Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Ashley & Kerri. Thanks for getting back to me and for the great resource links. I'll dive into those.

Hi,

I've no background knowledge of affiliate programs and am wondering if this would be a good idea for our company, www.vintageheirloom.com?

We sell for the most part expensive, vintage bags and jewellery. Would an affiliates program be appropriate or possibly annoy and hinder customer loyalty rather than promote it?

I'm using WP with Woocommerce and have seen a plugin that connects Woocommerce with Ambassador. Does anyone have any previous experience with this company, worked well, any things to watch out for etc.

One issue that puzzles me if that I get the idea that you can put a tracking code on say a 3rd party blog banner, person clicks and buy product, that gets tracked. But what if customer abandons sale, comes back later directly to site and purchases? I'm guessing this isn't tracked. Is that right?

As an aside I've a blogger friend who I'd like to pay for sending traffic that leads to sales. Is this the best way to track? Would the addition of 'How did you hear about us' question during 'Add to cart' process be a back up method? Any downsides to that, other than customer ignoring it?

Thanks a lot for looking & any suggestions you may have!

Kevin

Hi Peter,

I very much like the look of your suggested URL, many thanks. More elegant, simple...

Good point about the search phrase. I think I was going down the wrong road with this. I know that 'authentic bags', 'designer bags' and 'vintage bags' are all very popular search phrases. I was trying, clumsily, to string these together. Not a good idea?

I'll email Woocommerce again but I've been told not to try to remove 'product-category' even though it is possible. The 'World will disappear'...

Thanks again Peter for your insight.

Kevin

Hi & thanks for looking,

I'm not sure if I've adopted the best SEO URL structure for my site, www.vintageheirloom.com

For instance, www.vintageheirloom.com/product-category/authentic-designer-vintage-bags/

Works great for the top level category 'All bags', as I'm trying to keyword authentic designer vintage bags.

However the sub categories for instance 'Clutch bags' appears as, www.vintageheirloom.com/product-category/authentic-designer-vintage-bags/vintage-clutch-bags/.

As you can see at the moment this URL contains duplicate terms vintage & bags. I'm guessing that duplicate keywords in a url isn't too smart, but should amend with Option 1, 2, 3 or something completely different?

Option 1 - keep the top level category url the same, change the subcategory: www.vintageheirloom.com/product-category/authentic-designer-vintage-bags/clutch/

Option 2 - amend the top level category: www.vintageheirloom.com/product-category/authentic-designer/vintage-clutch-bags/

Option 3 - amend the top level category as this: www.vintageheirloom.com/product-category/bags/authentic-designer-vintage-clutch/

By the way I'm using WordPress with Woocommerce. I've asked but it's not possible with some technical issues to remove the /product-category/ section. But each product is for example just: www.vintageheirloom.com/shop/vintage-coach-yellow-duffel-sac-bag/ .... sweet.

Thanks again !!

Joshua,

Many thanks, that really is helpful.

When you mention a prefix for the blog, would simply adding blog be ok?

http://vintageheirloom.biz/**blog**/2013/08/vintage-heirloom-turns-4/

Thanks for the links I'm off to have a look !

Cheers !

Thanks Jon,

We get vintage bags, mostly unique but not always, e.g. we get several vintage Celine box bags over the year,  so we do get duplicate titles and do need to add a serial number.

Biz is my dev area, but thanks for the info !

Thanks for this Jon,

I tweaked the perma links and now have this for a product:

http://vintageheirloom.biz/shop/vintage-chanel-caviar-skin-2-55-bag/

It's a bit closer to the so named 'flat structure' and I think the URL still contains the reference that it is a 2.55 bag, hopefully this works. I'll get around duplications by adding a serial number or unique database number at the end.

We are blogging too so it might be worth keeping these categories, could avoid potential issues down the road.

I did notice I have a very flat structure for our blogs e.g.

http://vintageheirloom.biz/vintage-bamboo-gucci-bags/

This looks like it could lead to duplicates, so I've changed it to:

http://vintageheirloom.biz/2013/07/vintage-bamboo-gucci-bags/

Would you agree this is better?

Thanks

Hi Mozzers !

Thanks for looking.

I have a new shop in development (http://www.vintageheirloom.biz), I'm now using WordPress & Woocommerce.

I've asked Woocommerce whether it is possible to remove the 'shop' and 'product-category' categories. They say it is, but it isn't recommended, it can slow site speed & create possible duplicate pages.

I'm wondering what seasoned SEO experts opinions are on my particular structure? I've heard that a flat structure is recommended, but ecommerce shops as I understand pose their own issues, so any feedback would be appreciated.. Here's some URL examples:

http://vintageheirloom.biz/shop/**bags**/ - this for the category bags

http://vintageheirloom.biz/product-category/bags/**shoulder-bags**/ - this for shoulder bags a child of bags category

http://vintageheirloom.biz/shop/2-55-bags/**vintage-chanel-caviar-skin-2-55-bag**/ - a product

The last URL contains the category 2-55 bags. The products name also includes the phrases 2-55 bag. Should this level of repetition be avoided or is it best to keep the whole phrase 'vintage-chanel-caviar-skin-2-55-bag/' for SEO purposes?

Thanks for any help you can give me around this issue!

Kevin

Hi Chris,

I'll definitely give that a look. I'm sure my snippets could be improved, I'm moving to Wordpress before Christmas so I'm hoping that platform has better support for this than my current OpenCart cart.

Thanks for the heads up...

Kevin

Hi Moz,

My very humble attempts at SEO has been doing very well for over a year with the keyword phrase 'vintage chanel bags'.

Recently, about 3-4 months ago I noticed it dropped from rank 1 to rank 5.

I've slowly but steadily been building up more social marketing interaction (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram mostly), brand awareness in company is increasing more searches for 'Vintage Heirloom', great in-links from reputable companies & bloggers.

What I'm confused about is that one of our competitors Rewindvintage now appears as no.1 for this keyword but tracking with Moz every metric we outperform them on, namely domain authority & Page Authority.

I have noticed they have 4 anchor text links (dubious quality wordpress comments), with the anchor term vintage chanel bags and we have none despite ranking no. 1 for so long??

I'm trying to use the Moz science here, just a bit confused.

Any help, insights, similar experience would be much appreciated.

I engage only in white hat and look for slow & honest SEO growth (as far as I'm aware ! ).

Thanks for looking Kevin

Hi CleverPHD,

Many thanks for your considered response. I'll definitely add the unique product id at the end, it'll prevent dups as you say. Also I agree a bit more detail in the product title will help with long tail searches.

I'm working on a new site (Wordpress), and will also consider more product categories so again thanks for reminding me :-).

Hope your business is going well.

Thanks
Kevin

Hi Mozzers !

I'm running a small online vintage bag and jewellery store (www.vintageheirloom.com). Items are unique and need to be written up individually. Whilst the details condition, age etc are unique many of the items name's aren't.

For instance, we have over a year had several bags that we've named: Vintage Celine classic box bag

Naturally Moz has pulled up these as duplicates, same product title.

I could append a unique database id number at the end of each title but it looks strange for the customer.

I could add a few details like condition, age & price e.g. Vintage Celine classic box bag - B+ 80s 90s £425 but I don't think this would be entirely unique either.

Has anyone a good strategy for creating unique product titles that looks ok and informative to the customer?

Thanks for looking.

Kevin

abut some items do have the same Does anyone have a strat

Thanks Everett,

Strange, the product on the website appears in two places, on the homepage 'Featured' product, and in the Chanel > 2.55 bags category. When I check both I only see the product name after the .com/.

Thanks for the heads up about restructuring to match the rel canonical, makes perfect sense. I'll be moving over to Wordpress, Woocomerce at some point in the future. I'll look into making the linkable URL neat and tidy as suggested.

Much appreciated...

Kevin

Hi Everett,

Thank you for your considered response.

Choice wise, I feel fairly constrained by my shopping cart (Opencart, and lack of technical ability !

So am I correct in thinking that Google reads the rel canonical, not what appears in the URL? I've checked the generated rel canonical & by default it takes just the product name, probably as products, as you say, can be in more than 1 category. So I get: www.vintageheirloom.com/red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag-1362483150

As you say this omits the term chanel & vintage.

With no understanding of how to implement your suggestion of putting all products into a 'products' category I think it might be safer for me to leave as is... for now. I'll certainly bear this in mind when I next rebuild the website, all good food for thought.

Thanks!

Thanks Takeshi,

Good to know. Any harm in adding an additional 'vintage' here to match H2 product name?

www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-chanel-bags/2.55-bags/vintage-chanel-red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag...

Or does that look spammy?

Hi Mozzers,

I've been mulling over whether my URLs could benefit a little SEO tweaking. I'd be grateful for your opinion.

For instance, we've a product, a vintage (second hand), red Chanel bag. At the moment the URL is:

www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-chanel-bags/2.55-bags/red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag-1362483150

Broken down...

vintage-chanel-bags = this is the main product category, i.e. vintage chanel bags

2.55-bags = is a sub category of the main category above. They are vintage Chanel 2.55 bags, but I've not included 'vintage' again. 2.55 bags are a type of Chanel bag.

red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag = this is the product, the bag

**1362483150 **= this is a unique id, to prevent the possibility of duplicate URLs

As you no doubt can see we target, in particular, the phrase **vintage. **The actual bag / product title is: Vintage Chanel Red 2.55 classic double flap bag 10” / 25cm

With this in mind, would I be better off trying to match the product name with the end of the URL as closely as possible?

So a close match below would involve not repeating 'chanel' again:

www.vintageheirloom.com/chanel-bags/2.55-bags/vintage-red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag

or an exact match below would involve repeating 'chanel':

www.vintageheirloom.com/chanel-bags/2.55-bags/vintage-chanel-red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag

This may open up more flexibility to experiment with product terms like second hand, preowned etc.

Maybe this is a bad idea as I'm removing the phrase 'vintage' from the main category. But this logical extension of this looks like keyword stuffing !!

www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-chanel-bags/vintage-2.55-bags/vintage-chanel-red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag

Maybe this is over analyzing, but I doubt it?

Thanks for looking.

Kevin

Hi John,

Ah, thanks for the reassurance and Google article, very helpful.

Thanks for the feedback re my site too.

Cheers...

Hi Mozzers,

Just wondering what your thoughts are on repeating Shipping Info on each product page? Example: http://www.vintageheirloom.com/classic-black-tweed-shoulder-bag-1368793069

I guess I could simply link to the Shipping Page, but it takes the user away from the product page, not good user experience. Other big brand sites seem to do this, but it just struck me this could be looked as duplication.

Any thoughts on anything I'm doing wrong, always appreciated.

Cheers, Kevin

Thanks Irving,

So this seems like an aesthetic choice for brands that don't need to rely on on page SEO for their homepage (most have no text !) and drive customers in other ways.

I'm concerned my homepage looks cluttered. Would you know if Google still pick up text if I manage to implement an accordion for the chunk of text I have? Any possible penalties?

Thanks again...

Hi Mozzers,

I've just read this great article: http://moz.com/ugc/how-to-build-a-great-online-fashion-brand-34-things-that-really-amazing-fashion-retailers-do

I'm working with my wife on a small (hopefully, growing) fashion website www.vintageeheirloom.com

One of the points was not to directly sell on the homepage, rather draw customers into different areas of the site. Seems good advice and it's followed by many big brands online.

As a small company, doing fairly well for some targeted keywords, do you think it would be a good or bad idea for me to remove most, or all of the text on my homepage. The main emphasis of our site is vintage Chanel and using the tool nTopic I score 99% relevancy for 'Vintage Chanel'. Removing would certainly affect this. Obviously I could amend my Vintage Chanel shopping category to include all this.

I'd be grateful if you have any thoughts / similar experience.

Thanks !

Kevin