Summary
- Start with e-commerce keyword research. Understand the five stages of customer awareness to use the right keywords. Begin with "most aware" customers who are ready to buy and work backwards.
- Use existing keyword data, reverse engineer competitors, and explore platforms like TikTok and Reddit to discover new keywords.
- Conduct a technical SEO audit with tools like Screaming Frog to find and fix issues like crawl depth, duplicate content, and poor internal link coverage.
- Optimize pages with poor SEO by deleting, redirecting, consolidating, optimizing, or upgrading them.
- Use schema markup to help search engines understand your site better and to achieve rich snippets in search results.
- Make your URL structure relevant and simple for better crawlability and indexability.
- Focus on user experience with fast loading speeds; 40% of shoppers leave sites that take more than 3 seconds to load. Resize and compress images using Optimizi Zilla and convert them to WebP format.
- Create four types of SEO content: product category pages, product pages, blog content, and linkbait (e.g., free tools or infographics) to attract backlinks and build authority.
- Perform on-page SEO by placing target keywords in specific areas like the URL and title tags and using natural language processing to create content that Google deems relevant.
- Acquire customer reviews through platforms like Google and Amazon as 91% of people trust online reviews.
- Backlinks remain the most crucial ranking factor. Build a personal brand and write guest posts to earn backlinks. Consider outsourcing to a company like Digital PR to save time and gain powerful links.
- Always prioritize quality over quantity for backlinks to significantly boost your SEO performance.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest starting with keyword research since it's a low-cost, high-impact task. Focus on the "most aware" stage where people are ready to buy. Use tools like SEMrush to analyze competitors and platforms like TikTok for fresh keyword ideas.
A great way to boost your e-commerce site is by conducting a technical SEO audit. Use free tools like Screaming Frog to identify issues like crawl depth and internal linking. Fix these to improve site crawlability and user navigation, all without spending money.
Optimizing your site for user experience is key. Resize and compress images using free tools like Optimizi Zilla and convert them to WebP format to improve load times, ensuring customers don't leave out of frustration.
You might want to create four crucial types of SEO content: category and product pages, blogs, and linkbaits like infographics. These formats enhance your search presence and build authority.
It's very important to work on on-page SEO. Place your target keywords in URLs and title tags, and make use of natural language processing tools to make your content relevant.
Don't forget to gather customer reviews. Set up profiles on platforms like Google and Amazon to collect reviews, which can improve credibility without costing a dime.
Lastly, remember that backlinks are crucial. Build a personal brand or write guest posts for others. If your budget allows, consider outsourcing to a digital PR firm for efficient link-building. This can save time and yield powerful links. Always prioritize quality over quantity for maximum SEO benefits.
Quotes by Author
"Perform e-commerce keyword research so I'll be straight up with you most e-commerce websites do keyword research dead wrong"
"If you install a pixel on your website you can retarget these visitors with more content marketing"
"Find unknown keywords Tik Tok Reddit and other platforms are goldmines for finding hidden keyword ideas"
"Google can't read and objectively measure the quality of your content if the algorithms can't read then how do they actually measure quality"
"91% of people aged 18 to 34 Trust online reviews as much as recommendations from friends and family"
Full Transcript
SEO tips well I am too and that's why I've invested over 30 hours into building the ultimate stepbystep SEO checklist for e-commerce it's simple just follow this checklist and Google's algorithms will fall in love with your e-commerce website let's begin so number one perform e-commerce keyword research so I'll be straight up with you most e-commerce websites do keyword research dead wrong and it's because they don't understand the five stages of customer awareness so let's assume I work with a company that sells dark roast coffee so in stage one you're in the unaware stage which has informational intent and some longtail keywords at this stage would be how to make cold brew coffee is coffee acidic and does coffee go bad and in this content typically blog post you'd inform the prospect about dark gross and its benefits then two things can happen you can push the Searcher to another page on your website to educate them or get them to subscribe to your email list however 97% of Searchers at this stage will leave your website without taking any action but don't worry all hope isn't lost if you install a pixel on your website you can retarget these visitors with more content marketing to push them deeper into your funnel that brings me to stage number two which is problem aware so now the prospect understands the benefits of dark roast and they might start searching for Relevant keyword phrases like dark roast versus light roast is French Press good for dark roast coffee and you'll need dedicated Pages for these ideas since they have different search intent and then some of your target audience will end up in the following stage which is stage number three which is solution aware and the Searcher is already sold on dark roast and now they're ready to pick a brand these posts are perfect for creating brand awareness which brings us to the next stage number four product aware so the Searcher is now evaluating your specific product against others in the market and now to the final stage which is number five most aware at this point the prospect has their credit card and you need to close the deal now the question is where do you start so I recommend beginning with the end in mind so start with stage five which is most aware and then work your way up the funnel so the next question is how do you actually find the right keyword well use the following techniques number one tap into existing keyword data go to Google search and enter a top performing URL click new and create a query filter and enter the following Rejects and then just add these keywords to your database number two reverse engineer your competitors so open Sam Rush's keyword Gap tool and enter a top SEO competitor add a position filter to display only keywords where your competitor ranks in the top 10 and has a keyword difficulty below 49 then scroll down and click on untapped so these are keywords that your competitors are ranking for but you aren't and it's your responsibility to bridge this Gap number three find unknown keywords Tik Tock Reddit and other platforms are goldmines for finding hidden keyword ideas search your topic and look for posts with user engagement then you can save the pages a PDF open chat gbt and enter this prompt now you'll have access to Unique content ideas now let's move on to number two which is conduct a technical SEO audit so screaming frog SEO spider is the best audit to tool and this tool will crawl your website and find countless technical SEO opportunities screaming frog allows you to integrate Google analytics Google search console Google page speed insights and the HR apis and you need all of this data to perform a proper audit step number two is identify opportunities number one craw depth so go to the craw depth column and sort Z to A look for any page greater than three clicks deep into the site architecture and that's because Google has a hard time crawling and indexing pages that are buried super deep in your architecture and a quick way to resolve this issue is to leverage your sitewide navigation as many successful e-commerce websites do number two internal link coverage so go to the unique in link section look for pages with less than five internal links and then look for Relevant opportunities on your website to add internal links to these Pages assuming that the pages are high quality and if you're struggling to find Opportunities it's often a sign that you need more s SEO content I'll get into this in a second number three pages with poor SEO performance so filter the ga click Impressions and hr's referring domains columns to find these pages and there are a few actions you can take on these Pages you can delete which is best if a page is irrelevant thin outdated or low quality you can redirect since these Pages have no positive metrics redirection is only useful to eliminate keyword cannibalization you can also consolidate which is a solid option if there's some content worth salvaging you can also optimize which you can reoptimize the page if it's high quality but it's been treated unfairly by Google's algorithms and lastly you can upgrade which means you're going to rebuild the page from scratch if you're targeting a qualified keyword but the page is outdated or low quality and some other technical Su opportunities you also want to tackle are number four duplicate content so go to sideline or run a crawl to identify duplicate content on your e-commerce website any duplication above 50% is worth investigating number five schema markup so schema helps search engines understand your pages better and allows you to get rich Snippets in Google Surs or search engine results pages and these are some of the most commonly used schema in e-commerce now the good news is that chat gbt has made schema markup a breeze just use this prompt and then it will spit out this markup and then all you have to do is just go and use this tool to test it once it passes add it to the appropriate pages on your e-commerce website and now number six optimize your url structure so so the number one quality of a perfect URL structure is relevance look at this example you could remove the root domain and still know the page is about blue prom dresses and an effective URL structure will also produce breadcrumbs which function as internal links this makes crawlability and indexability more efficient for Google and now e-commerce SEO tip number three is become obsessed with user experience so go to the performance score in your screaming frog crawl and these are pages with poor loading speed 40% of Shoppers will abandon an e-commerce site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load so use these techniques to upgrade the experience on your site first resize your images don't upload enormous images they need to be big enough for a user to zoom in and to see the product the next thing to do is compress your images use a tool like optimiz illa to compress the images so they load faster and the final step is to convert your images to the fastest file type webp so technical SEO and ux is critical but now it's time for the lead Domino which is number four create epic SEO content so there are four types of SEO content you should create for e-commerce first product category pages so no web page is more important for e-commerce than your category pages and these Pages must give the user exactly what they want this is not a place to write a dissertation about your products or your company for example look at the word count Target for cowhide rugs rankability uses a med median word count to eliminate outliers and less is more when it comes to category Pages the second type of page is a product page only use product pages for SEO when there's evidence in Google like cowhide rug cleaner the serps confirm that it's wise to optimize a product page the next type of content is blog content so creating high quality content that targets informational keywords is critical for a few reasons first is organic traffic plus brand awareness and these informational keywords can push the searcher deeper into your funnel the next is topic Authority so creating quality content in your field of expertise helps Google understand your website's relevance the next is linkability so websites are likelier to link to helpful content tools or resources than pages with commercial intent like category Pages this brings me to the final type of SEO content you should create which is linkbait and this is content engineered to attract backlinks some examples are free tools infographics and statistics I recommend using chat GPT to help you brainstorm ideas you can use a very simple prompt like this and no SEO content strategy is complete without number five perform on page SEO so here's a weird SEO fact Google can't read and objectively measure the quality of your content if the algorithms can't read then how do they actually measure quality well user signals play a huge role but what about Pages without user signals because they're not ranking yet well that's when natural language processing or no n LP for short comes in Google uses NLP to extract ideas or entities from your page to understand its relevance now before I show you how to tap into NLP to create SEO content that Google loves let's handle the basics first focus on keyword placement not density so place your target keyword in the URL page title tag meta description H1 and for sentence and just doing this alone will help you beat 80% of websites but to beat the top dogs you'll need to use NLP to build insanely relevant content so enter your keyword into a Content optimization tool like rankability to see every topic your competitors cover and the rankability score is a simple measurement of relevance in other words how relevant is your page the top competitors for this keyword then it's your job to just cover as many relevant topics as possible and don't worry about how often you mention a specific keyword phrase in other words keyword stuffing focus on brevity more words don't equate to better SEO results number six acquire customer reviews so 91% of people aged 18 to 34 Trust online reviews as much as recommendations from friends and family use these third-party review platforms to build trust the first is Google where you can go and create a free Google business profile and then you can streamline your review collection with tools like nice job birdeye and Podium and if you're selling your product on Amazon make it your mission to collect as many reviews as possible POS and now number seven is get more backlinks so backlinks are the most important ranking factor in Google so here are a couple of my favorite link building strategies for e-commerce Brands first build a personal brand so look at how many backlinks Gary ve is attracted and a personal brand gives you access to backlink Opportunities like interviews responding to press inquiries and being linked to because you're an expert in your field number two write guest post so use the following search strings in Google to find Opportunities then use a template like this for your guest post Outreach the next link building technique is to Outsource your link building if you have the budget and this is going to free up so much time and that way you can focus on the higher impact activities in your business so the one company that I do recommend for doing digital PR types of Link building is digital. PR and they're going to get you some of the most powerful backlinks that you can pretty much get and they're going to do it because they're using a variety of different techniques so obviously reactive PR with actually responding to Trends and then also contributing as an expert as well on your behalf and helping you get links on really powerful websites and they'll actually even build out dedicated linkbait like I mentioned earlier in this video where they're actually going to go out and promote that link bait to journalists and then you're going to get links so this is one of the best ways to build your website Authority fast and to ensure that you're focusing on quality over quantity when it comes to link building and these days almost all of my my focus is on getting the most powerful links possible and one link can make a significant difference on your SEO performance and so focus on quality over quantity and if you have the budget I highly recommend Outsourcing to a company like digital. PR and finally watch the next video to see more of my proven link building techniques
