Recently wrote the Amazon Online Shop SEO Check guide and discussed Amazon.com home page SEO and how I think they could improve their Google traffic for SERPs like Online Shopping by having a title tag “Amazon.com: Online Shopping” and stated would be an interesting SEO test to target the Online Shopping SERP on this website which isn’t a shopping site.
I don’t seriously expect to rank high for the online shopping SERP (will probably get useless low/no traffic SERPs like Online Shopping SEO), for starters this isn’t a shop which makes it impossible to silo SEO links: look at the left sidebar links, they are about SEO not shopping which will hurt this webpages shop SERPs and I’m contextually linking (links within content like the silo SEO link above) to other SEO articles which again damages the online shopping SEO targeting (I’m linking to off-topic webpages: off-topic to the shopping niche).
However, this is a really good SEO teaching exercise for those targeting shopping SERPs (any SERP really), just concentrate on the content that benefits shop, store, mall type SERPs and consider I wouldn’t have all the SEO links if this wasn’t an SEO test and if this was a shopping sites would have lots of links about shopping, buying, adding to cart… on the sidebar etc… maybe links with anchor text “Why Shop Online with Stallion” or “About the Shopping Mall” or “Shopping Cart” (you get the idea).
SEO Guide: The text in the first paragraph includes the main SERP we are targeting “Online Shopping” at least once (three times). I’ve also linked out to a relevant webpage with a derivative SERP “Online Shop”, this sort of contextual link near the top of the main content helps this webpage rank, doesn’t have to link to an exact match page, a derivative SERP is close enough (it all helps). Because the SEO package which you should purchase I use (Stallion Responsive: which I’m trying to sell you BTW, go buy it now) has the main content high in the HTML code the above text is some of the first content Google indexes and that’s important from an SEO perspective.
SEO Guide: Note how I’m trying to SEO the SEO package link anchor text by adding a shopping relevant keyword “purchase”: that page doesn’t target shop SERPs, but by adding shop relevant anchor text it helps this pages SERPs. Normally I’d link to relevant webpages on the same site using relevant anchor text (the keywords I’m trying to target), but I don’t have any other shopping articles to link to.
You can search your own site for the most relevant webpages using this Google search format:
site:stallion-theme.co.uk shopping
This Google search will find all webpages that include the keyword shopping, I didn’t have many that were were worth linking to.
Only one page using shopping in the title tag, was to a comment as well Shopping Cart Integration: Stallion Responsive allows comments to be indexed, don’t shop around for an SEO package, go buy Stallion Responsive now: hope you are appreciating how much I’m pushing this to get the right keywords in the body text :-)
Online Shopping Sites
SEO Guide: Manually added a derivative SERP “Online Shopping Sites” (200,000 visitors a month) within the H2 header above. Stallion Responsive which you can buy by clicking the “Buy Now” button on the left sidebar (note the keyword BUY is related to shopping: buy, sell, shop, store etc… are keywords I’ll try to use in the text) also adds an H1 header (above main content) with the main SERP “Online Shopping” which is also the title tag and within the URL of this webpage https://stallion-theme.co.uk/online-shopping/.
There’s a lot of Google traffic for SERPs related to online shopping, the online shopping phrase alone generates 1,000,000 monthly visitors according to Google Analytics Keyword Planer Tool, when I state monthly visitors it’s from the AdWords tool, it’s a nice guide to the amount of traffic potentially available (you won’t get it all even if number 1 in Google). Picture a decent share of one million visitors a month from one shopping SERP.
SEO Guide: The image above has a filename including online-shopping.jpg. Google PageSpeed Insights Tool (it’s free) generates optimize image warnings under the mobile tab if an image is wider than 500px. My online-shopping.jpg screenshot is wider than 500px (over 1,000px wide), so to avoid Google generating an image warning used a smaller 500px image which links to the full image. This is built into WordPress/Stallion Responsive which automatically generates different sized images like online-shopping-500×286.jpg (500px wide by 286px height: the 500px wide image is a Stallion feature). We’ve also given the image an alt attribute (alt=”Online Shopping”) which adds SEO relevance to the image. Basically if the image is above 500px wide create a smaller image (500px wide or smaller) and link the large image to open when clicking the small image.
Online shopping is a highly competitive niche, the Google search shows the sites targeting online shopping, we have brands like:
Jabong Online Shopping India – Alexa rating 208th most popular website.
FlipCart The Online MegaStore – Alexa rating 96th most popular website.
Home Shop 18 Online Shopping Store in India – Alexa rating 1,563rd most popular website.
eBay India – Alexa rating 208th most popular website.
Myntra Online Shopping India – Alexa rating 377th most popular website.
Amazon India – Alexa rating 195th most popular website.
Amazon.com – Alexa rating 9th most popular website.
Snapdeal Online Shopping India – Alexa rating 244th most popular website.
IndiaTimes Shopping – Alexa rating 102nd most popular website.
Shoppers Stop Online Shopping India – Alexa rating 10,890th most popular website.
Alexa ranks websites by popularity, it’s not accurate and can be easily manipulated, but it’s a useful rough guide to how popular a website is. Popular websites tend to be really hard to beat, they usually have a really strong off-site SEO strategy (lots of backlinks basically).
SEO Guide: Really interesting analyzing the above sites, looks like they are tending to copy each others SEO including SEO mistakes :-) Really funny considering I wrote Amazon SEO shopping online check to describe why NOT to copy your competition. I think they all use the keywords meta tag for example which doesn’t work, does look like they are copying one another, very interesting how rubbish the SEO of big brands are generally.
Look what I found when viewing source of SnapDeal online shops HTML.
Really cool finding ‘hidden’ messages in the code for those obsessed with code like I am :-) And we have another image to support or target relevant SERPs. Filename snapdeal-online-shop.jpg and alt text “SnapDeal Online Shop”. On-page SEO is really easy when you know how.
Online Shopping India
SEO Guide: Another major SERP targeted above via a H3 header including “Online Shopping India” with 74,000 monthly visitors. Below I’ll try to cover this SERP (note the next image, filename online-shopping-india.jpg and alt text “Online Shopping India”) and related SERPs whilst keeping in mind other relevant phrases.
I’m analyzing the shopping SERPs and websites as I write this article. Really interesting to see how many Indian shopping sites are listed in the top 10, I’d have never predicted this. I’m browsing Google in a Private Window (FireFox) so I’m not forced to a country specific Google (would be .co.uk since I’m in the UK), so these are ‘clean’ Google.com results with no localization etc…
9 out of 10 of the online shopping sites found are from India! Only Amazon.com (8th) isn’t from India, WOW to Indian web stores and online malls. Interesting the 7th listing is Amazon.in (Amazon India) and note they are beating Amazon.com most likely because of keyword proximity, the phrase Online Shopping is the first phrase of their title tag whilst for Amazon.com the title starts “Amazon.com: Online Shopping …”, so the India shopping site is considered more relevant than the USA shopping site for the Online Shopping SERP (there’s more to it than this, but it helps).
Shop Online SERPS
If I were targeting a lot of shop, mall, web store types SERPs I wouldn’t target them all on one webpage. The Online Shopping India phrase is worthy of it’s own page for example, BUT take into account it can be a lot of off-page SEO work building backlinks for highly competitive SERPs like these, sometimes it makes sense to target multiple competitive SERPs on one webpage.
It’s why we see the over keyword stuffed title tags from the shop websites I listed above, they are trying to obtain every competitive SERP on their home pages (huge SEO mistake, spreading their SEO power too thinly). As an SEO looking through a competitive SERP like this and finding ALL the sites use the same over stuffed title tags is bizarre!
Jabong – Online Shopping India: Shop Shoes, Clothing, Bags, Watches Online in India
FlipCart – Online Shopping India – Shop Online for Books, Mobile Phones, Digital Cameras, Watches & More at Flipkart.com
Home Shop 18 – Online Shopping India – Shop Online for Mobiles, Cameras, Home & Kitchen, Appliances, Jewellery, Fashion, Health & Beauty & Books – HomeShop18.com
eBay India – Electronics, Cars, Fashion, Collectibles, Coupons and More Online Shopping | eBay
Myntra – Online Shopping India – Shop Online for Branded Shoes, Clothing & Accessories in India | Myntra.com
Amazon India – Online Shopping: Shop online for mobiles, laptops, cameras, books, watches, apparel, shoes and more – Amazon.in
Amazon.com – Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more
Snapdeal – Online Shopping India: Buy Mobiles, Laptops, Apparels, Shoes & more at Snapdeal.com
IndiaTimes Shopping – Online Shopping: Buy Mobiles, Electronics, Cameras, Computers, Apparels & Jewellery Online
Shoppers – Online Shopping India, Women Apparel, Men Clothing, Kids Wear | Shoppers Stop
From the 10 title tags we have 129 words, so each averages 13 keywords, that’s way too long. To put things into perspective, 5 keywords is a lot unless you are targeting long tail keyword SERPs (one long tail SERP per webpage).
Still a LOT I could discuss (you’ll just have to read the rest of my site for more SEO tips :-)), but I’ve wrote more than enough for my SEO test, so will wrap things up.
If this was a shop website I’d try to target webpages to keywords like these and attempt to inter link relevant pages together, silo SEO links on the side menu for example.
Keyword : Monthly Visitors
shopping : 550,000
online shopping sites : 201,000
shop : 201,000
shopping online : 110,000
online shop : 90,500
web store : 74,000
online shopping india : 74,000
shop online : 60,500
online shoping : 49,500
online mobile shopping : 40,500
online clothes shopping : 33,100
shopping sites : 33,100
clothes online : 33,100
shoping : 33,100
online shopping sites in india : 33,100
Some of these keywords overlap, shopping sites and online shopping sites for example. Some are misspellings like a missing p for shoping, if the traffic is worthwhile you can target a page to misspelling, but Google will show what it thinks you meant so th value is debatable.
Search for “online shoping” and Google will provide results for online shopping and a link to the misspelled search. So if you plan to target misspellings don’t expect the numbers listed above.
David
Website - SEO Gold
SEO for Online Shopping Sites
The main online shopping SEO experiment article has some really good on-page SEO techniques incorporated in the content, but it lacks support from related webpages. Since Stallion Responsive is so versatile SEO wise adding some support via these comments :-)
Below is a list of some of the positive on-page SEO factors that would help any online shopping site generate SERPs.
Title tag = Online Shopping
H1 Header = Online Shopping
H2 Header = Online Shopping Sites
H3 Header = Online Shopping India
H3 Header = Shop Online SERPS
Anchor text = Amazon Online Shop SEO Check
Anchor text = SEO package which you should purchase
Anchor text = Shopping Cart Integration
Anchor text = Amazon SEO shopping online check
Anchor text = Online Shopping Sites
Alt Text = Amazon Online Shopping
Alt Text = Shopping Cart Integration
Alt Text = Online Shopping
Alt Text = Online Shopping Sites
Alt Text = SnapDeal Online Shop
Alt Text = Online Shopping India
Alt Text = Online Shopping SEO
This isn’t an extensive list of the SEO I’ve added to the main content to target the online shopping SERPs, not covered general body text, image filenames (same as alt text with hyphens like shopping-cart-integration.jpg), how this comment adds SEO to the main article (two new links with anchor text “SEO for Online Shopping Sites”…
You should see from the short list above how I’m attempting to optimize the WordPress post (it’s just a WordPress blog post) for relevant shop SERPs. This is on-page SEO 101 for beginners, it’s really easy to do with WordPress and Stallion Responsive.
Reading the above makes it sound like this webpage is fully search engine optimized, it isn’t, far from it. There’s a LOT of SEO damaging factors on this webpage which because this is a website about search engine optimization and making money online I can’t easily fix (I can fix it, but, not going to).
Note: this is SEO damaging factors to THIS webpage, not others and if I fixed these SEO factors for this one webpage it would damage the majority of the site (good SEO is all about compromises).
David
SEO for Online Shopping Sites
Online Shop SEO Mistakes
In my earlier comment SEO for Online Shopping Sites I discussed some of the SEO positives on this webpage, in this comment let’s look at some of the on-page SEO mistakes you can learn from and not repeat on your online shops.
Look at the top of the webpage.
We have a link to home anchor text: WordPress SEO Packages
WordPress Tagline: Best Google Hummingbird SEO Package for WordPress
Because I built the Stallion WordPress SEO package I use on this site I didn’t add any additional relevance to this link back to home and the WordPress tagline. It’s just a simple text link and bit of body text with no more SEO relevance than the identical content above (just a link and text).
With many WordPress themes the developers put the link back home in a H1 header and the tagline in a H2 header adding SEO relevance, this damages the on-page SEO of each individual WordPress post! Go to one of your WordPress posts and view code source, search through the code for H1, H2, H3, H4 and see what content is in those header tags.
Does it support that webpages shop SERPs? If not you have an SEO problem.
As a Stallion uses though having this unrelated link and text on THIS webpage is SEO damaging to the online shopping SERPs, it’s minimized by not adding a header around it.
Remember this website isn’t an online shop, I’m mostly targeting SEO and money type SERPs and for most webpages on this site the above content helps those webpages SERPs, but by adding no additional SEO relevance any SEO damage is minimized. When building a WordPress site try to name it with SEO in mind, the title of a site is used by all WordPress themes, what you name your site will be the home pages title tag.
If I named my site “Dave’s Awesome Blog” the home page will be search engine optimized for “Dave’s Awesome Blog” (don’t think there’s any traffic for those SERPs :-))
For an online shop run under WordPress what you call it is important, if you lack a true brand identity (my site doesn’t have a strong brand) aim for an important SERP (mine is “WordPress SEO Packages”), if you sold India Fashion you might name the site something like “India Fashion Shop”. If Amazon ran under WordPress it’s site title based on the title tag would be “Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more” which is bloody awful SEO wise, I’d go with “Amazon.com: Online Shopping” or even better “Online Shopping : Amazon.com”.
I could easily use a WordPress Custom Page Template for this webpage and remove or replace the above content. So there is a solution, but it would be a bit weird having one webpage with no header or a different header and the SEO damage is minimal and the link back home helps the home page SERPs.
Below this content we have a navigation menu, look at the anchor text of the 7 links, they tend to target WordPress, SEO, Tutorial type SERPs, again not supporting this webpages SERPs, but supporting my most important webpages. If this was a shop site I’d mostly add shop/shopping relevant links above to support the sites shop SERPs. If you are optimizing a WordPress shopping site and use a navigation menu try to mostly add supporting links for most of the site (I want SEO Package, WordPress SEO, SEO tutorial type traffic and my navigation menu supports these SERPs).
We find a lot of webmasters stuff this area with a lot of links and don’t add enough SEO relevance to the links (anchor text is REALLY important). If you are linking to a section of your site about iPhone 6 faceplates you sell don’t just add the anchor text “iPhone 6”. Does this mean you are selling the iPhone 6, buying the iPhone 6, supplying apps for iPhone 6… Be as specific as what works for your design, if you sell iPhone 6 Faceplates your anchor text should be something like “iPhone 6 Faceplates” NOT just “iPhone 6” or just “Faceplates”.
On-page SEO is really easy, look at my nav links, they all describe where the link goes. Sometimes you have to add links that aren’t for SEO reasons, the Recent Discussions link and Tech support link are for users, makes it easy to find recent comments and ask for support.
I don’t have a contact page because I want contact via comments, as a shop you’ll need a prominent Contact or About link sitewide. You can add relevance to the links, “Contact Amazon”, “About Amazon”, “Contact SEO Dave”, “About SEO Dave”, “Contact Stallion Responsive” (pushing it a bit), “About Stallion Responsive”. Try to avoid just “Contact”, “About”, “Home”, “Click Here”, “Continue Reading” for anchor text.
Now we come to the truly damaging SEO part of this webpages design, the left menu.
The Buy SEO Package widget helps this pages SERPs (BUY is relevant), but the rest isn’t. I have two silo SEO widgets on the left menu, popular posts and recent posts.
The Popular Posts widget is SEO’d, but it’s Silo SEO’d for the Test SEO category (the category this post is in) and a couple of other related categories which is why most of the links have anchor text related to SEO.
My SEO test is targeting the “Online Shopping” SERPs, but I lack any supporting webpages for this SERPs (why I’m writing these comments), I don’t have an online shopping category, I don’t have an online shop.
If this were an online shop the Popular Posts widget would be renamed “Popular PRODUCTS” and I’d silo SEO the widget to only load popular PRODUCTS from categories related to shopping online.
Same for the Recent Posts widget except it’s silo SEO’d only for the Test SEO category (only shows recent posts from one category). If this was a shop the widget would be called “Recent PRODUCTS” or “Latest Products” and would show recent products from a shop category.
Every webpage on this site works this way. Go to the SEO Silo Tutorial and the Popular and Recent posts widgets only load posts from the SEO tutorial related categories: you’ll see different links from this webpage. Go to the Laptop vs Desktop PCs post which is in the Product Reviews category and you only see links to other product reviews. This is built into Stallion Responsive.
I COULD fix the left menu SEO issue, I have multiple options with Stallion.
Can set the Popular and Recent posts widgets not to load on this one post (Stallion feature) and add something else to fill the blank space.
Could set the post to use a custom post template that lacks the left sidebar.
Could write a series of articles (10 say) regarding Online Shopping SEO and move the post from the SEO test category to the new Online shopping SEO category. This would give me enough related webpages to online shopping for the popular and recent posts widget to support the online shopping SERPs (that would be the best SEO fix, but is time consuming writing supporting webpages).
Currently writing a few comments to support the online shop SERPs, the main article now has two more links with anchor text “Online Shop SEO Mistakes”. By adding comments with relevant comment titles I’m adding more links out to related webpages (Stallion Responsive has a feature that generates webpages from comments).
As more relevant comments are added the 20 unrelated links from the popular and recent posts widget become less important. The ratio of related anchor text to unrelated anchor text is increasing. Also the webpages generated from the comments are indexed by Google and link back to the main online shopping article with relevant anchor text. If I can get to around 10 comments we’ve in effect built a online shopping section to the site via comments, a small SEO silo structure just for the online shopping SERP: pretty cool SEO tactic when it works ;-)
I don’t seriously expect any competitive Online Shopping SERPs, this is a teaching tool to show HOW to SEO a WordPress site.
David
Online Shop SEO Mistakes