Ecommerce - SEO Quick Wins?

[BeckyKey]

Hi

I wanted to find out if anyone had any quick wins for an ecommerce site & SEO. I am the only SEO and we have a small online team and an ecommerce site with thousands of product pages.

It's impossible to optimise everything, and we have taken the top 100 products and optimised them - starting from scratch with keyword research.

I'm now struggling to prioritize what we need next - I know we need better internal linking, content, social and lots more, but this isn't something I can get through alone.

I need a starting point and perhaps something with a quick win initially?

Thanks

[Silkstream]

Unfortunately, without knowing the types of products you sell, what you've done so far, site structure of categories and subcategories, etc, it's difficult to say what direction to go in for a "quick win".

It might be that there's no "quick win"

[ClaytonJ]

Hi

The quick win is page loading speed. If the site is slow 2 seconds + - often getting it below two seconds you will see often a jump in traffic to your website.  Google certainly likes the site more!

If forced to choose 1 - that would be my start, page loading speed.

The second quick win - is ensuring the key pages are optimized, ie title tag, H1 to answer the searchers query.

And a third to make it is not a "quick win" is a link audit or detox if required.

But as silk stream states - without knowing your site.  It is hard... but that is a super quick answer to your query.

Though in fairness I would take a extra 24 hours and walk through the attached site audit, identify weaknesses and then prioritize.

https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015

Hope that assists.

[BeckyKey]

Haha sure, perhaps 'll re-phrase and ask - what you would start with?

I've started with optimising current product/category pages so we're focusing on the correct keywords. I know we need more content & internal linking, but I guess I'm caught up with what task to start?

[BeckyKey]

Thanks!

I have optimised key pages & raised that we get page speed looking into - I have to raise it to another team and it's not been prioritised due to other things.

I know we also need good backlinks - but the process of creating great content people link to takes time, I am starting to work on it, but it's not a quick fix.

Thanks for the Moz audit - I'll take a look!

[Silkstream]

One thing that I think all ecommerce sites need to be adopting these days, if you haven't already, is Product schema. Even if it doesn't directly impact your rankings (which, by the sounds of it, it may in future if not a little already), it can certainly influence searchers to click on your result above others that may even rank above you.

Some reading on Product Schema, direct from the horse's mouth:
https://developers.google.com/structured-data/rich-snippets/products

[BeckyKey]

Hi,

I have checked through our schema, there were a couple of tweaks but after user the testing tool it's correct - unfortunately it's still not showing.

I did read on here that Google won't show it for everyone?

[19prince]

I'll add something two items...

#1. We had solid success with sorting out the right formula for canonicalization and pagination. It was tricky for us because we have faceted navigation + sorting parameters (like, sort by price) + multiple pages of products.

#2. Auto internal linking, we found an off-the-shelf extension to our CMS (Magento) that allowed us to auto-insert links across our site.

[BeckyKey]

Hey

Auto internal linking sounds great, did you set up rules for how it worked? To ensure it made sense and linked to relevant pages?

Thanks!

[JustinMurray]

1. I personally would concentrate on your Title tags, modifying the title tags to reflect your researched keywords will have a relatively quick turnaround if optimized correctly. If your CMS allows, change the whole structure to stay within Moz/Google suggested limits. Add unique content to your category pages, and optimize those titles as well.

2. Compress images, caching, server optimizations, etc to increase website speed as much as possible, an increase usability.

3. Gain low hanging fruit quality relative links, for example, any links to industry brand lists, any brand mentions without links, charity sponsorships without links etc.

[BeckyKey]

Hi Justin,

Thank you for the feedback. What I find difficult, is that we're a generalist ecommerce supplier and our keywords are competing with the likes of Amazon / Ebay.

I've also started adding unique content to our category pages, but right now the template isn't the best. I want to add content in a better way for the user, I want to make it work for the customer and not be pointless text just for SEO.

With gaining brand mentions, are there any quick wins here? I mean, outreach is a huge task alone and one I can't focus on full time.

Thanks!

[19prince]

This auto-linking tool has some nice customization options.  I went through and created keyword/link pairs - no automation there.  And, I also limited the link insertion to specific areas of the site.

[sportingdesires]

I no this question is bit old, however I found it relevant to my own site,

All I can say is... breath take stock and focus on the task in hand. what I mean by that is try not to get wrap in the world of seo yes most things are the same. however there's about a million ways of doing these things.

I found it better to concentrate on one task at a time, like doing all top titles & meta tags.

its hard as its only me doing the website whilst doing a full time job.

however like they say Rome was built in a day and it will all come good one day lol

good luck