT NEED TO PAY AN EXPERTNeed help improving your ecommerce sites SEO With this guide you can do it yourself
DOWNLOAD
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
AUTHOR RONEN AMIT | SELLER ACT
ANSWER
The Options for Approaching Product Variants Product variants --the different variations in color size scent and so on --of a certain product can be incorporated into your online store in two ways 1 Single product page enabling your customers to choose the right size preferred color scent etc2 Multiple product pages each page for each variants or for a group of variants Which is better for SEO and what other factors may you want to take into account
Single Product Page
Creating a single page for all product variants is pretty straightforward on most modern ecommerce platforms If you decide to go with a single page make sure to apply SEO best practices as you would on any content page integrating keywords into the product title and description meta tags and so on Important Note If your platform creates a new URL for each variant make sure you use canonical URL to signal Google that all variant URLs are pointing to a single core product Otherwise you risk Google considering these URLs as duplicates and penalizing your product pages or even your whole website Use the following tag on your product page between ltheadgt and ltheadgt ltlink rel=canonical href=your core product url here gt
QUESTION
What are SEO best practices for handling dozens of variations of the same product
The Canonical URL signals the search engine your preferred core product URL For further information see httpssupportgooglecomwebmastersanswer139066
In addition you may want to consider using Schemaorg Here is an example how to deal with variants
ltdiv itemprop=model itemscope itemtype=httpschemaorgProductModelgtltspan itemprop=namegtVariant Product Nameltspangtltmeta itemprop=productID content=Variant Product SKU or Catalog gtltmeta itemprop=isVariantOf content=Core Product SKU or Catalog gtltdivgtltdivgt For further information please refer to httpschemaorgProductModel
Multiple Product Pages
In case you decide to create different page for each variant (see more considerations and recommendations below) you will need to set the content of each variant page apart so Googles algorithm will not consider those pages as duplicates Unless you have only several core products this could be a tedious task For example if you have only 5 colors and 5 sizes for each core product 100 products turns into 2500 product pages each should be optimized separately with a unique content
Usability and conversion
Beyond SEO there are many factors --and chief among these usability and conversion
Variant 1 Variant 2 - Note the URL is different than variant
-- to consider when yoursquore working with an eCommerce site Even if you were able to generate more organic traffic by creating different pages for each product variant rather than featuring all variants on a single page does that mean you are making more sales If a potential customer were to find your store and see the blue product would she be aware that you also have the same product in red When a customer arrives at your web store regardless of whether they came through a search engine how easy is it for them to find the product they are interested in Having 25x more product pages or even just 5x more product pages for each core product may possibly help you generate more organic traffic but at the same time it will almost certainly make it more difficult for your customers to find products in your store Is the tradeoff worth it
Best Practice It is very clear that Google does not like duplicate pages And if you try to find loopholes in Googles algorithm you risk facing massive penalties for your entire web store We recommend creating a single page with all your variants in one place For best results apply on-page SEO to create an optimized product page which ranks well on search engines and converts your visitors into buyers with attractive design hi-res images persuasive content and clear a call-to-action
BUILD AN ONLINE STORELearn about how Ronen Amit and SellerAct can help you build an online store that creates revenue and growth
START BUILDING
Additional Resources on Product Variants
Katey Ferenzi | BigCommerce Product Options The Most Commonly Overlooked Ecommerce Element Likely Affecting Your SEO and Conversions
Jill Kocher | Practical Ecommerce SEO When Product Facets and Filters Fail
Google Webmaster | Faceted Navigation Best (and 5 of the Worst) Practices
QUESTION
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like
AUTHOR JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
ANSWER
When we SEO folk talk architecture wersquore referring to the way your content
is organized on your website Site architecture matters to search engines especially for ecommerce websites
If you have a lsquodeeprsquo architecture it takes your customers a bunch of clicks to find their information Google Bing and friends are no different Search engines find it hard to navigate through different levels of your website So in the simple terms that you wished your business teacher could have used to save you an entire semester worth of study
The easier it is for search engines to find your content the better your presence in SERPs will be
The difference between deep and flat site architecture On the left is a flat architecture with a homepage 8 category pages and 6 product pages within each category On the right is a deep architecture with a homepage four category pages two layers of sub category pages and just one or two product pages within each sub category
A ldquoflat architecturerdquo is best for SEO purposes But as always customer first Google second
Why a flat site architecture is (usually) better A flat page hierarchy allows users to navigate through your site quickly with no need to make 6 or 7 clicks to get to their destination So most times flat is best for your customers too However if your potential customer canrsquot understand where to find information within a category you might need to add a sub category to make things easier
If itrsquos fashion apparel yoursquore pedaling you could break out menrsquos and womenrsquos shoes into categories rather than forcing your visitors to search through both on the same product page
From an SEO point of view a flat structure ensures your page rank is less diluted across the site Pages will get more rankings juice from each other
The more clicks you have to get to the lower pages the more link juice (technical term promisehellip) you are filtering This means less juice is left for your deeper pages and that Google will have a harder time finding them
If a customer needs fewer clicks to get to the bottom of your architecture itrsquos easier for Google to associate your popular home and category pages with your product pages Google doesnrsquot have to search as hard or squeeze the rankings juice as far
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites as you are dealing with lots and lots of categories sub-categories and products pages
SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site
bull Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepagebull All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigatebull Most importantly itrsquos easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex but if yoursquore following a similar pattern to this yoursquove got the right foundations for a flat site architecture
YOU DONT NEED TO PAY AN EXPERTNeed help improving your ecommerce sites SEO With this guide you can do it yourself
DOWNLOAD
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
The Canonical URL signals the search engine your preferred core product URL For further information see httpssupportgooglecomwebmastersanswer139066
In addition you may want to consider using Schemaorg Here is an example how to deal with variants
ltdiv itemprop=model itemscope itemtype=httpschemaorgProductModelgtltspan itemprop=namegtVariant Product Nameltspangtltmeta itemprop=productID content=Variant Product SKU or Catalog gtltmeta itemprop=isVariantOf content=Core Product SKU or Catalog gtltdivgtltdivgt For further information please refer to httpschemaorgProductModel
Multiple Product Pages
In case you decide to create different page for each variant (see more considerations and recommendations below) you will need to set the content of each variant page apart so Googles algorithm will not consider those pages as duplicates Unless you have only several core products this could be a tedious task For example if you have only 5 colors and 5 sizes for each core product 100 products turns into 2500 product pages each should be optimized separately with a unique content
Usability and conversion
Beyond SEO there are many factors --and chief among these usability and conversion
Variant 1 Variant 2 - Note the URL is different than variant
-- to consider when yoursquore working with an eCommerce site Even if you were able to generate more organic traffic by creating different pages for each product variant rather than featuring all variants on a single page does that mean you are making more sales If a potential customer were to find your store and see the blue product would she be aware that you also have the same product in red When a customer arrives at your web store regardless of whether they came through a search engine how easy is it for them to find the product they are interested in Having 25x more product pages or even just 5x more product pages for each core product may possibly help you generate more organic traffic but at the same time it will almost certainly make it more difficult for your customers to find products in your store Is the tradeoff worth it
Best Practice It is very clear that Google does not like duplicate pages And if you try to find loopholes in Googles algorithm you risk facing massive penalties for your entire web store We recommend creating a single page with all your variants in one place For best results apply on-page SEO to create an optimized product page which ranks well on search engines and converts your visitors into buyers with attractive design hi-res images persuasive content and clear a call-to-action
BUILD AN ONLINE STORELearn about how Ronen Amit and SellerAct can help you build an online store that creates revenue and growth
START BUILDING
Additional Resources on Product Variants
Katey Ferenzi | BigCommerce Product Options The Most Commonly Overlooked Ecommerce Element Likely Affecting Your SEO and Conversions
Jill Kocher | Practical Ecommerce SEO When Product Facets and Filters Fail
Google Webmaster | Faceted Navigation Best (and 5 of the Worst) Practices
QUESTION
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like
AUTHOR JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
ANSWER
When we SEO folk talk architecture wersquore referring to the way your content
is organized on your website Site architecture matters to search engines especially for ecommerce websites
If you have a lsquodeeprsquo architecture it takes your customers a bunch of clicks to find their information Google Bing and friends are no different Search engines find it hard to navigate through different levels of your website So in the simple terms that you wished your business teacher could have used to save you an entire semester worth of study
The easier it is for search engines to find your content the better your presence in SERPs will be
The difference between deep and flat site architecture On the left is a flat architecture with a homepage 8 category pages and 6 product pages within each category On the right is a deep architecture with a homepage four category pages two layers of sub category pages and just one or two product pages within each sub category
A ldquoflat architecturerdquo is best for SEO purposes But as always customer first Google second
Why a flat site architecture is (usually) better A flat page hierarchy allows users to navigate through your site quickly with no need to make 6 or 7 clicks to get to their destination So most times flat is best for your customers too However if your potential customer canrsquot understand where to find information within a category you might need to add a sub category to make things easier
If itrsquos fashion apparel yoursquore pedaling you could break out menrsquos and womenrsquos shoes into categories rather than forcing your visitors to search through both on the same product page
From an SEO point of view a flat structure ensures your page rank is less diluted across the site Pages will get more rankings juice from each other
The more clicks you have to get to the lower pages the more link juice (technical term promisehellip) you are filtering This means less juice is left for your deeper pages and that Google will have a harder time finding them
If a customer needs fewer clicks to get to the bottom of your architecture itrsquos easier for Google to associate your popular home and category pages with your product pages Google doesnrsquot have to search as hard or squeeze the rankings juice as far
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites as you are dealing with lots and lots of categories sub-categories and products pages
SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site
bull Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepagebull All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigatebull Most importantly itrsquos easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex but if yoursquore following a similar pattern to this yoursquove got the right foundations for a flat site architecture
YOU DONT NEED TO PAY AN EXPERTNeed help improving your ecommerce sites SEO With this guide you can do it yourself
DOWNLOAD
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
-- to consider when yoursquore working with an eCommerce site Even if you were able to generate more organic traffic by creating different pages for each product variant rather than featuring all variants on a single page does that mean you are making more sales If a potential customer were to find your store and see the blue product would she be aware that you also have the same product in red When a customer arrives at your web store regardless of whether they came through a search engine how easy is it for them to find the product they are interested in Having 25x more product pages or even just 5x more product pages for each core product may possibly help you generate more organic traffic but at the same time it will almost certainly make it more difficult for your customers to find products in your store Is the tradeoff worth it
Best Practice It is very clear that Google does not like duplicate pages And if you try to find loopholes in Googles algorithm you risk facing massive penalties for your entire web store We recommend creating a single page with all your variants in one place For best results apply on-page SEO to create an optimized product page which ranks well on search engines and converts your visitors into buyers with attractive design hi-res images persuasive content and clear a call-to-action
BUILD AN ONLINE STORELearn about how Ronen Amit and SellerAct can help you build an online store that creates revenue and growth
START BUILDING
Additional Resources on Product Variants
Katey Ferenzi | BigCommerce Product Options The Most Commonly Overlooked Ecommerce Element Likely Affecting Your SEO and Conversions
Jill Kocher | Practical Ecommerce SEO When Product Facets and Filters Fail
Google Webmaster | Faceted Navigation Best (and 5 of the Worst) Practices
QUESTION
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like
AUTHOR JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
ANSWER
When we SEO folk talk architecture wersquore referring to the way your content
is organized on your website Site architecture matters to search engines especially for ecommerce websites
If you have a lsquodeeprsquo architecture it takes your customers a bunch of clicks to find their information Google Bing and friends are no different Search engines find it hard to navigate through different levels of your website So in the simple terms that you wished your business teacher could have used to save you an entire semester worth of study
The easier it is for search engines to find your content the better your presence in SERPs will be
The difference between deep and flat site architecture On the left is a flat architecture with a homepage 8 category pages and 6 product pages within each category On the right is a deep architecture with a homepage four category pages two layers of sub category pages and just one or two product pages within each sub category
A ldquoflat architecturerdquo is best for SEO purposes But as always customer first Google second
Why a flat site architecture is (usually) better A flat page hierarchy allows users to navigate through your site quickly with no need to make 6 or 7 clicks to get to their destination So most times flat is best for your customers too However if your potential customer canrsquot understand where to find information within a category you might need to add a sub category to make things easier
If itrsquos fashion apparel yoursquore pedaling you could break out menrsquos and womenrsquos shoes into categories rather than forcing your visitors to search through both on the same product page
From an SEO point of view a flat structure ensures your page rank is less diluted across the site Pages will get more rankings juice from each other
The more clicks you have to get to the lower pages the more link juice (technical term promisehellip) you are filtering This means less juice is left for your deeper pages and that Google will have a harder time finding them
If a customer needs fewer clicks to get to the bottom of your architecture itrsquos easier for Google to associate your popular home and category pages with your product pages Google doesnrsquot have to search as hard or squeeze the rankings juice as far
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites as you are dealing with lots and lots of categories sub-categories and products pages
SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site
bull Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepagebull All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigatebull Most importantly itrsquos easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex but if yoursquore following a similar pattern to this yoursquove got the right foundations for a flat site architecture
YOU DONT NEED TO PAY AN EXPERTNeed help improving your ecommerce sites SEO With this guide you can do it yourself
DOWNLOAD
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
Additional Resources on Product Variants
Katey Ferenzi | BigCommerce Product Options The Most Commonly Overlooked Ecommerce Element Likely Affecting Your SEO and Conversions
Jill Kocher | Practical Ecommerce SEO When Product Facets and Filters Fail
Google Webmaster | Faceted Navigation Best (and 5 of the Worst) Practices
QUESTION
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like
AUTHOR JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
ANSWER
When we SEO folk talk architecture wersquore referring to the way your content
is organized on your website Site architecture matters to search engines especially for ecommerce websites
If you have a lsquodeeprsquo architecture it takes your customers a bunch of clicks to find their information Google Bing and friends are no different Search engines find it hard to navigate through different levels of your website So in the simple terms that you wished your business teacher could have used to save you an entire semester worth of study
The easier it is for search engines to find your content the better your presence in SERPs will be
The difference between deep and flat site architecture On the left is a flat architecture with a homepage 8 category pages and 6 product pages within each category On the right is a deep architecture with a homepage four category pages two layers of sub category pages and just one or two product pages within each sub category
A ldquoflat architecturerdquo is best for SEO purposes But as always customer first Google second
Why a flat site architecture is (usually) better A flat page hierarchy allows users to navigate through your site quickly with no need to make 6 or 7 clicks to get to their destination So most times flat is best for your customers too However if your potential customer canrsquot understand where to find information within a category you might need to add a sub category to make things easier
If itrsquos fashion apparel yoursquore pedaling you could break out menrsquos and womenrsquos shoes into categories rather than forcing your visitors to search through both on the same product page
From an SEO point of view a flat structure ensures your page rank is less diluted across the site Pages will get more rankings juice from each other
The more clicks you have to get to the lower pages the more link juice (technical term promisehellip) you are filtering This means less juice is left for your deeper pages and that Google will have a harder time finding them
If a customer needs fewer clicks to get to the bottom of your architecture itrsquos easier for Google to associate your popular home and category pages with your product pages Google doesnrsquot have to search as hard or squeeze the rankings juice as far
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites as you are dealing with lots and lots of categories sub-categories and products pages
SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site
bull Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepagebull All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigatebull Most importantly itrsquos easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex but if yoursquore following a similar pattern to this yoursquove got the right foundations for a flat site architecture
YOU DONT NEED TO PAY AN EXPERTNeed help improving your ecommerce sites SEO With this guide you can do it yourself
DOWNLOAD
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
QUESTION
What does SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture look like
AUTHOR JAMES DILLON | GORILLA 360
ANSWER
When we SEO folk talk architecture wersquore referring to the way your content
is organized on your website Site architecture matters to search engines especially for ecommerce websites
If you have a lsquodeeprsquo architecture it takes your customers a bunch of clicks to find their information Google Bing and friends are no different Search engines find it hard to navigate through different levels of your website So in the simple terms that you wished your business teacher could have used to save you an entire semester worth of study
The easier it is for search engines to find your content the better your presence in SERPs will be
The difference between deep and flat site architecture On the left is a flat architecture with a homepage 8 category pages and 6 product pages within each category On the right is a deep architecture with a homepage four category pages two layers of sub category pages and just one or two product pages within each sub category
A ldquoflat architecturerdquo is best for SEO purposes But as always customer first Google second
Why a flat site architecture is (usually) better A flat page hierarchy allows users to navigate through your site quickly with no need to make 6 or 7 clicks to get to their destination So most times flat is best for your customers too However if your potential customer canrsquot understand where to find information within a category you might need to add a sub category to make things easier
If itrsquos fashion apparel yoursquore pedaling you could break out menrsquos and womenrsquos shoes into categories rather than forcing your visitors to search through both on the same product page
From an SEO point of view a flat structure ensures your page rank is less diluted across the site Pages will get more rankings juice from each other
The more clicks you have to get to the lower pages the more link juice (technical term promisehellip) you are filtering This means less juice is left for your deeper pages and that Google will have a harder time finding them
If a customer needs fewer clicks to get to the bottom of your architecture itrsquos easier for Google to associate your popular home and category pages with your product pages Google doesnrsquot have to search as hard or squeeze the rankings juice as far
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites as you are dealing with lots and lots of categories sub-categories and products pages
SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site
bull Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepagebull All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigatebull Most importantly itrsquos easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex but if yoursquore following a similar pattern to this yoursquove got the right foundations for a flat site architecture
YOU DONT NEED TO PAY AN EXPERTNeed help improving your ecommerce sites SEO With this guide you can do it yourself
DOWNLOAD
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
Why a flat site architecture is (usually) better A flat page hierarchy allows users to navigate through your site quickly with no need to make 6 or 7 clicks to get to their destination So most times flat is best for your customers too However if your potential customer canrsquot understand where to find information within a category you might need to add a sub category to make things easier
If itrsquos fashion apparel yoursquore pedaling you could break out menrsquos and womenrsquos shoes into categories rather than forcing your visitors to search through both on the same product page
From an SEO point of view a flat structure ensures your page rank is less diluted across the site Pages will get more rankings juice from each other
The more clicks you have to get to the lower pages the more link juice (technical term promisehellip) you are filtering This means less juice is left for your deeper pages and that Google will have a harder time finding them
If a customer needs fewer clicks to get to the bottom of your architecture itrsquos easier for Google to associate your popular home and category pages with your product pages Google doesnrsquot have to search as hard or squeeze the rankings juice as far
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites as you are dealing with lots and lots of categories sub-categories and products pages
SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site
bull Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepagebull All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigatebull Most importantly itrsquos easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex but if yoursquore following a similar pattern to this yoursquove got the right foundations for a flat site architecture
YOU DONT NEED TO PAY AN EXPERTNeed help improving your ecommerce sites SEO With this guide you can do it yourself
DOWNLOAD
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
SEO friendly ecommerce site architecture
In a basic sense this structure is an ideal setup for an SEO friendly ecommerce site
bull Your products are only 2 clicks away from the homepagebull All of your pages are easy for robots to crawl and navigatebull Most importantly itrsquos easy and fast for potential customers to find the information they
are searching for
Of course e-commerce sites can be very complex but if yoursquore following a similar pattern to this yoursquove got the right foundations for a flat site architecture
YOU DONT NEED TO PAY AN EXPERTNeed help improving your ecommerce sites SEO With this guide you can do it yourself
DOWNLOAD
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
Additional Resources on Ecommerce Site Architecture
James Gurd | Econsultancy Ecommerce Information Architecture the Devil in the Detail
Jill Kocher | PracticalEcommerce SEO 201 Architecture is Key
Ecommerce SEO Book Ecommerce Website Architecture and SEO Part 1 Part 2
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
AUTHOR DIANE ELLIS SCALISI | CANIRANK
ANSWER On-page SEO consists of a lot of things you have direct control over including
high quality thematic content page titles header tags image alt tags URL structure page load times and your overall site architecture
Off-page SEO on the other hand is made up of the signals that tell Google what others think about your ecommerce store And in order for others to think anything - good or bad - about your store you need to engage in the promotion and marketing of your site
Off-page SEO falls into four broad categories page external relevancy website external relevancy page strength and website strength
1 Page external relevancy Do others consider your websitersquos product pages collection pages and blog posts relevant A high page external relevancy score means that many quality websites link to a specific page in your store using anchor text related to the keyword In the screenshot below for example the blogger links to Ikearsquos homepage with the anchor text ldquoIkea Houstonrdquo However if Ikea were trying to improve its off-page SEO for lawn furniture specifically they could increase their page external relevancy scores by asking the blogger to link to their lawn furniture category page using the anchor text ldquolawn furniturerdquo
QUESTION
What is off page SEO Is it important for an ecommerce store
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
2 Website External Relevancy Do others consider your ecommerce store relevant A high Website External Relevancy score means that other websites frequently link to your website using anchor text related to the keyword In that last example imagine the blogger had instead linked to Ikearsquos homepage from the anchor text ldquolawn furniture and striped umbrellasrdquo Google would see that as this bloggerrsquos vote or recommendation of Ikea as a place to get lawn furniture and striped umbrellas Enough bloggers and websites associating Ikea again and again with lawn furniture and striped umbrellas would translate into high website external relevancy scores for those keywords
3 Page Strength How authoritative is a specific product page category page or blog post in your store Search engines consider a page to be important when many other important pages link to it Page strength scores are a combination of on-page and off-page SEO The best place to start building page strength scores for individual pages in your store is by linking to them from other important pages in your website
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
If yoursquore working on a relatively new store focus on getting links to your homepage Links from bloggers directories forums review sites vendors manufacturers and experts or professionals in your niche listing you as a source for your primary keyword help build your homepagersquos page strength You can share some of that strength with your categorycollection and product pages if you link to them directly from the homepage Over time as your homepage page strength grows you can shift your focus to building the page strength of categorycollection pages as well as core product pages Of course as the store owner or administrator your control over the link building process is limited But you can reach out to websites who link to your store to thank them and to ask them to consider updating their link to your homepage to a category or product page
Going back to the Ikea example assuming that Ikea already has a great page strength score for their homepage it could be worthwhile for them to ask the blogger to link to their lawn furniture collection instead of (or even better in addition to) their homepage
4 Website Strength How authoritative is your estore as a whole Much like page strength a high website strength score means that many other important pages are linking to your site - including the homepage and all other pages Having a high website strength score means that new pages that you add to your store will have a much easier time of ranking even with lower scores relative to your competitors in other key measures This is why your long established competitors and ecommerce giants can rank with pretty weak pages with limited copy and irrelevant content
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
The screenshot above from the CanIRank Improve My Rankings tool examines the on-page and off-page SEO scores for ecommerce store Small Pet Selectrsquos landing page for timothy hay (food for rabbits and guinea pigs) The analysis gives us an understanding of what Small Pet Select needs to do to move from 9th in the rankings for ldquotimothy hayrdquo to a top search result As we can see Small Pet Selectrsquos Page Relevancy score of 81 crushes the competitionsrsquo scores and its website relevancy score is better than four of the top rankers However Amazon Wikipedia and PetSmart have website strength scores that far exceed Small Pet Selectrsquos While it may not be feasible to overtake these giants in the short term Small Pet Select can work on building its website relevancy score (on-page SEO) and site external relevancy score (off-page SEO) to overtake Sierra Valley Hay which currently holds the fifth and sixth ranked pages in the search results Understanding off-page SEO is the first step in being able to craft a strategy that will get your store ranking To learn more about off-page SEO tactics that you can use to increase your scores take a look at the following resources
bull 5 Off-Page SEO Tactics from a DIY Merchantbull Building Backlinks The Backbone of Your Ecommerce Businessbull How 9 Ecommerce Stores Use Content Marketing to Build Links
YOUR CUSTOMERS LOVE YOUR STOREDo the search engines CanIRank offers ecommerce SEO services as a DIY tool suite amp as a full-service option
GET YOUR FREE REPORT
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
Quality blogs and online magazines about digital marketing and SEO are plentiful But marketing and SEO tactics that work for other types of websites donrsquot always translate well to ecommerce applications The following list contains the ten best ecommerce blogs for online merchants
1 Practical Ecommerce When you have any ecommerce-specific SEO question or are merely looking for new actionable ideas to test out to increase your storersquos traffic and conversions therersquos really no place better than Practical Ecommerce The site features a regular roster of authors with deep ecommerce experience writing on such topics as marketing conversion carts and platforms social media search engines and estore design and development Additionally Practical Ecommerce boasts regular columns by current ecommerce merchants who regularly share lessons theyrsquove learned from their experiences running online stores
2 The Shopify Ecommerce Blog Shopify is a content machine producing regular podcasts case studies and blog posts on just about every aspect of ecommerce you can imagine They also offer some impressively comprehensive guides on various challenges that ecommerce store owners face such as how to use Google Shopping as a source of traffic and how to run a successful dropshipping business Even if you donrsquot host your store on Shopifyrsquos platform yoursquoll find much of the content on their blog and in their guides to be universally applicable
3 A Better Lemonade Stand Less about theory more about how to master the everyday things you need to be able to do in order to run a successful ecommerce store Richard Lazazzerarsquos A Better Lemonade Stand is one of the best resources out there for solopreneurs and ecommerce startups On the ABLS blog yoursquoll find scores of really valuable resources that Richard gives away for free including a guide that details how to find drop shipping companies and suppliers and which comes with a directory of 50 suppliers
TOP 10 ECOMMERCE BLOGS
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
4 Ecommerce Illustrated Some bloggers set out to produce fresh high-quality content on a weekly basis and realize the the near-impossibility of this ambition after three or four weeks Not so with Linda Bustos the blogger behind the stellar blog Ecommerce Illustrated which walks you through 52 ecommerce ldquoissuesrdquo from an estorersquos home page through the checkout with a new blog post each week Each post is chock-full of data loads of examples (with screenshots) and lots of actionable advice
5 Gorilla360 The folks at Sydney-based Gorilla360 really know their ecommerce And they write about topics such as SEO conversion optimization and customer loyalty in a quirky offbeat accessible way that will have you coming back for more
6 Baymard Institute The Copenhagen-based Baymard Institute really deserves a spot in any ecommerce professionalrsquos regular reading circuit Focusing on topics such as ecommerce search homepage and navigation best practices checkout experience and ecommerce on mobile devices the Baymard Institute conducts original large-scale research studies on ecommerce usability They offer their comprehensive studies (which number in the 100s of pages) for purchase but their blog is full of fascinating excerpts from these studies
7 SelfStartr Though updates to the SelfStartr blog are somewhat infrequent the thoroughness of research that goes into founder Darren DeMatasrsquos posts is awe inspiring Take his guide on selecting the best ecommerce platform or his post on why ecommerce stores canrsquot rely on the Google Keyword Planner for their keyword research for example Plus if you prefer learning via podcast be sure to check out Darrenrsquos podcast series on ecommerce topics
8 eCommerceFuel eCommerceFuel is an online (and real-life) community for owners and in-house employees of ecommerce stores generating six and seven figure revenue But in addition to their exclusive community eCommerceFuel founder Andrew Youderian hosts a regular podcast and maintains a blog about successfully navigating all things ecommerce
9 Web Retailer Web Retailer has carved out a niche for itself by focusing entirely on marketplace ecommerce So if yoursquore running a multichannel ecommerce business or interested in
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes
selling on marketplaces such as Amazon Ebay Rakuten and the like Web Retailer is an unparalleled resource
10 E-Commerce Nation A relative newcomer E-Commerce Nation approaches ecommerce topics with a dose of international flair With its steady stream of content E-Commerce Nation is a great site to peruse on your lunch break where yoursquoll come across articles on such questions as how to use color psychology in E-Commerce and how to add some life to your E-Commerce AdWords campaign in under 10 minutes