SEO for ecommerce is all about technical efficiency, clean, crawlable sites and a great UX. These slides were presented at Fresh Business Thinking Live - June 11th 2014.

1. common pitfalls
SEO

2. Organic digital marketing
G
Global
Campaigns
G
Creativity &
Connection
G
Delight &
Inform

3. Recent Credits
Awards Credits
2. Best Use of Search
- Wirehive
3. Fast Growth -
Wirehive
2. Econsultancy: SEO
Best Practise Guide
3. Co-Authored: Hit Me!
Best Use of
Search – Retail*
Econsultancy
Buyers Guide
*UK Search Awards 2013

4. Attention to detail

5. Almost doubled within
one week period

6. Common Pitfall
Don’t plan the
site around the
product
Start with “how”
and “why”
research
x

7. Advanced Keyword Research
GSite Search
Logs
G
Google Keyword
Planner
G
Market
Research

8. Query Types
INFORMATIONAL
TRANSACTIONAL
NAVIGATIONAL
CONNECTIVITY

9. INFORMATIONAL
TRANSACTIONAL
NAVIGATIONAL

14. research informs
information architecture,
on-page SEO and content
strategy...

15. Common Pitfall
Messy Site
Architecture
Route Users,
Crawlers and
Equity
x

17. Pick A Favourite

18. 301
Redirects
humans &
agents
G
Rel=canonical
Preferred above
others

19. funnels equity
Retains any required
functionality/security

20. • Natural journey in file structure
• Succinct real words in URLs/files
• Home > Category > Sub-category > Product

21. Filters for options, sizes, styles… not sub-pages

22. HOME
FRAGRANCES
P1 P2 P3 P1 P2 P3 P3P2P1
SOFT
FURNISHINGS
CANDLES
www.examplesite.com/candles/ginger-fig

23. Common Pitfall
Crawl Budget -
Waste
Clean, Efficient,
Error Free
x

24. Query URLs
Currency
Sort order

25. Pagination
Category landing
Search results

26. Search results
Most cases (not all)

27. Parameter Handling
Let Googlebot decide?
Advanced
feature – be
very sure…

28. Keep It Clean
G
Fix All 404 GRe-Point 301 to
link cleanly
G
Check all
return 200
Screaming Frog SEO Spider (Crawling Tool)

29. Common Pitfall
No strategy for
maintenance or
out of stock
Header status
codes
x

30. 503 Maintenance

31. Out of Stock
• Stick a sign on it
• Pre-order/reserve
• DON’T 404!

32. Discontinued
• 301 to Direct Equivalent
• 301 to Optimised Custom Landing page
• Consider 410 to reduce index wastage

33. Common Pitfall
International
Strategy – Not
One Size Fits All
Business
Resource Comes
First
x

34. Best Practise
G
Sub-domain G
Domain G
Top Level
Domain
www.example.com

35. ccTLD
• Natural language
translations and
resource
• Content, mark-up,
meta, URLs

36. Sub-domain
• Natural language
translations and
resource
• Content, mark-up,
meta, URLs
• Leave folder for
language

37. Hreflang=“X”
Link element - header
HTTP header
Sitemaps

39. confers equity
Right page, in right index
increases conversion

40. Common Pitfall
Making do for
mobile
Optimise mobile
experience
x

41. 17.4% global web
traffic is mobile...
Data source: Statcounter

42. Responsive
Optimised App
“Mobile” site
Whatever resource constraint
there are choices...

43. Common Pitfall
Thin/duplicate
content
Clever use of
tags + content
x

44. 82%
Average
visibility drop from the TOP 100 losers when
Panda rolled out to the UK
Data: SearchMetrics

46. • Never duplicate your entire
database in a feed
• Never duplicate your entire
database in a feed
• Never Give that feed to affiliates

47. hold back
Keep optimised attributes,
detailed descriptions,
consider UGC...

48. Thank you
for listening
DOWNLOAD SLIDES
www.slideshare.net/NicholaStott

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