Showing Google you’ve got the goods
Hey you, ecommerce store owner.
I know you got a sexy theme for your website that promised it was responsive, conversion-focused and all that jazz.
But is it?
So many ecommerce sites fall down on the basics of user experience.
Terrible navigation – check
Confusing home page – check
Bland category pages – check
Cut and paste product descriptions – check
And don’t get me started on that checkout experience.
Well, today we’re honing in on carts, shopping and making the sale.
Telling you how to turn casual browsers into eager buyers.
Tune in to learn
Today we’ll cover:
- The three main differences between service-based business SEO and ecommerce SEO
- How small businesses should build out the primary nav structure
- Two ways to start driving more relevant traffic to your ecommerce site today
- How to avoid the duplicate content issue with collection and product pages
- How to do keyword research for collection pages and product pages
- How to improve time on site and key information you should add to encourage customers through to the sale
- How to stand out in the SERPS against the bigger brands
- Optimising your product pages – where to start
- Why generative AI isn’t going to doom ecommerce stores
- The importance of your brand story, and taking consumers on a journey with your brand
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And big thanks to EJM Web Design from the United States for their lovely review:
“Kate is awesome. Great show, insightful but funny and not tech bro-ish like so many of the others out there!”
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Connect with Louis Smith
Useful Resources
About Louis Smith
His expertise in the ecommerce space has earned him a reputation as a trusted advisor and a go-to resource for businesses looking to improve their SEO performance.
Tell me one weird, fun fact about you
Fun fact: Louis has landed on a mountain in a plane.
Transcript
Kate Toon:
Hey you, ecommerce store owner. I know you’ve got a sexy theme for your website that promised that was responsive, conversion-focused and all that jazz. But is it? So many ecommerce sites fall down on the basics of user experience. Terrible navigation. Check confusing homepage, check bland category pages, check, cut and paste product descriptions. Also check and don’t get me started on that check out experience. Well, today we’re honing in on carts shopping, and making the sale, telling you how to turn casual browsers into eager buyers. Hello, my name is Kate toon. And I’m the head chef at the recipe for SEO success and online teaching hub for all things related to search engine optimization and Digital Marketing. And today, I’m talking to Louis Smith. Hello Louie.
Louis Smith:
Hey Kate, great to meet you. Thanks for bringing me on to the show.
Kate Toon:
So let me tell you who Louis is. He is a top freelance ecommerce SEO expert with over nine years of experience in the SEO industry. He has a deep understanding of search engine algorithms, and a passion for helping ecommerce businesses succeed. He has helped many ecom brands improve their online visibility and increase organic revenue, which is what it’s all about. Louis specializes in on page optimization, technical SEO and link building using data driven driven strategies to deliver measurable results. Oh, it’s always so hard reading out people’s bios. But I actually found you via LinkedIn. And so you know, I saw on there that you had this amazing expertise. In the Ecommerce space, you’ve got a bit of a rep, a trusted adviser, you’ve got an amazing product spreadsheet that I saw the other day as well. Lots of good stuff. So I was kind of stalking you a little bit before I invited you on the pod and I’m very glad to have you here. And we’ve got a weird fact. Louis has landed on a mountain in a plane. Were you flying the plane? Or was it an accident?
Louis Smith:
No, I wasn’t flying the plane. It was actually in New Zealand on Mount Cook. So I did the tour where they fly up into the sky. And this little Indiana Jones plane was like four of us in it like do do do ricketing into the sky and then landed on Mount Cook on a glacier.
Kate Toon:
I’ve done it too, Louis. I’ve done it too Isn’t it amazing?. And there’s like no one else there and it’s just white for miles. And so it’s pretty magic, isn’t it? You feel like you’re on top of the world.
Louis Smith:
Silent one hour like just crazy. You’re in the middle of nowhere, just on this mountain. Yeah, incredible.
Kate Toon,
Yeah, I love, I love New Zealand, the best trip there with my best mate. Yeah, it’s I’ve done that, too. It’s a real experience. So there we go. Another thing common. We’re both northerners, we’ve both been on a glacier. And we both have a deep love of SEO. So let’s dig into today’s episode. And in the recipe for SEO Success course we have a whole separate module on ecommerce because it has its own unique challenges. So you know, what would you say are the three main differences between say service based business, SEO and ecommerce, SEO?
Louis Smith:
I’d say, Kate, Let’s take a look at site architecture. This is a massive one for websites. It’s easier to have a service-based website in terms of site architecture, service pages and setting up, when you start building, you know, hundreds of 1000s of SKUs, that’s when it starts to get difficult. So that’s one of the main differences. Obviously, geolocation, you know, an ecommerce site can target the world. Again, that raises a whole lot of other challenges. And then templates as well. As you know, when you are creating products, and you have hundreds of thousands to them, they’re all gonna have very similar template. So the quality of that template can have a massive impact on how you rank in terms like service based website, we can go in optimize different pages. Once you wear them 1000s of SKUs out if you’re doing it in massive your brand like Shein, publishes 1000s every week. That’s, you know, the main difference part of a service based website is what I’d say anyway.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I mean, I agree with you and, you know, all those SKUs. I mean Shein is quite an example that you know, a lot of ecommerce sites that I’ve seen recently actually reducing the number of SKUs reducing the number of products available to maybe you know, instead of having a 1000s and 1000s, having a slightly more curated product line, because it’s just becomes unmanageable and uncrawlable and overwhelming. But we’ll dig into that a little bit more, I guess most of the people listening to this podcast are going to be smaller stores, they’re not going to be the Shein’s of this world, or even the Marks and Sparks. But even if you have a smaller store, getting that primary navigation right can be super challenging. You know, once you go beyond, say, 10-11 categories, then that kind of just primary nav structure doesn’t work. And you kind of have to move into the mega menu, which causes additional problems, doesn’t it? So you know, what is some advice around that primary nav that you could offer a smaller ecommerce site?
Louis Smith:
Yes, so with the primary nav, the thing I see with a lot of brands is not just the smaller brands where they’ll come in, they have an understanding about their product. So they place that in the navigation, and then you know, as SEOs will go into that, and, you know, there’s so much opportunity with these different intents for what you’re putting into navigation, maybe we should put this in the navigation, and I have never gone to a brand and not seeing opportunities to change that navigation. So that comes we’re going to talk about seeing probably keyword research to say you know what we need to put in the navigation, but never, never stay static. Never think your navigation is the best one. And it’s right for your customers. Because every brand I go to is there’s always opportunity to change pages. The navigation is the most link to pages in the website. So you’re passing the most authority to them. And so, you know, you could have 20 potential money pages that are sat just hidden in your website, that could just drop in that navigation as a sub menu. So yeah, it’s super important. And I’d say, you know, after listening to this podcast, definitely check the navigation. And there’s opportunity always to change pages and match what customers are looking for.
Kate Toon.
But it’s super challenging, isn’t it? Because you’ve got that, you know, SEO intent, but then also, you know, you’re huge on UX. And so you know, you may have this thing that you want to draw out of level 17. And pop in you’re nav, but it makes, it doesn’t sit well with the other elements in your nav or you know, you’ve got single word terms, and then all of a sudden, you’ve got this other one and you know, should it be alphabetical? Or should it be based on your most popular products? I mean, there’s a lot of difficult decisions to make there. And you’re, you’re kind of trying to do a vortex between pleasing the Google Gods pleasing the customers, but also your understanding of your product line. Do you know what I mean? Because I often see ecommerce sites where it’s like, why is that first in your nav? And they’re like, oh, because it was the first product we ever sold. And I’m like, oh, so what? You know, I mean, like this mega-sea nav that you’ve glued fits on. I think sometimes you need to take a step back, go back to the Excel spreadsheet, and rejigger it all, don’t you?
Louis Smith:
Yeah, definitely. And one of the common things I see is brands trying to be smart by labeling the blog, something else or the about page, try to give it a quirky name to, like make brand difference, almost like a Gucci style where, you know, people search for the brand, but just keep it simple level what the pages make it easy for customers. Again, that getting them money page in the navigation is crucial. But stuffing it with lots of random pages, giving them different names to try and be clever is not going to help search engines. It’s not going to help you customers.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, it’s very, it’s a very northern approach, isn’t it? Call a spade a spade. There’s nothing worse when you go to someone’s blog. And it’s like, stories from the shopping carts like what you talk, it’s a blog, call it blog, it’s a Contact Page Shut up. So let’s start with the basics. We’re talking about, you know, plain English being straightforward. What are two, we’re going to try and get some easy wins for people today. What are two ways that ecommerce businesses could start driving more relevant, that’s the main word I’m looking for there, relevant traffic to their site today?
Louis Smith:
Quck step process, you can get analytics for Sheets, and open up your Google Search Console data. What the problem I see with every ecommerce site is, for example, a small brand will have five collection pages of trainers, okay? Now, just because they contain your product does not mean they’re matching what your customers are looking for, you know, if they’re looking for red hiking trainers, for example. And you’re not, you don’t have a collection page matching that. That’s a clear opportunity where you can go to Google such that it has a bunch of collection pages ranking. You need to create a collection page because you offer the product where you’re not targeting that That’s one of the biggest ones for me, there’s software’s out there now that generate that mass basically match what your customers are looking for. And because it’s a golden opportunity, it’s, I’d say, never hire an SEO agency or an SEO Freelancer just to optimize five collection pages hoping to rank for like running trainees, when you’ve not got all this diversity SKUs. And collection pages. internal linking as well, depending on how big your website is, you can build internal links, you can push products higher in search just by pushing more relevance to their pages. And I said, too, but I’m gonna say, you know, product pages as well, there’s so much you can do with your product pages. People say Amazon ranks so well, because of their authority. But if you actually look at the quality of the product page, they put so much value into that. But on the flip side of that smaller businesses have this agile movement where they can say, you know, we don’t have to wait months for a developer to come in and edit a product page, let’s do it ourselves. How can we best give more value to our customers? if it’s reviews, you know, guides on page videos, actual images that help that customer, and do that because you can, you can move a lot quicker than the bigger brands. And you’ve got more, just more time on your hands to do this. And that’s one of the bigger wins, don’t think because the big brands or the big brands have got all the authority they deserve to be there for so much the small brands can do faster. And that’s one of the benefits of being smaller.
Kate Toon:
I love that. I’m just going to revisit a couple of days, just to be clear. So the first one was developing collection pages based on user searches, so not just sticking with the collection pages you have, I guess some brands might get confused there a little bit and go Well, isn’t this kind of duplicate content on I just kind of pumping out pages? Isn’t it all about quality? Not quantity? So you know, how would you answer that, like you’re coming along and saying no, no, create this collection page and this collection page, and they’re going all but I saw we wanted to not have too many pages on our site, what would you what would you say there?
Louis Smith:
No, because you’re clearly, clearly matching what the customer is searching for. If I was searching for, for example, you know, hiking trip, I’d have to land on a page that as hiking journeys in the title of page one, and a brief description, as opposed to the landing page that just says trainers. And that’s the reality of it.
Kate Toon:
It’s that specificity of that more focused longtail conversion, focus search. So instead of, you know, we’d never go after trainers, but I know what you’re saying, you know, I mean, like, trying to get that specificity in the collection pages and pulling the relevant products in, assuming you have enough parallax to populate that collection page, I end up with one product because that’s a bad user experience, you know, often you go into sites and you go into a particular category, and there’s like one product, and it’s like that really didn’t deserve its own category page. Do you know what I mean? Like you have to have the quantity as well. So it’s not going to cause duplicate content issues, because it’s going to be different, right? It’s got a different h1, different copy, different title tag, different alt tags, different image tags, different URL, so it wouldn’t be deemed duplicate content. And if there’s enough quality content on there, it’s not going to be thin and crappy either.
Louis Smith:
Exactly that, its personalization. And as such moves forward, you know, as marketing moves forward, that’s what it’s all about, it’s personalized to the individual consumer search. And the more personalized, you can get that, you know, the better chance of conversion. And I’ll just quickly throw in, if you look at Canva, the design tool. It’s like the business card. So the business cards ideally should just be one page, but the problematic SEO where they’ll target, you know, business card for gardeners for roofers for hairdressers, because it targets personalized search for all them different searches, when really, it should just be one page, you know, business card design, but it matched what the consumer is looking for.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, interesting. And then the next one was internal links, which is kind of to your point about the navigation about deep linking to these relevant pages that you want to bring up maybe featuring them on in your nav or having featured elements on your homepage or just linking between popular products, which I think really helps. And then of course, product pages, which I think we’re going to talk about a little bit more as we go on. So I’m going to hold that thought, because the next thing that I wanted to talk about was this whole keyword research piece, you know, obviously, a lot of ecommerce stores will simply you know, go after the name of the product, you know, and often if they’re resellers that puts them in direct conflict with the brand that they’re reselling from. So what advice do you have around keyword research for those collection pages and for the product pages?
Louis Smith:
Yeah, so with ecommerce it’s important to build that relevancy. and authority. When you look at content websites, for example, you know, holidays in Bali, you’d have, you know, hotels, restaurants, because that’s a bit of topical relevance with ecommerce, the same goes. So if we go back to trainers, it’d be selling collection page trainers, your supporting pages are built out, you know, hiking, running, children’s, men’s, women’s, and that’s your topical authority around that ecommerce space. So your keyword research is to say, about the quick wins, what we can do as a brand is go to Google Search Console and see what we’re showing up for. That’s where we’ll get most like keywords what Google is saying, what are brand’s relevant for, and 100%, if you do that, today, you will see opportunity to build out new pages. So that’s step one. Step two, my favorite is to go to Google SERPs. And basically Google page one and search the keyword using you know, an extension like Keyword Everywhere. And look at the related keywords, but look at what Google is showing you relevant to that topic. It this is the benefit of smaller brands to say, right, we want to establish trying to focus on 1000s of category pages. Let’s focus on again, running trainers, for example. What is Google showing us related to this, look at the image entities on that, look at the related searches at the bottom and look at the site links of what’s showing underneath URLs. Export that there. So just into Google Sheets, there’s nothing sexy about that. And the stats that to understand what are the related keywords. Those are great, so Ahrefs, Semrush, we all use them. What Google SERP is the one that gives you the best data, because it’s showing you exactly what they’re interpreted as the most relevant data they get. Google gets billions of searches every day, it understands more about any product than any ecommerce brand, so much exactly what they’re looking for. And you’ll have a better chance of ranking.
Kate Toon:
Hey, I love that. Now, again, you know, not all our listeners will understand terms such as topical search, and all that kind of stuff. So I really want to break this down. I also want to explain for our American listeners, that trainers are running shoes, because I know, we’re Northern. So I’m gonna give it an example I am I’m the same as you like I love actually like starting with Google, you know, and seeing what happens in the search engine before I go and start playing with the tools. Because I tend to find I come up with my idea. I look at it in Google, I go through all the research and I end up with the same idea that I started with. So let’s get it we’re gonna pick an example we’re gonna do blue running shoes for girl aged seven with butterflies – pretty specific, right? Now bring back that results. You get a whole shopping carousel of shopping ads, which is probably where I’m gonna go because it’s very visual, then I get some images, then I’m getting some big brands, Big W over here in Australia, Etsy, Myer, Sketchers, Kmart, Rebel, I’m doomed, right, as a small business owner. I mean, what do I add to that kit? It’s so specific. What can I possibly add to that keyword term to get any of that traffic?
Louis Smith:
Yeah, so this is a double edged sword. So it’s, you know, you see the bigger brands and you almost feel put off. But when, when we’re looking at it, to say that no actually, this is a great opportunity to because there’s no niche relevant site that’s really pushing for that keyword. Google is ranking them because it trusts them, they trust them, it trusts that they will deliver the service to match that customer search and make the sale. So obviously step one is to make sure that we target that keyword, it goes back to keyword research. Do we have a page? Do we have a product matching this search? Okay, if we’ve not, let’s get that done, take one step to okay, what’s the related searches around that product? What are then related products at the bottom? What Google is showing us?
Kate Toon:
Got some good ones here. Yeah, I’m just gonna give some examples of people know what you’re talking about. So you if you if you just scroll to the bottom of the search results, and obviously we’ve got a bit of sort of infinite search going on these days. So we’ve got flower girl shoes cobalt blue, I mean, that’s so specific, right? It’s not just blue is cobalt blue. And then running shoes. Blue shoes, some brand names popping up. Yeah. So there are some different terms that we can use. And the funny thing is, as well, despite all of these results, none of the images showing in the shopping carousel, or as the thumbnail next to Myer or whatever, actually have butterflies on them. So you talk about what Google’s showing. And sometimes you think, oh, it’s dominated space. There’s nothing I can do. And it’s like, no, this is all Google’s got. That it hasn’t got anything more relevant. It’s doing his best but if you We produce something more relevant, you could crush it because not a single one of these shoes has a bloody butterfly on it. So it’s, which I didn’t notice at first, I was just like ah doom. I saw Myer, I saw Kmart, I’m like I’m doing but there’s no butterflies on these images. So there you go.
Louis Smith:
Opportunity found straightaway. Yeah, you know, that’s, and then once you know, as a small brand it was about, let’s get this as a sprint, you know, over these next two weeks, let’s get it all. Let’s get that page producing revenue. And what you’ll find is Amazon won’t notice that, they won’t notice you’ve got that keyword because they’ve got so much going on, you know, they’ve got the bigger picture. And so you’re picking up revenue without them even noticing. As you can.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, you can be nimble. And you know, that is a perfect example. And again, it’s another northern expression of I can’t see the wood for the trees. Because straightaway, you’re just so blown away by the noise on the search results, that it can intimidate you enough to just not take another step. So yeah, very interesting. All right, moving on. Sorry, exactly. Just talk about blue shoes with butterflies on for the -cobalt blue, mind you. So perhaps let’s talk a bit more about UX and usability because I know that you’re really into this, you got this great checklist for product pages. And you know, at the end of the day, we love a good home page or an ecommerce store. And we love a good collection page or a category page. But the money page is your product page. So, say we do so we do our work, we put our butterflies in our longtail keywords, and we get someone to our product page, but they’re not converting what can we what can we do? What are some of the things that keep people sticking around and improve time on site? Because we know time on site generally equates to a conversion, generally do you know what I mean, they’re not just sticking around there for the hell of it. How can we improve time on site on our websites?
Louis Smith:
Yeah, so as this is where search is going now, where we, instead of focusing on the singular keyword, blue butterfly trainers, you know, we focus on the intent behind it, and trying to match what that is for permanent buying it like Why do they want that trainer? Is it because it’s a child? Is it for school? Is it for PE. And again, it goes back to personalization of understanding that journey. Once we know that we can bring them in pain barriers on the product page, to say, you know, don’t talk about the product being crazy blue butterflies, talk about the benefit of you know why the child’s gonna love it. As soon as you break down barriers, it’s still not converting them. It’s like, why, is it social proof, you know, have we have we done any PR work? Have we got product reviews on that page, and then we can start to build in them segments or, you know, social proof, that’d be a block on your product page. FAQ is that’d be a block, we do super-fast shipping, that’d be a block, we do free returns, and you start to all the pain barriers. I call it you know, thinking so when you go to a page, if you can reduce that thinking of the customer, all them pain barriers, they’re gonna convert it’s like a good salesperson is, you know, the knocking down them walls, so there’s no reason not to convert. You know, if the price is right, you’re not doing all the benefits, they know they’re gonna get faster, whether they’re, you know, they’re gonna get free returns. There’s no reason not to convert. And then what you’re doing then is you start to get into obviously, testing elements, you get heat mapping on the start to work on car rolls hand in hand, no conversion rate optimization for the listeners, is hand in hand with SEO. To understand, you know, we’re trying to not just bringing the traffic in from a search engine, but trying to get them on macro conversions, ie engaging with the page, clicking buttons, clicking accordions, interacting with your content, interacting with the videos, looking at your images, and then you know, that will push them the macro conversion, ie the sale.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I like that micro and macro. So get them interacting with the content and as you said, overcoming objections, but I like what you said at the beginning as well. And again, brought up some sort of natural language issues there, like you talked about PE, which over here would be like sports, you know, we don’t, it’s a funny, you know, like, all these English isms that I’ve forgotten. But I always like to say, you know, at least try and cover off the who, the what, the when, the where, the how, and the why. So who’s wearing it? Why are they wearing it? Where are they wearing it? How do they feel when they wear you know, try and get a bit of emotion as well. And then I love what you talked about overcoming objections, you know, can I put these butterfly shoes in the washing machine? Because they’re gonna get messy? Will they survive? You know, are they, is the kind of parent buying these kind of somebody that is into sustainability? So do they want to know that they’re not made in some factory by children in China? Do you know what I mean? They want to know that they’re Australian made or whatever it may be. You need to know your customers super well. And I like that you talked about different elements on the page, you know, using FAQ’s and you know, descriptions and videos and getting those little engagements so that people feel super sticky. And then it does just come down to price and speed. I need them today. And I want them to be cheaper, you know. So I love that. I think that’s great. Hey, let’s talk about the SERPs a little bit. The search engine results pages. Sorry. You know, now, Google is always changing things, as we know. And as you know, as I said, when I started looking for my little butterfly shoes, there is so much going on, you know, we’ve got the sponsored carousel, we’ve got sponsored posts, we’ve now got thumbnails next to products. You know, it does feel very noisy. How is it possible to get stand out there in the SERPs? It’s pretty hard, right?
Louis Smith:
Yes, so obviously, searches come a lot of where we used to used to be 10 blue links. And we’ll talk about assume what generative AI like, that’s just the next step on where we are. Now we’ll look at a lot of social media feeds, it’s like SERPS is like social media feeds, where instead they put images where they put videos, and they put so many different elements on the page. You know, getting them clicks is harder in a lot, lot of different ways. So, again, looking at your product page templates, for example, you know, I’m helping a sauce brand in the UK at the moment. And the SERPs are various sort of hybrid of recipes, and products. So my strategy has been, so how do we rank for it? All right, how do we rank for clicks to the recipe pages, and to the products, we need to dominate the SERPS. So with your product page, give Google a good reason to trust that page to match what them searches are looking for. So back to the example we started in recipes, we can’t just push products and not have recipes, because we’re missing out on all that intent of the customer. So as a brand, listening to this a brand owner, you need to decide, right? We offer you know, if it’s pet clothing, and we offer pet clothing. So we need to give the products and we need to give the guides and it goes back to that SERP analysis to say, right, what is Google showing us the understanding about this topic, if they want videos, if it’s very video heavy, we need to 100% make sure we’re creating videos, if it’s very image heavy, and carousels. We need them images on the collection page. Because we need to be generating clicks. And once you start to build that case study of what you need to work on, that’s where you can start to say, right, we can strategize this now. And then once you’re on the website, that’s when you start to work on the micro conversions. And so it just all falls into this ecosystem. But the number one thing you can do is to go to Google and trying to understand what Google is looking for because the keyword research tool says Yeah, these keywords are related. But it’s not giving you that visual, you know, actually go and spend two hours crawling through Google Google with, you know, just manually looking, you’ll get so much data, you know, you can quickly say it, it’s, again, you know, Dog clothing, you can quickly see what Google wants for that search and build, you know, really great case study to target that search.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I mean, you know, you’d think like, it’s always going to be the big brands coming up. And you know, what, a long time ago, Google did make changes that it wasn’t always Amazon and it wasn’t always Etsy popping up. I’ve just put for example, buy new koala jumper into Google. And the results that come up are a lot of smaller brands. But again, you know, even the most basic stuff the way that they’ve written their title tags and meta descriptions. It’s not salesy. It’s very descriptive or there’s no meta description and Google’s just pulled whatever out, you go to the patient has one image one blooming image of this koala jumper, I can’t see the cuff I can’t see the color I can’t see it. You know, I think it looks like a knitted jumper, but is that, is that material glued on? Or? I mean for goodness sake and I want to see a kid wearing the jumper and moving around and it like a little video you know even if it’s crappy, even if it’s you on your iPhone, just moving the jumper around so I can get some sense of scale and material. There’s so many missed opportunity. And I think the thing is what a lot of ecommerce stores think because I’ve got so many products I cannot do this on every single one you know what Louis saying and I’ve got I’ve FAQs and who what when why how and material instructions and I can’t do that on all of them. So you know if you were approaching a smaller site that was doing it themselves, so yes, they can be nimble, and they’ve found opportunities. Would you be saying to them, number one, go through and optimize your best sellers or number two go through and optimize your worst sellers on number three, go and optimize the things you want to get rid of. How would you, would there be an approach because otherwise it just feels like you’re just shooting fish in a barrel? I know you said look for opportunities but would you be working down your best sellers and making them sell better, first? Or would you be starting with your worst sellers and trying to get them to sell it all you know on a simple in a simple way of thinking about it?
Louis Smith:
Yes, I look at those that are converting well, and it is a slight drop in the top 10 sellers were fine, four of them are converting well, but they could be converting better, you know, 100% optimize them. And then it just goes, this is what brands can do now is basically export that data from Google Search Console, look at your top traffic pages, look at ones and not yet generate as much traffic and build, build around them, you know, just say, This is what a lot of brands do wrong, they’ll focus on building 20 blog posts a month and ignore product pages. Instead, let’s, let’s focus on 20 products a month. And do that now for the next six months. And then all of a sudden, you know, we’ve got 120 product pages optimized for search, that’s super relevant for our searches, super personalized. Because as you know, as you mentioned, having one image on a page doesn’t care to 1000 different people that will go to that page, you know, we’re all weird buyers, you know, we have our own views on the world. And we all want to know what we want and what we going to benefit from. So when we go to that page, and might want to watch a video and make sure, yeah, that’s gonna look great in my home, you might be very image driven, and work other people, but I want to know how the delivery works. If it’s good delivery, I’m sorry, cuz I really want this product. So optimize around your top. Just don’t focus on the short ways, like say to set, you know, set a goal to set, right, we’re going to do 15 products this month, we’re going to put videos in we’re going to put at least you know, five to seven images in and we’re gonna put in what our customers are asking for, for example, if we keep getting phone calls about certain products, you know, is it. made such a we’re getting that on the page, break down that barrier, it frees up the sales team, you can move forward.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I love that.
Louis Smith:
Yeah, work back. Yeah.
Kate Toon:
Work back, because you know, in that case, you know, a lot of SEO agencies focus hard on ranking, obviously still, in these days. You know, with a lot of stills, you don’t even need to move your ranking, you’re already ranking pretty well. You just need to improve the conversion on the thing that’s ranking and you know that you can get way more money and you don’t even move at all at the search results. I think that’s so important in the different things that make people buy. I’m a sucker for the reviews. I love a review. I love to read what Jeanine in Ipswich says about the product, good or bad, you know, sometimes, like, I’ll read I read in one the other day, and I was gonna buy something with Marks and Spencers and someone said was got a one star review. And obviously we love to read a one star review don’t mean I read those first. But then I read it and she was like, Well, I didn’t realize that the top didn’t come with the bottom, even though it said short sleeve top or whatever. I was really disappointed that it didn’t come with a bottom and I’m like, All right, Karen, you know that one star review is valid. But again, the store owner had not responded to the review. They had not kind of come back there was no you know, it was – I don’t know I love reading reviews. So a lot of again, a lot of ecommerce store owners will turn off reviews because they’re frightened of what people will say. For me that’s user generated content. That’s hundreds of words I didn’t have to write. Again this little koala sweater I’m looking at. I’ve got a short description, you know with most ecommerce sites for listening, whether it’s Shopify or WordPress or whatever, you get your short description then you get your long description. All I’ve got is a short description I’ve got two lines to sell me a $60 jumper and it’s the $60 jumper for a kid so they’re gonna grow out of after a week. You have to make me want to buy that jumper. Anyway, it’s funny isn’t it though that it always shocks me the lack of effort some of these product pages have and then people like oh, why am I selling and I’m like, it got two lines of copy on the page. So like I could go on about this all night. So could you pet hates. But let’s talk about the elephant not the koala in the room, the elephant in the room. You mentioned it generative panels and Google changing everything. How is this going to impact ecommerce stores are they doomed?
Louis Smith:
No I believe it provides it’s almost like a rich snippets, you know, when you search for products to get featured at the top of Google, if you can optimize around that when that ever does finally roll out across the globe, it’s a good opportunity to take that search you know, you might not have been generating traffic. So what you do know over the next six months can completely change your business. If you get 20 products featured in that in that top panel, it’s going to drive a lot of revenue. If you do everything right on the page, you now have one quality image. But get so how’s this gonna work? So Google has to trust your product page has to trust your match search intent. So the basics you can do for your product is make sure you provide imagery, provide video and you provide everything, briefly mention product attributes is something that ecommerce owners need to think about. So attributes being if you look at trainers, so running trainers again, looking at Site assets-
Kate Toon:
You’re obsessed with trainers Louie, you’re obsessed. Me on koala jumpers and you on trainers. So yeah, when you’re talking about product attributes, you’re talking about all the relevant points one would think about with trainers. So like, as you said, size, color, sole, probably what they’re made of. Yeah, all that kind of all those kinds of elements and jumpers is going to be different, isn’t it, it’s going to be collars cuffs, machine washable, that kind of thing. So ticking off all those attributes.
Louis Smith:
Yeah, so ticking them off, get the media on the page, make sure your page obviously loads quick. And that’s your fundamental note of ecommerce. And once you start to get all the building blocks in it’s the foundation of a solid structure for a page. And the more you can do that, and then you top that off with reviews, user generated content. So this isn’t a one I could go on a tangent about. It’s it’s so important that I see many brands reach out small brands that have not done rank well, because they have a good product to have a good product manage and have these user generated reviews were to me, it’s a solid trust signal for Google, if you’ve got honest reviews, five star reviews, putting all the buzzwords in around your product, you know best, this is fantastic. This is awesome. It does so much for your brand. So Google now has everything it needs on your product page to get you pushed up to that top, where this is where you can benefit against brands like Amazon, because you have that agile approach. Actually, instead, instead of trying to focus all these, all of our product pages, match box on these top 10 sellers that we know is generating revenue, because we’re doing it with PPC and email. So let’s focus on how we can build these out. And if you’re finding you’re struggling a bit, go to the panel, click the product, what’s ranking, Look What’s Missing on your page, and then adapt that into your page. But build that solid foundation and get everything on there give Google the best reason to rank your page. You’re not if you’re missing a certain element.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I love it. And the thing is, while you talk about one of the advantages smaller ecommerce stores have over bigger stores is that agility, the ability to move quickly and you know, make changes and not have to wait for the development team to slowly get to it. But the other advantage we have is that you have a personality, you have a story, you know and one of the lines I use in my course a lot is give me a reason not to buy it from Kmart, you know Kmart is not big over there, you know, Kmart will eventually find your product mass produce it and sell it for half the price, right. But there is a joy that comes from buying from a small business. But I want to know who that small business is, I want to know who’s behind it their values, how they got started. And so I think an underestimated page on ecommerce stores. We talked about people pumping out blogs and not spending time on their collections and their products. But also your story, your brand story your about page, a really good, well-written returns page can get me going, you know, to me like you don’t, don’t lose these opportunities for microcopy and personality to really make that connection with a buyer. Because once you’ve got we talk about SEO bringing people to the door, and CRO getting people to convert, but what keeps people loyal, what keeps people coming back? It’s not price, it’s not price, I think it’s often just your story and who you are and how you treat people. And I think that’s often underestimated in all this AI tech world. You know, people want to buy from people, they kinda like, don’t you think? Do you see that in your world? I know you’re data and Google and spreadsheets, but you know, humans matter at the end of the day, don’t they?
Louis Smith:
Yes, yes, that’s where it is. And there are the brands that will win not moving forward, the ones that build a story and build them and frames to match the customers, you know, many brands will skip that framing and building out that story. But as consumers, you know, that’s what we want. We want to buy from brands that deliver what we’re looking for. And we can join them on that journey. Because as humans we connect to tribes you know, we have that tribe mentality. And if we can join a brand on that journey, we’re sold on that and something that Amazon doesn’t do, we only buy from Amazon and brands like this because he’s a buy-bot to be certain that clothing brands you know, you look at Nike, because there’s a story behind night and we just we stick to that, you know, we internally we want to join that journey and personalization is such an important factor. And just a quick one on the About page. Don’t just build an about page, build a home off that so from your about page, you know, have a page that says why a bit more a bit you know about the brand about the products, how they’re made and create this this this journey for your customer to come in and out of them pages and connect to the brand even more.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I love that. You know so you got your back you got your brand story. You can have your approach. You can have your media and awards, the charities you work with. You could feature some of the people who make your products overseas, you can feature some, you know, top buyers, your most loyal customers and case studies, there’s lots of opportunities in these things that the big brands can’t do, they can try. They can pretend you’re talking to Sue in the call center, even though you know it’s not sue, but you are Sue, be more Sue would be my recommendation. And I say that I’ve got a fabulous member of my community Sue, who I always use as an example. And she sells French tablecloths. And you know, and she’s very niche. But there’s such personality and warmth in our copy, she’s ticked off the SEO boxes, too. But you want to buy from Sue, you know yet, because you just like her, you know, and if you’re ever in the market, and someone says, oh, tablecloths, you’re gonna go with Sue. And it’s that thing, isn’t it always going to be easy to be found for who you are than what you do? So you’ve got to build that brand story at the same time. Hey, Louis, I know we went a bit off script, we could talk about so much more that I really, highly recommend you go and find Louis, on LinkedIn. I think that’s kind of your platform where you live at the moment, isn’t it? There’s a lot of content you’re pumping out on LinkedIn.
Louis Smith:
Yeah, daily, there’s a post to go out later today. But yeah, every day I just give value on what I see working. Yeah, yeah. You know what I experience with brands.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. So I’m gonna link to Louis’ LinkedIn. He’s got some great resources on his site as well. And just, you know, he’s keeping up with all the latest trends. So he’s definitely somebody to follow. Hey, Louis, thank you for finding the time. See, it works pretty smoothly, after our first little hiccup. It was great. I have got progressively more and more northern as this podcast has gone on, which is perfectly fine.
Louis Smith:
You have.
Kate Toon:
I can’t help it. So fantastic. Well, look Louis, thanks so much for being on the show.
Louis Smith:
Yeah, thank you, Kate. It’s been a pleasure to finally get on the show. I’ve been a massive fan over the years. So it’s great to finally come on.
Kate Toon:
Well I hope you can understand me as I got more and more northern as that episode went across. I’m kind of raving about Louis. I do really think his content on LinkedIn is great. There’s a lot of noise makers on LinkedIn, but he is someone that you should follow. So I’ll definitely include a link to his. Hey, look, that is the end of this week’s show. If you have questions about ecommerce or SEO friendly UX, or CRO you know what to do, head to the I LOVE SEO group on Facebook. Also, you can check out the ultimate SEO checklist if you don’t have it already. I mean, who doesn’t have that by now? I want to give a shout out to one of my lovely listeners. It’s EJM web designs from the US a case is awesome. Great show insightful but funny. And not tech bro ish. Like so many others out there. No, bro Here, it’s all tech-sis-ish. I don’t know what that means. Thank you, EJ web design. And thanks to us for listening. If you have a minute to leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you’ve listened to this podcast, it’s super helps other people find the show gives me something to read at the end. And to be quite honest, makes me happy. And you know, it’s all about me. You’ll also get a shout out on the show. Don’t forget you can head to the show notes for this episodes at the recipes Seo success.com where you can find a link to Louis on LinkedIn. So that’s it. Until next time, Happy SEOing
