The Retailer's Guide to SEO

Too often in retail unnecessary pressure on SEO performance comes from a Google search on a smartphone in the boardroom. Yet the vanity keyword your CEO wants to be top of Google for and "doesn't appear on Page 1 yet" does not define SEO success.

It's not unusual for board members to expect the same results as Google Ads with paid search budget sacrificed to generate an SEO revenue stream, (the traffic comes from the same place, right?) which increases pressure.

With PPC you see an instant return, you can increase or lower investment dependant on performance and monitor metrics as far down as keyword level. Instant visibility where you want it; is always going to come at a price.

SEO is a much longer and bigger game; managing expectations that the huge rewards of free organic traffic and revenue is going to take time should come with an informed reasoning of why. It is important to understand all the elements of SEO, the process in optimising a website and show the budget holders a game plan. So where do you start?

Moving a target keyword from position 50+ to page 3 is a lot easier than moving from page 2 to page 1; it's vital that stakeholders understand that revenue driving SEO traffic is not an overnight fix.

Benchmark your data. What's working, what isn’t? Where are you looking to improve? Set KPIs and be measurable. Look at your paid search data to identify priority keywords and products that drive traffic and convert but are expensive. Most importantly, make sure your analytics is tracking correctly. Once you have accurate data it's much easier to show the progress being made.

Keyword research. Understand which keywords offer the most value, don't just look at head terms and ignore the long tail; look at topics and build keyword clusters. What search terms make up the purchase journey? How are you going to help the research shopper before they are ready to convert? This exercise will not only help you understand what your customers are searching for but also help you devise a content strategy for non-converting search terms.

Research trends for keywords throughout the year; maybe one set of categories should be the SEO focus in summer ready for the winter and vice-versa. Prepare for Christmas early; keyword research can add massive value to more successful targeting during peak periods (e.g. what's the number 1 toy on Santa's list going to be this year?).

Use keyword tracking data to understand keywords that are on page 2 and 3 that are closer to those traffic driving positions; prioritise strengthening these pages through on-page SEO techniques, internal linking and link building.

Competitor analysis. Set up keyword tracking and track competitor's performance for keywords and organic visibility against your website. Identify new opportunities by looking at the content they produce and where they get their links from. Look at competitor's site structure and taxonomy for missed opportunities.

Fix your Technical SEO. If Google doesn't enjoy crawling your site, then it's unlikely their users will. Duplicate content, redirects, site speed, crawl budget and broken links are just some of the things that will be uncovered in a tech audit. Improving technical SEO could well uncover a quick traffic win. It could also make or break your entire SEO strategy; once it's fixed, keep on top of it!

Make sure your site is optimised for mobile. According to Merkle's Q2 2018 report mobile devices account for 55% of all organic traffic; a large proportion of your customers will research a purchase on their mobile device before converting.

Link Audit. A strong domain is incredibly important for SEO and will play a key part in how well your site ranks. Check that you have a healthy link profile and no toxic links pointing to your site. Its important that link velocity (the speed of which you obtain links) is consistent with no huge spikes giving indication to Google that 'forced' link building is taking place. Make sure you also check for any sign of link penalties which may be restricting your site from performing in the SERPs.

Audit where links point to on your site; a link pointing to a a 404 page offers no value to your site, products are superseded and outreaching to the source and fixing a problem for them in return can be a quick win. Look for opportunities to funnel link juice from the homepage to your target pages by improving internal link structure. Benchmark and measure your link profile against the competitors regularly. Look at metrics like domain authority, link velocity, trust and citation flow.

Content strategy. If you've not got one, get one! SEO is all about words and building themes of relevancy for topics; if your category pages rely on just a header tag and brief description to rank then you're unlikely to get anywhere near the traffic driving positions in the SERPs.

Build relevancy on your site to target keywords and topics and help your customers make purchase decisions without leaving. Think about Google answer boxes by creating content that answers common questions about the products you sell. Google is finding more and more ways of answering the search user's intent without leaving the search engine. This also applies to voice search.

Improve site structure and navigation. The taxonomy of your categories and sub categories should be built around keyword research. URLs should flow logically from category to sub category to product page wherever possible. Consider faceted navigation as a way of building more landing pages for popular keywords not covered in your category structure.

Identify poor performing pages. User experience is key for SEO; metrics like bounce rate, average time on page and pages visited will give you a great indication of what pages need fixing. Reducing your bounce rate by 50% could see the same results as doubling your conversion rate.

On-page SEO. An optimised page should be relevant to target keywords, provide a great user experience and assist in conversion. On-page SEO starts in the SERPs so make sure your Title and Meta descriptions entice customers to click through to your site. Work with designers and developers to ensure your pages have a correct header tag structure, on-page descriptions and link through to supporting content to build topic relevancy.

Product Page SEO. Use internal linking effectively to connect related products and help customers by linking to editorial information such as buyers guides. Product SCHEMA such as stock availability, reviews and price will significantly help CTR% from the SERPs.

User generated content such as reviews increase content on product pages and keep them fresh. Never use manufacturer product descriptions, you're not going to get ahead of the competition by having the same product content.

Local SEO. If you are a retailer with a brick and mortar presence then make sure your local listings are complete and optimised. Ensure you list your company name, address and phone number (NAP) citations on local (credible) directories and if you have a dedicated page for each store location then ensure you incorporate localised SCHEMA mark up on those pages.

Link Building and Content Marketing. Gaining links is a complicated and difficult process but ultimately link building remains one of the most important elements of SEO. Get it wrong and your whole site could suffer; Google frowns on artificially gained links and unnatural link profiles. A link penalty will be disastrous for your site traffic and rankings.

Building a trusted domain is vital; authority, credibility and trust are the key metrics and these are gained from sites linking to yours that already have these attributes.

Gaining links to the root domain is best achieved through PR, news and brand stories; attracting links to commercial pages is a little more difficult. Remember, you can't expect influential bloggers and publications to link through to pages that are just trying to sell something as these offer no value to their audience unless in context.

Today's link building is all about earning links through quality content creation of content marketing campaigns, complemented by outreach and digital PR. The beauty of content marketing is that done well it can also raise brand awareness, increase social engagement and of course drive traffic, but this activity is often hosted on editorial sections of a website or off the site altogether. Often link juice is secondary in this instance, meaning that you gain the links through quality content and then link from that content to the target page.

SEO Training. Best practice guidelines and a better understanding of SEO will help your in-house copywriters and site merchandisers keep your site optimised. Run regular training workshops with your in-house SEO or agency to ensure your team are supporting on-going SEO efforts through optimised copy and basic on-page SEO techniques.

Remember, SEO is a long term strategy and investment; it's the long game. Get it right and it means you have to spend less money to drive traffic and customers and will have a massive edge over your competition.

@ChrisAiley @iThinkMedia