MKT 348: E-commerce and SEO

When optimizing an e-commerce website for SEO performance, you’ll often notice that the product being sold (i.e., the bread and butter of the business) is generally not a focal point in the SEO discussion. After all, SEO recommendations aren’t necessarily based on a brand’s product mix, but rather a strategy is developed based on the holistic needs of the website.

While it’s important to understand the product and how it’s positioned in the marketplace (luxury product, discount product or something else), that’s typically where the conversation ends. Often SEOs liaise directly with marketing managers, and because of this, there’s generally little discussion around the merchandising strategy and how it can affect SEO.

MKT: 348 SEO Basics

Don’t jump in blind.

One of two things can happen when you begin an SEO campaign, you can jump in blind and guess your way through the process or you can create a partnership with a company that wants to work alongside you to improve your SEO rankings.

You should always do your research before embarking on any kind of campaign. Check out what your competitors are ranking for and what key search terms they use. Keyword research sounds simple but it actually drives the entirety of your campaign. Try searching for long-tail key words (multiple words to create a search phrase) and short-tail key words (1 or 2 words to create a search phrase) to see where you appear in the search listings, in comparison to your competitors. This is always the best starting place for any campaign, then you can see exactly what is popular and what is not.

Think about your website.

If your website is confusing and doesn’t have a proper structure you may as well forget about SEO. There is no point ploughing money into a campaign if Google marks you down because of your actual website. Today people are obsessed with mobile, it is quickly developing into the new TV and Millennials are using it to search for everything they need in seconds. If your website isn’t mobile responsive you could potentially be missing out on over 80% of internet browsers using smartphone’s.

MKT 348: SEO Successes

Efforts to drive more traffic and rank better on search engines sometimes seem to be in conflict with those for increasing conversion rates for your website. But, as improved user experience becomes a stronger criterion for search engines, search engine optimization and conversion rate optimization are becoming a complementary, multistep process in marketing your business.

Don’t sweat it: Your SEO efforts won’t ruin conversions on your site. And your CRO (conversion rate optimization) strategies won’t harm your findability, either.

When setting your marketing plan, you might want to create different pages for different stages of your conversion funnel. Depending on the strategy you create and your business’s needs, you might find yourself designing SEO-focused pages in relation to CRO-focused pages.

This change in focus means a change in content. You would produce content to get your site found and rank better instead of creating content to convert your visitors into buyers. As each page you create has a goal towards micro or macro conversions, filled by soft CTAs (calls to action) or hard CTAs, you might reasonably start wondering if your SEO-focused content is going to interfere in these conversions.

MKT: 348 SEO Mistakes

Many mistakes can be made if SEO is not implemented successfully. The threat of negative SEO is remote but daunting. How easy is it to for a competitor to ruin your rankings, and how do you protect your site? But before we start, let’s make sure we’re clear on what negative SEO is, and what it definitely isn’t.

Negative SEO is a set of activities aimed at lowering a competitor’s rankings in search results. These activities are more often off-page (e.g., building unnatural links to the site or scraping and reposting its content); but in some cases, they may also involve hacking the site and modifying its content.

MKT 348: Three tips on SEO

SEO your content strategy

"Too many marketers are still waiting until the end of content creation to bring in SEO as a promotional tool. They try to figure out what they’ve just created, so they can plug in a few keywords and links."

Design good content

"Good UX is good SEO. When users are engaged, they consume more content, interact with it and share it. From the overarching structure to the details of the layout, make sure you are designing good content."

Create correct content

Is there anything as unsettling as a typo in an otherwise great piece of content? No. There isn’t. While there is no evidence, at this time, that grammar is a ranking signal, it’s a UX/credibility concern.

MKT 348: Changes affecting SEO

Search engine optimization can be seen as a running battle between website design and search engine companies. Sites constantly seek edges to gain (or keep) their first-page rankings, while search engines want to refine what they promote, in order to improve results for searchers.

Mobile Designs 

The past couple of months Google has been rolling out updates that will soon make mobile search the primary index, and the fact that nearly 60% of searches are now coming from mobile devices, the shift to a mobile-first approach has become a top priority when developing and executing SEO strategies

Original Content 

With Google trying to cut down on spammy, buzz-word SEO techniques, it’s important to shift focus and create meaningful original content. One effective method of doing this is by empowering employees to develop their personal brands.

Site Caching 

Search engines aim to showcase results that are not only relevant, but those that provide the best possible user experience. Caching will significantly improve your website's load time, which in turn will result in better ranking and lower bounce rates. 

MKT 348: Success with SEO

"SEO (search engine optimization) is a term used by web professionals to describe the art/science of making a web page appear in a search engine's results in a search for an appropriate and relevant term. For example, if the website is about sailboats, it should appear in the results when someone searches for "sailboats," hopefully near the top of page one.

Personal SEO is the art/science of having a person's name appear in search engine results for a relevant search, like a name, job title or professional skill, again, hopefully on the top of the first page. Personal SEO also applies to searches done on sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and other relevant/searchable sites.

People search to expand their networks, find new potential business partners, customers and/or employers and also reconnect with people from their past"

MKT 348: SEO Tactics That Still Work

It used to be easier to game the search rankings by stuffing web pages full of keywords you wanted to rank for. The resulting pages were easy for bots to crawl, but ugly for people to look at.

Meaningful Relationships

It’s still true that getting links from other websites improves your site’s keyword rankings, both for the specific pages that are linked to and site-wide.

Local Search

It’s always been valuable to rank highly when people are searching for businesses in their local area. Now, you just have many more options for how to look good in these searches. (Consider local listings the athleisure of SEO.)

Getting The Accessories Right

When people think about SEO, they tend to think about their search engine presence. But nowadays, your business is present in a lot more places than that — whether you like it or not.

MKT 348: SEO is For Now

People must gain enough knowledge on the different areas of SEO. Many companies consider SEO to be a 'black box'. They are not certain where things will lead.

"Entrepreneurs want to achieve results quickly and the SEO as a channel requires a steady build up over time to be successful. Businesses would be more willing to invest the time if there was a degree of certainty about results which unfortunately has been traditionally absent."

MKT 348: Analytics and SEO

"I find that spending some time just poking around my analytics tends to reenergize me, and reminds me why I ever cared about SEO in the first place. This is particularly true when looking at my conversion rates. There's nothing like seeing a drop in conversion rates to remind me why SEO matters."

"If spending time with your analytics doesn't help (or makes your burnout even worse), it may be time to take a short break from anything related to SEO. This means no obsessing over traffic, no reading up on the latest Google updates and no re-optimizing old content in a desperate attempt to rank."

"Since most SEO tasks are completed online or at least on a computer, I recommend taking some time to do something offline that you enjoy. Jogging (or strolling), going out for dinner, playing with your cat (I'd choose my dog, but you get the idea) - it doesn't matter. Just make sure it's something you love (and bonus points (we must track everything) if it's a guilty pleasure)."

"I find it's often when I'm doing something I enjoy that I get new insights about my business, website or SEO strategy. This then gives me the motivation to get back at it and make things happen."

MKT 348: Tips for SEO beginners

As SEO becomes a fundamental part in many companies success, we must be able to correctly run SEO tactics. One part in succeedings while doing this is to completely understand how SEO should work, and what beginning users should be doing.

The following are five tips that should be considered when beginners are using SEO.

1. Grouping your keywords
• "Keyword grouping refers to the organization of keywords into clusters for a variety of purposes — to inform your site’s information architecture, to optimize landing pages, to identify potential areas of content development opportunity and more."
2. Page change monitoring
• "Monitoring page changes is a new tactic for me, but I find it’s absolutely crucial to SEO. With page change monitoring tools, you can receive alerts about any changes on the pages you are optimizing."
3. Competitor SEO research
• "Staying smart on the competitive landscape is critical for SEOs and marketers. Inform yourself by keeping track of your competitors’ marketing activities, starting from search rankings down to new content and links."
4.  Long-tail keywords
• "Embracing long-tail keywords is vital for online businesses that want to get high rankings in organic Google searches. Long-tail keywords are often neglected because they initially get less traffic, but by cultivating those who search for these terms, you will get better results in the long run."
5. Mobile Rank Tracking

• "It’s impossible to ignore the incredible impact mobile devices are having in everyone’s daily lives, so mobile metrics are growing increasingly important."