9 Actionable E-commerce SEO Tips

We like the straightforward simplicity of this list of e-commerce SEO tips. Writing better product descriptions seems obvious, but you'd be surprised how many online merchants walk by the obvious. 

Nothing in SEO is complicated as these 9 tips show despite their "advanced" claim. Tips such as the create "versus" posts will occur to anyone who sees what controversy does to visits (it increases them). Visiting isn't conversion and many new to-e-commerce make that simple mistake.  

Our advice is not to do that. 

Google Rankbrain SEO's New Math
Google Rankbrain Artificial Intelligence (AI) SEO killer will surely scorch the earth. Dogs and cats living together was the only, “Machines Take Over” reference Larry Kim left out of RankBrain Judgement Day: Four Tactics You’ll Need To Survive for SearchEngine Watch.

Quieting the hyperbole a tad doesn’t mean Kim’s post isn’t..

.Read More

Epic Ecommerce Journey –
Leveling Moon-Audio.com Up
Epic Ecommerce Journey – Leveling Moon Audio Up shares the “virtual team” journey to find the next million dollars. Drew and Nichole Baird, founders of Moon Audio, knew their website needed to catchup, it needed to “level up” to a current Magento, responsive design and re-align to Moon's 80-20 Rule. 

Curagami Customer Hunt on LinkedIn
Curagami is half app development company and half search marketing agency. We've helped e-commerce and B2B relationship sellers create content, strategies and tactics to win hearts, minds and loyalty online.

We manage content, social media and strategy for 2 to 4 customers a year. We currently have one possibly two openings. We say one possibly two because we never know how much time a client will need to achieve their online marketing goals.

If you need help or know someone who does use our Curagami Customer Hunt form at the bottom of this post to share your story:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/curagami-customer-hunt-martin-marty-smith

New SEO Looks Like Old SEO
Thanks to David Kutcher we've embarked on a 3 part journey. Our goal is to show how and why the "NEW SEO" is beginning to look a lot like the OLD SEO.  Our journey has three parts that all start here:

http://www.curagami.com/why-new-seo-looks-like-old-seo/?v=7516fd43adaa

 After that we move to:

* Brands (http://www.curagami.com/new-old-seo-brands/?v=7516fd43adaa )
* Love (coming soon)

* Community  (coming soon)

I'm in Columbus at Ohio State for my year anniversary of being treated by the great Doc Byrd. Will finish Why The NEW SEO is Looking Like The OLD SEO when I get home.

In the meantime BRANDS is live.  

Magento is a great system for building e-commerce websites; it’s not bad for marketing them either. Out of the box there are no truly bad default settings for SEO and it offers handy functions to m…

Web Migration Trauma
Website migration creates seo, traffic and money trauma. We share 5 website migration tips so your next web heart / lung transplant helps you gain not lose:

• Up Your PPC Spend.
• Tighten Your Site Maps & create SILO based maps (advanced).
• 301 never 302 and Watch Webmaster Tools like a hawk for 494 Page Not Found.
• Create highly social & shareable content like contests and games.
• Know your 80:20 Rule and creating supporting content BEFORE the migration.

 
Included ADVANCED tips too in case you are a high risk player OR more advanced in your SEO knowledge. 

Avoiding ASP .Net Storefront
ASP Net Storefront may be good for many things but online commerce for Small to Medium Sized Businesses is not one of them. Here's why:

• SEO problems.

• Content Problems.

• Engagement challenges.

• Complexity & Right vs. Left Brains.

• Open Source Wins.

 
We do NOT recommend ASP .Net Storefront for SMB online stores.  

30 Ecom Strategies & Tactics To Master
No wonder most ecommerce teams feel overwhelmed. Off the top of our heads we came up with 30 complex "mini-systems" that must be mastered to create greatness in online commerce.

Gone are the days when a little of this and that could win the day in online retail. Today all 30 of these tactics and strategies dance together requiring sophisticated understanding of individual trends, tools and ideas to win.

Things change too fast to really KNOW anything. Instead teams must surf waves, learn and fail fast and then wax up their boards for another wild ride.

Did we miss any BIG IDEAS your ecommerce team is managing. Soon we will support this infographic with a http://www.Curagami.com post to further explain each strategy and tactic. In the meantime let us know what we missed in comments or email martin(at)Curagami.com.

Thanks and remember DEEP SLOW BREATHES and if you aren't having FUN your visitors will know. They will feel it.

See your Google organic visit data overlaid with Google's major algorithm updates, and then dig into your data.

Marty Note
One of our favorite Free Tools is Panguin. Panguin overlays Google algorithm changes on your Google Analytics taking the mystery out of what has happened to all of your traffic.

We've seen well established sites take a 30% traffic haircut due to all of Google's changes. Hope your site isn't in that group, but if it is know that working your way back is possible, but change is necessary (it doesn't get better on its own).

How did we made more than $30M in online commerce? Watch our first Ecommerce Master Class Video & to learn about directed search wins hearts, minds and loyalty. Can watching a 2 minute video really make millions? Worked for us :). M

There's some great data out there on marketing channel ROI. This infographic pulls together industry studies and surveys on how marketing channels compare.

Marty Note
Somewhat disingenuous to separate channels like this. Everything is everything now and that means results in one channel are influencd in many ways by other channels. That is an important caveat for the "all or nothing" crowd who may read these results thinking they can reduce or eliminate commitment to social or PPC.

Yeah we wouldn't do that.  Your site is MODELED and substantial changes to any part of your current model could take down all the dominoes. That doesn't mean this knowledge isn't important though your results may be different. Knowing what channel is contributing profit and what channel is contributing traffic allows you to invest in the blend. Remember it is the blend that wins so don't go cutting off your nose to spite your website.

Love this cool memory game from Iron Yard instructor Chris Davies (@chrisdaviesgeek ). Easy to adapt to any business and great time on site builder so helpful to the new SEO.

How to Choose the Best E commerce Platform for SEO. An independent, comparative study of all the most popular E-commerce platforms in respect of SEO.

Marty Note
Wow, this is an exhaustive "complete guide" to SEO for ecom. I agree with the ranks their exhaustive research creates with a single caveat. I hate platform ecoms like Shopify and Volusion.

Both work great UNTIL you need to scale and then the limitations of such a template and community serving become clear. That said, for companies just starting or below $5M in annual sales Shopify would be a great place to start.

Magento is complicated and intense. No need to go there until you can pay for it with money and expertise. Great post.

There is a new invisible giant, a giant using 5 "tricks" so the "new seo" is hard and harder to see and understand. This Haiku Deck and Curatti blog post is about how to see the invisible giant. How to win hearts, minds and loyalty online.

Bad links can kill your website's hard-won authority, reputation & traffic. Use Google's disavow tool to protect your site's traffic from SEO bandits.

There is a new invisible giant, a giant using 5 "tricks" so the "new seo" is hard and harder to see and understand. This Haiku Deck and Curatti blog post is about how to see the invisible giant. How to win hearts, minds and loyalty online.

We've named the hard to see new seo The Invisible Giant. Thousands have now seen, interacted with, shared and commented on The Invisible Giant. Have you?

Haiku Deck
http://shar.es/1nCjlP

Curatti Blog Post
http://curatti.com/invisible-giant-hard-see-new-seo/

Your website sucks.I’m sorry that I have to be the bearer of bad news, but someone had to tell you the truth.Your website is a crime against humanity, an atrocious abomination, a target for Godwin’s

Agree These Are Common SEO Mistakes Made By Merchants
* Dupe Titles (not unique).
* No Text On Category Splash Pages (easy one to blow).

* Product Descriptions That Lack Depth.

I would add these 3:

* No keywords in title or keywords you win anyway (company name or brand). 
* No keywords in image anchor text (or too many keys). 

* No "in-lline" divs promoting "Read More". 

That last one is a "trick" that secures engagement and spider attention by writing 500 or more words and then hiding most of the text behind a "read more" link. 

The content appears to the spider early and the spider skips right on by the "read more". 

Fix these 6 common ecommerce SEO mistakes NOW and you make more money on black Friday. 

How do you build a website and marketplace to sell your products and services? Here are the 5 Best Companies for creating an eCommerce platform and marketplace.

Scenttrail Ratings
We've built stores with three of these five recommendations. Each has its good points and bad. Each is perfect for some and not so good for others. Here are our ratings:

ShopLocket
They don't mention this option, but we love the idea of being able to add a shopping cart to any piece of content without paying a big hosting operation like the 5 mentioned. If your ecommerce needs are small and located in social take a look at https://www.shoplocket.com/ .

Caveat
When you are camped on someone's ground THEY will always gain more benefit than you. The chance of a Shopify store outranking Shopify.com is zero. This issue is only a big deal for stores greater than 50,000 Stock Keeping Units and/or greater than $10M in sales. If you think you will eventually sell $10M+ you may want to create your own store / site. If you think it will take 10 years to reach $10M Shopify may be your best bet for ROI and speed. The PAIN comes when you transfer OFF of their platform, but we can discuss that at another time.

Shopify
Would be our first choice for most small to medium sized ecommerce implementations. The UI is clean and easy to understand. You can be up and running on Shopify in a matter of days. Inventory load is always the biggest pain and they have some ways around that.

Big Commerce
Sounds like Big Commerce fills the promotional hole we felt with Shopify. Most websites aren't very sophisticated in their coupons and promotions. If you are you will find Shopify limiting. Sounds like Big Commerce stepped in to fix the issue. And it can be a big issue since cross talk between offers and coupons can cause a train wreck. If you are sophisticated enough to make free shipping, % off and BOGO offers you may want to use Big Commerce.

Volusion
I wasn't wild about Volusion, but can't remember why. The security stuff the review mentions is marginally important. If you need highly secure ecommerce maybe they are better, but their inner-workings didn't seem as friendly as Shopify or as promotional savvy as Big Commerce.

Magento GO
I built our Story of Cancer store (now down) on Go and was impressed with the powerful business rules they include. Less than 10% of ecommerce sites need such power, but if you do Magento Go is probably your best bet. This is the power to say on a rainy Wednesday you want the price on yellow tops to be down10% when pared with shoes A, B or C. The cross-sale and up-sale wigets are powerful. The promotion, free shipping and coupons are powerful (once you figure out the convoluted logic and that problem is endemic).

Presta Shop
I don't know this option and am suspicious of FREE. Free is a risk because things go BUMP in the night on ecom sites. If you aren't a techie or don't have a techie working for you its good to have someone to call or email in an emergency like if you are bleeding personal information all over the web (say for an example lol). My concern here would be can the code keep up with needed changes (since how do they make money) and is it secure since security thanks to crazed hackers can be a real moveable feast (and I only meant "crazed hackers" in the nicest of ways so to do or say otherwise risks a "just because" attack, you know the attacks they launch just because they can).

Best Online Store Option For YOU?
I've used Magento Go and Shopify. I've also used other Content Management Systems when I managed an Ecom team (for 7 years) including home grown and Magento enterprise.

If you want to start an online store which platform should you use? Let's look at a feature by feature comparison:

Easy To Use - Winner Shopify

Plugin / Add On Development - Winner Magento Go 

Email Integration - Tie (both work well with MailChip et al)

SEO - Magento Go if you KNOW SEO, Shopify if you don't

Promotion - Magento Go if you KNOW ecom, Shopify if you don't

Manage SKUs - Tie
up to about 50,000 after than NEITHER (you've outgrown OPP Other People's Platform if you have more than 50,000 unique stock keeping units SKUs). 

Cart - backend Magento Go
(can do more with logic so ASSUMES you know how to create business rule promotions) frontend (what customer sees) Shopify.

Templates - Tie 

Pretzel Logic - Magento Go
(winning this is not a good thing since it means the platform has its own language YOU must learn or things go bump in the night. Magento Go is willing to be confusing and a pain to add POWER, but 95% will never use that power so if you have a small, fun store steer clear). 

Cross Sale / UpSale
Slight nod to Magento Go again assumes you know ECOM well and cross merchandising is not intuitive but is powerful. 

Overall Winner - Shopify
For most readers of this post Shopify is the best choice.

Magento Go honorable mention
for a specialized niche group that needs powerful business rule based promotion, have between 30k to 50k SKUs and don't mind learning a new language to get the backend power they need Magento Go may be for you.

. If you don't know your crosssale (what you do on a product page to move customers to more profitable or popular choices) or upsale (what you do in the car to build Average Order Value (AOV) then use SHOPIFY. 

Netflix data shows "binge watching" is up. How do we create content marketing to encourage a binge?

Creating Binge Worthy Content for Ecommerce sites helps master the New SEO, but the process is different than for B2B because:

* B2C ecom content needs more UGC (User Generated Content).
* Ecom content needs to tell great stories fast so VIDEO.

* UGC needs engagement support so gamification.

* Tribal key for ecommerce, so needs to be highly social.

* Don't like to pull attention away from HERO, so selectively visual.

* Need to curate more "binge worthy content" from UGC and social. 

That last bullet demonstrates the core difference. B2C ecommerce is an act of curation as much as creation. Customers trust each other often MORE than the websites they visit. The more UGC an ecom website has the richer it is.

UGC can take many forms on an ecommerce site such as:

* Reviews. 
* Profiles (MyAccount). 
* Comments. 
* Response to contests and games. 
* Review the reviewer (was this review helpful?). 
* Social shares.
* Blog or social commentary (use only with permission as you will have to rake into your website with an Online Reputation Management tool). 

Stories and content are no less important to an ecommerce website, but there are distinct difference in the type of content that will help and not hurt conversions.