SEO: Six Must Haves to Optimize Your Ecommerce Site for Maximum Traffic

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SEO Six Must Haves to Optimize Your Ecommerce
Site for Maximum Traffic
Dave Bascom SEO.com dave_at_seo.com
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Organic Approach to SEO

• Google is looking for the most relevant content
• Give Google what its looking for
• Whats good for humans is good for Google!

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Search Engine Market Share
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Paid/CPC
Organic/SEO
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Six Must-Haves

• Keywords
• Competitive Insight
• Content
• Site Structure
• Links
• Metrics

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1. Keywords

• Where it all starts

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Analyze keywords driving sales

• Look for 2nd 3rd page keywords
• Keywords that are working in PPC campaign
• Keywords based on business decisions (high
  margin, high demand, new product areas, off-line
  marketing campaigns)

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Look for additional opportunities

• Google Keyword Tools
• https//adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExter
  nal
• http//www.google.com/sktool/
• KeywordDiscovery - http//www.keyworddiscovery.com
  
• Wordtracker - http//freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
  
• SEOBook - http//tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/s
  eobook/
• Competitors - what keywords are they targeting?

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Segment keywords into buckets

• Broad (shoes, sneakers, buy shoes)
• Category (running shoes, basketball shoes, dress
  shoes, mens shoes)
• Product (nike air force one, buster brown
  loafers, adidas ts bounce commander, sku
  74234521)

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2. Competitive Insight

• Understand who your competitors are
• Pay attention to what theyre doingemulate
  strengths, exploit weaknesses
• Google wants to provide something more and/or
  better than the competition

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Who Are My Competitors?
These Guys!
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Competitive Analysis Tools

• Hitwise, Comscore
• Compete.com, Quantcast.com, Alexa.com
• Firefox Toolbars/Plugins SEOBook, SEOMoz
• RSS Feeds/Email Alerts on Competitor Names and
  keywords
• Search engines linkwww.competitor.com

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3. Content

• Write unique product descriptions for every
  single product
• Add supplementary content such as product
  reviews, buyers guides, relevant news, tips
• Dont forget about category pages

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Over 9300 Matches!
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Category Page With Very Little Descriptive Text
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Category Page With Descriptive Text
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4. Site Structure

• Make it easy on the search engines
• Dont hide stuff behind JavaScript or Flash
• Use standard text links for navigation
• Use keywords in nav links when possible
• Use text link breadcrumbs

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5. Links

• Links are a very important part of the algorithms
• Do the easy stuff - press releases, articles,
  directories
• Get Social blogs, twitter, facebook,
  stumbleupon
• Get creative make your site worth linking to
• Great content, buyers guides, reviews, contests,
  games

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6. Metrics

• Search engine rankings are NOT the best measure
  of SEO success
• Rankings fluctuate all the time
• Personalization of search results based on
  location and past searches
• So what should you measure?

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Rankings Only Matter if They Drive Traffic/Sales
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Key Traffic Metrics

• Total organic search volume and number of
  keywords
• Conversion rates on a keyword level
• Create a dashboard with your key performance
  indicators

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7 (Bonus) Dont Stop

• SEO isnt a one-time event. Keep working on it.
  Add content, links, and constantly improve.

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QA
Contact Info Dave Bascom SEO.com dave_at_seo.com