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Podcast (10k-podcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:36 — 28.9MB)
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Ecommerce SEO strategies, as an eCommerce business owner, you likely understand the importance of optimizing your website for search engines. After all, appearing at the top of Google’s search results is the key to driving traffic to your website and boosting sales. However, many eCommerce businesses make the mistake of focusing solely on product pages and category pages and overlooking the value of a blog.
In this post, we’ll explore the real reason eCommerce business owners should be publishing articles on their blog, and how it can help maximize eCommerce SEO.
Time Stamps
0:00:00 | Unlocking the Benefits of SEO for Ecommerce Businesses: Why Publishing Articles on Your Blog is Key
0:03:24 | Optimizing Ecommerce Websites for Organic Traffic: A Content-Led Approach
0:05:54 | Exploring Topical Mapping: A Comprehensive Overview
0:07:09 | Exploring Content Mapping Strategies for SEO Success
0:08:41 | Exploring the Benefits of Topical Mapping for SEO
0:10:09 | Exploring the Connection Between Topical Relevance and High Performance Ranking
0:13:15 | Evaluating SEO Performance: Leading Edge Metrics and Competitor Analysis
0:14:59 | Exploring the Benefits of Topical Mapping for SEO Programs
0:18:19 | Exploring the Benefits of Topic Mapping and Buyer Journey Mapping for SEO
0:18:55 | Exploring the Benefits of Building Authority for SEO Success
0:21:50 | Understanding the Relationship Between SEO and Ecommerce: How to Maximize Traffic and Conversion Rates
0:24:42 | Unlocking the Potential of SEO: Insights from Ashley Pierce
0:26:36 | Understanding SEO for Ecommerce: Key Takeaways for Driving Traffic and Conversions
0:28:12 | Understanding Ecommerce SEO: Takeaways from Ashley Pierce of Future State Media
0:32:37 | Exploring Risk Mitigation Strategies for E-Commerce Platforms
0:35:51 | Exploring the Benefits of SEO: Leveraging Topical Relevance to Increase Profitability
0:38:19 | Exploring Opportunities for Establishing Topical Relevance in SEO
0:41:25 | Exploring the Power of Authority Building in SEO
Ecommerce SEO Strategies : The Power of Topical Mapping
To start, it’s essential to understand the power of topical mapping. At its core, topical mapping is the process of identifying the key topics that are most relevant to your business and creating content around those topics. This approach can help build a level of topical authority in search engines, which can drive traffic to your website.
Traditionally, building topical authority involved generating millions of backlinks. However, today’s SEO techniques are more sophisticated, and topical mapping has become an essential tool in the eCommerce SEO toolkit.
To get started with topical mapping, you’ll need to map out your niche using tools like Google and SEM Rush. By analyzing what your competitors are already publishing, you can gain a better understanding of the topics that are most relevant to your business.
Ecommerce SEO Strategies : Topical Mapping and the Buyer Journey
However, it’s essential to note that topical mapping is not the same as mapping out the buyer journey and providing content. In most cases, there will be some overlap between these two approaches, but they won’t be perfectly aligned.
The aim of the game is to cover the topic more fully and to a higher quality than your competitors in the search market. Once you do this, you’ll find ranking for commercial “buying intent” terms easier and more reliable.
The Role of Commercial Intent
One of the most common mistakes eCommerce businesses make is creating content solely for informational search intent, which may have no commercial intent. While this approach can help you rank product pages and category pages for commercial intent topics, it doesn’t necessarily translate into sales.
Instead, it’s essential to create content that aligns with commercial search intent. This type of content should be designed to drive high-profit sales from Google Organic traffic, especially for highly commercial terms. By creating the most complete site to cover the topic and including FAQ sections, you can increase the chances of driving traffic to your eCommerce pages.
AND The Importance of non-commercial keywords
Having explored the importance of having commercial intent, however, the opposite extreme is also a trap. Having too much of a commercial bias and not enough of a focus of ranking for informational searches is also an error. But – and this is the heart of the matter – not for the reason you think!
The Paradox of Publishing Articles on Your eCommerce Website
The paradox of publishing articles on your eCommerce website is that it’s not about the traffic they can generate directly. Instead, the traffic to the non-commercial “informational” content is actually just a byproduct of the process of building topical authority. This can cause frustration for eCommerce business owners, who may be more interested in converting traffic into sales.
To avoid this paradox, it’s important to measure traffic to commercial intent pages, such as product and category pages. By focusing on these pages’ traffic, you can more accurately measure your topical relevance and the effectiveness of your SEO strategy.
Tools for Measuring Topical Authority
To measure your topical authority, you’ll need to use leading-edge metrics and compare them to your competitors. For example, you can track the number of keywords you rank for in your niche and filter keywords that are outside the niche and inside the niche.
Tools like Google Search Console can help you measure your topical relevance against “dog” related queries, for example, if you sell dog products.
Structuring Your Ecommerce SEO Strategies Through Topical Map
When structuring your topical map, it’s important to consider Google’s view of the topic. While this can be a source of disagreement with clients, it’s essential to structure your content in a way that aligns with Google’s interpretation of the topic. This can help you rank on Google which is in the end the provider of your (free) traffic!
Ashley and his team work with clients to build organic traffic from Google, Bing and other niche search engines by;
- Topically mapping their niche(s)
- Publishing pages on their website to align with that topical map
The topical map is constructed of informational (article and FAQ) search intent and commercial search intent (traffic ready to buy)
How to Structure Your Topical Map
To start planning your topical map, the first step is to map out your niche. Use Google to identify the primary topics and subtopics in your industry or area of expertise. This will help you create a comprehensive topical map that covers all of the key areas.
Once you have a list of topics and subtopics, it’s time to create your topical map. This can be done using a mind map or spreadsheet, and should include all of the main topics you want to cover, as well as the subtopics that fall under each one. Make sure your topical map is organized in a logical and easy-to-follow way, so that both search engines and users can quickly understand your site’s structure.
Let the Topical Map be Your Guide…
As you start creating content for your site, it’s important to keep your topical map in mind. Make sure you cover each of the main topics and subtopics you’ve identified, and create a mix of different types of content, such as articles and FAQs. It’s also important to keep commercial intent in mind, which means creating content that is focused on the products or services you offer. By creating the most complete site possible, you’ll not only improve your SEO, but also provide value to your users and establish your site as a go-to resource in your industry.
How to Get Help from Ashley and Future State Media
Ashley’s Google SEO guide for ecommerce (Amazon or DTC)Â
This includes Guidance on many helpful topics:Â
- How to get started
- Clear Definitions of technical termsÂ
- Essential Tools or free/low cost free trials
- How to start writing articlesÂ
- How to project manage getting content written for you
Just click here to get your Ecommerce SEO guideÂ
Talking to Ashley or His team
Click here to book in a call to discuss your ecommerce SEO with specialists who do this all day!
