Ecommerce SEO Tutorial to Get More Free Search Traffic

[@mojganghare]

You are the greatest instructor and content developer ever! Thanks for all the amazing information that you share! Also, the architecture of information inside your videos is WONDERFUL and SUPER UNDERSTANDABLE! I wish I could leave more than one like! :))

[@AhrefsCom]

Thanks, Mojgan! Glad you enjoyed out video.😀

[@chiragartani]

BOOOM! Hi sam that's really amazing.. you covering every single thing in under 20-22 minutes super hard! Thank You appreciate you.

[@AhrefsCom]

You're welcome, Chirag. That was the greatest challenge for this video! Create something in-depth and actionable in a reasonable amount of time 🙂

[@chiragartani]

Absolutely but you are the great when it comes to teach marketing and seo we all learning from here without paying anything to you! :)

[@sauravpanda2116]

Sam you literally taught me so much in just a month and we are using these tactics in our website

[@AhrefsCom]

That's awesome! Keep up the good work 🙂

[@VijaySrinivas]

Great video as usual Sam! Awesome tips on link building techniques for product pages. Looking forward to next week's content!

[@AhrefsCom]

Thanks, Vijay :)

[@cebcreative]

Hi Sam, thanks for posting such a detailed guide to E-commerce SEO. I have an E-commerce site that’s in desperate need of some SEO but just didn’t know where to start. This video has helped me formulate a clear SEO plan and I am now planning a new E-commerce venture as well!

[@AhrefsCom]

That's great to hear. All the best with your ecommerce sites 😀

[@frankfunk9188]

Now that was an INFORMATIVE video. Much appreciated!

[@AhrefsCom]

You are *very* welcome :)

[@elragna9102]

My god, I think i just spend 1 hour to watch a 20 mins video XD. Very helpful video OH, VERY HELPFUL. Even the comment section taught me something good LOL, you are a great content maker.

[@AhrefsCom]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@michellecollins2712]

Thankful you found it helpful!!

[@taofeekjunaid1388]

Hi Sam. Thanks for the tutorial. However, I have a question about linkbuilding. Especially internal linking. I have an e-commerce project that I'm working on. However I have been building internal links to product pages by adding and hiding anchor text among product descriptions. I hide anchor texts by highlighting them in black so visitors won't notice until they mouse over them. Anytime I do this I see positive effects on traffic from the GSC. And I haven't seen brands like AMAZON doing that. I want to ask if it's a good practice? Because I just thought out of the box to implement such a strategy.

[@mapledigitalmarketing5983]

Sam, excellent video! Thank you

[@AhrefsCom]

Glad you liked it! -Helen

[@hellocourage]

If the shop only carry 1 brand, does it still makes sense to write the brand name as H1 on every single product pages ? The storefront will show all products with the same brand name + model, which is kind of weird. What's your thoughts ?

[@zainulabaidin9343]

Thanks Sam. I wanna know how can we know our Client's business more clearly like in video u mentioned that keyword "gabe pump heel shoes" had no search volume while other keyword "vince camuto pumps" had a decent search volume. but how do we know that we can also use this keyword which can be used in place of "gabe pump" as we have no idea what "vince camuto pump" means? should we ask client whether this keyword relates to ur business before optimizing his website for these keywords?

[@AhrefsCom]

If you're working with clients, you can talk to them and learn more about their industry. - SQ

[@David-hd1xl]

You're a good teacher

[@AhrefsCom]

Thanks! -Helen

[@nikleshsundar6736]

The content is getting me super stoked! Thanks a lot Sam!:)

[@AhrefsCom]

You're welcome!

[@BloggingBIG]

I am creating SILO structure , my is simple blog so do i need to index silo category in the yoast seo or not ? and do i need to optimize that SILO catagory or not ?

[@Goofykatze]

How would I want to structure my shop, if I am selling only one type of product (art prints), but offer different variations and sizes of the prints? Should I create a category for each material (canvas, poster, etc.)? Or for different sizes???

[@AhrefsCom]

This is a pretty loaded question and unfortunately can't give you a simple answer. A couple considerations would be the # of products / category, facets etc. If you don't have many products, keep it simple. Or use selector options (ie. change color) within your product pages. -Sam

[@guillaumejuillard8258]

I don't know if you will read this personally but Sam you are amazing, the way you explain difficult things with a lot of simplicity, demonstrate a high professionalism from you and all the ahrefs team. I am a newbie in the seo world and I have a very big respect for you, this video was very instructive :)

[@AhrefsCom]

Thank you for a kind feedback. Sam checks all of the comments, I am sure he will enjoy reading this one =) I just help to follow up with the comments, but definitely make sure Sam is aware of this one;) - Max

[@michellecollins2712]

I’d suggest you talk out things with Edwinconsult __ on Instagram regarding improving your SEO, ranked higher on sales and google using their support..

[@beau9709]

Hi Sam, is there any full course about on this topic of Ecommerce SEO? I do use woocommerce.

[@AhrefsCom]

Unfortunately, we don't have such a course but we're about to launch an affiliate marketing course very soon. Maybe it helps. -Helen

[@markcruise106]

Can you please do a step-by-step tutorial for ranking a travel agency website? Thank you.

[@AhrefsCom]

Hey Mark. We'll consider using the travel niche in some examples for future videos.

[@markcruise106]

Ahrefs Thank you. Looking forward to it.

[@kaka1738]

Hi there! Thanks for this content. Does everything still apply the same in 2020 now?

[@LuxxeProducts]

How can I rank my online store for such wide keyword "Skin Whitening"?

[@selectiveroots]

this is very helpful. thank you

[@AhrefsCom]

Thanks for watching! -Helen

[@fishysaag]

Hey Sam great video! For the parent categories should the goal first be to have easy to understand names to navigate the website rather than SEO. My categorisation isn't going to be straight forward as I am retailing a variety of products so I feel like explanation should be the priority for my parent category and SEO can fall into the sub-categories. Does this make sense? Also what should I do if the singular phrase word is way better on a collection page than the plural version?

[@SamirRifai]

Excellent video! Great way to optimize an e-commerce website.

[@AhrefsCom]

Samir, I am glad you found it useful!

[@GraceAnastasia]

This was super helpful thank you!!

[@AhrefsCom]

Glad it was helpful!

[@EFriend]

Thanks ... very informative video helped me alot .. may god bless u

[@AhrefsCom]

You're welcome, and thanks for watching! :)

[@jayrai7820]

You are a great teacher.

[@AhrefsCom]

Thank you!

[@marialirio7852]

As someone new to SEO this is very informative and got me curious. How does ecommerce seo differ from paid search? Are there any difference at all? Thanks.

[@AhrefsCom]

ahrefs.com/blog/seo-vs-ppc/

[@marialirio7852]

@@AhrefsCom Thank you! 🙏

[@self-alignment4186]

Wow it's such an insightful video

[@AhrefsCom]

Glad you liked it :) -Helen

[@AnnaSzabo]

Sam, excellent video! Thank you 🙏🏻

[@AhrefsCom]

You're welcome! Glad you found it to be helpful, Anna.

[@woffell3291]

Exactly what I needed. Thanks Sam

[@AhrefsCom]

You're welcome! Hope it helps 🙂

[@woffell3291]

It certainly does help, just need some money to afford an ahrefs subscription to make this whole process more effective

[@joliecathy1127]

Thanks for the video

[@AhrefsCom]

Our pleasure! :) -Helen

[@restaurantlinenstore8874]

You are my real boss!!!

[@AhrefsCom]

👍

[@stanimirmihov]

greatly appreciated!

[@kingryanarthur]

Sam, you're my favorite! Thanks for such a great and thorough tutorial. Do you suggest finding additional categories that your current product inventory can fit into in order to have more pages ranking? Additionally, do you know of any major differences between bigcommerce and Shopify from an SEO perspective? We recently looked at organic traffic data from a client. The two years they were using bigcommerce there traffic was almost double of what it was when they moved to Shopify. And it's never fully recovered and appears to be going down each year. We're not sure if it was the platform or the content that made the biggest difference, or something else entirely.

[@AhrefsCom]

It depends... I wouldn’t add products to a category that doesn’t sell or is tangential to your store for the purpose of ‘ranking.’ More traffic does not mean more sales, if you target "not so related" keywords. Do not have any insights on BigCommerce vs Shopify, but I doubt that the reason is in a platform itself.

[@kingryanarthur]

@@AhrefsCom awesome, thanks for the reply. I've assumed keyword research would be part of choosing the categories to add. So, then you WOULD recommend adding new categories for products that do sell?

[@Eskimoz]

Super merci pour ce contenu à consommer sans modération.

[@tusharcharnalia2764]

Provide excellent knowledge

[@AhrefsCom]

Thanks!

[@joshdean187]

Hey Sam, thanks for this! What are your thoughts on keyword cannibalization when it comes to e-commerce? Especially niche websites that have lots of similar products in a single collection. How would you approach this and also do content marketing?

[@AhrefsCom]

Hey Josh. It happens a lot in ecommerce and I think there are occasionally exceptions. For example, branded queries tend to get cannibalized often (ie. Zappos shoes). Search intent is clear that someone wants to look through Zappo's catalogue for shoes, and thus, Google may rank /shoes/ /womens-shoes/ /mens-shoes/ etc. I recommend watching this part here where I talk about the above example using position history: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mnvVkGeYmKZ_f68m24s

[@ianokababa6003]

Nice click generation process

[@AhrefsCom]

🙌

[@ItsCoachBen]

Ahrefs is a fantastic tool!

[@AhrefsCom]

Thank you!

[@efitreze]

That was much more complex than I was expecting... let me go back to the beginner's course 😅

[@AhrefsCom]

Take your time :) -Helen

[@loveluisito]

Hi Sam, apply what you say in your video to finish the web address with /sitemap.xml to the competition page and return "This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below."

[@AhrefsCom]

You need to create a sitemap before you can access it at that URL. If you are doing it on a competitor/client's website, they may not have a sitemap or have it on another URL. In general, most websites will have it at sitemap.xml, but not all websites have the XML file there.

[@tanan9750]

I’m using Shopify and I remove my store name in theme because it adds on total characters of title pages and blogs. It would affect my SEO? Thanks!

[@AhrefsCom]

I don't think removing your store name from the title would be a huge deal. I wouldn't lose sleep over it.

[@tanan9750]

Ahrefs means that’s okay? because I use Ahrefs to audit my store and it keep showing my title is too long because of Shop Name. Looking for for this reply. Thanks!

[@AhrefsCom]

Unfortunately, there isn't a definitive answer. Entirely up to you 🙂

[@ehabkhedr09]

Thanks 😊

[@AhrefsCom]

You're welcome! :) -Helen

[@antoniskaloterakis7996]

Great video as always , I recently started using ahrefs to try fix some issues My I ask , What if a shop had 50 or 100 product but had to be listed and photographed separately cause of unique wood grain , how should product title,url and description should be approached ? Would the sku code on the title url and description should be enough to avoid dublicate contend issues ? And on the other hand what if a particular product page ranks high and or has links then the product is sold ? By deleting it dont we lose traffic ? A way around is i can think is instead of product/c30ol75.com is product/N1-N100 in which after the product is sold we can replace photos and product description without touching the url ? Would ranks remain ?

[@AhrefsCom]

Antonis, I wonder why you want to have a separate page for each finish of the same product. Having some sort of a dropdown or any other type of selector for product finish within one page makes much more sense to me. In this case you avoid duplicate content, as well as make it easier to improve backlink profile for a given product, if you want to rank it. If you delete a product page that ranks well for high-volume keywords, I would not delete it but put it "out of stock" with some similar suggestions being published on that page. So you will keep that traffic and possibilities to get some conversions. Alternatively, you can delete the page but still create a 301 redirect to a relevant product. With your last sample, you will keep the backlinks in place without redirects, but I do not recommend doing that. Your page was about topic A and now about topic B. You ranked for keywords A and now all of the content is about B. People linked to topic A, while now it represents topic B. Too much confusion and fishing is around. I doubt there will be positive results in rankings if you do so. These are just personal thoughts, so do not take it a pure gold ;) - Max

[@antoniskaloterakis7996]

@@AhrefsCom Hello again , thanks for you response I am not talking about finish it is a completly different unique product made by the same species of wood but differentiate alot , a drop-down wouldnt work because you would had to browse between 100 photos , in the same time by reusing the url (lets imagine url as a as a nail on the wall where you can hang a wall clock ) in this particular situation keyword A will be exchactly the same as keyword B . Its kind of hard to explain but i could sent you or post a link to clarify what i mean .

[@AhrefsCom]

I am sorry but we do not provide consulting. You might want to check your options with some SEO agencies. Thanks in advance for understanding. - Max

[@vayadolorosa4498]

​@UCWquNQV8Y0_defMKnGKrFOQ Hi Mr. When loading an image of a product that is sold by other 20 online stores... Is it advisable to add your short text for your shops name at the end on the prduct/image name so that the clients can see your shops name when they google for images which will in turn direct them to your site? Or a clean product name is enough for saving a product image ?

[@AhrefsCom]

I do not think I have a good answer for this. I guess some sort of watermark will help to protect your images from copying as well as help people with some brand awareness. - Max

[@vayadolorosa4498]

@@AhrefsCom We are all using the same exact pictures as middlemen; myself included... It is advisable to save the image with it's item description + ones business name or shop at the end ?

[@niteshgarg16j]

Hey Sam can you please make a video on 'How to rank classified ads websites?' where the content is not in the hands of website owner.

[@AhrefsCom]

Thanks for your suggestion, Nitesh. We'll see if it fits into any of our future videos.

[@wenjingji8086]

However, the truth is many websites do not promote e-commerce website for free, there are always affiliate programs going on. It is so much easier to just use affiliate websites than doing all these analysis and reach out but hear nothing back...

[@AhrefsCom]

I don't think these tactics are mutually exclusive 🙂 - SQ

[@UrbanCraftTv]

Thanks 🇰🇪

[@AhrefsCom]

👍

[@jotgoo4271]

good

[@AhrefsCom]

Thanks :) -Helen

[@streetgoods5841]

Let's talk about AI

[@AhrefsCom]

We're already talking here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a2rLpIOJp76po80 :) -Helen

[@101superstore8]

ahrefs is not free....

[@AhrefsCom]

We have some free tools, check them out (scroll to the footer): ahrefs.com/ - SQ

[@rioservidad1593]

Execute JavaScript cannot turn on on 7-days trial so cannot follow these steps properly.

[@AhrefsCom]

Do consider signing up for an Advanced plan if you want to render Javascript for crawling :)

[@rioservidad1593]

@@AhrefsCom business. :)

[@SebastianPappG]

Dude, if u are so smart with this seo ecommerce thing, then why the fuck u don't build your damn website and make millions of dolars like amazon and so on :)))

[@SamOhYT]

Who says I'm not? :)

[@David-hd1xl]

You're a good teacher

[@AhrefsCom]

🙂