Myriam Jessier of PRAGM joined the Clearscope webinar to discuss ecommerce content types.
Myriam covers the the must-have pages and more importantly what needs to be on them. Watch the full webinar below.
Watch the full webinar
Myriam graciously shared her slides which you can find here.About Myriam Jessier:
Myriam Jessier is co-owner of the PRAGM agency and a certified trainer. Her main job is to teach SEO to corporate marketers, brand agencies, and development centers.
Follow Myriam on Twitter: https://twitter.com/myriamjessierAbout PRAGM:
PRAGM is a company specialized in technical marketing training and consultancy. They specialize in technical issues tied to SEO & Analytics such as rendering, GTM debugging, and improving Core Web Vitals.
Read the transcript
[00:00:00] Travis: So today we have Myriam Jesser joining us. Myriam is the co-owner of PRAGM agency and a certified trainer. Her main job is to teach SEO to corporate marketers, brand agencies, and development centers. And PRAGM is a company specialized in technical marketing, training, and consultancy. They specialize in technical issues, tied to SEO and analytics, such as rendering, GTM debugging, and improving core web vitals.
[00:00:46] Myriam: So today we're going to be talking about different e-commerce content types. And one of the issues I often run into is that some of my clients were like, we want to rank for this. And I'm like, that's great. However, were you aware that, you know, the results that are shown are aggregator types? So unless you can transform yourself into a lifestyle blog for this, it's not going to happen.
[00:01:13] And. This brings about many, many questions. So with time I developed, you know, a way to explain this to clients and I wanted to share it today with everyone. The first thing I explained is that there were some key pages for SEO when you do e-commerce. I mean, it's just non-negotiable and it's for a different reason.
[00:01:34] The homepage, the product detail pages, category pages, FAQ blog articles, and promo pages are very often just left to languish. When users do seek out quite a lot of customer service pages, this one is near and dear to my heart because it's something that we will find very often listed in the content quality writers' guidelines.
[00:02:00] So the EET guidelines. If you don't have a customer service page, well, most often you don't have the right information that would make you appear to be a legit store. But as a customer, I shouldn't have to end up in a rabbit hole spending 10 minutes on Reddit to find your brands and shipping details. And to figure out that if I send this to Canada, I'm going to have a huge amount of money to payout.
[00:02:27] I shouldn't have had this experience. Like I should be able to find this information easily. So there are three big things that you have to consider when you have an e-commerce store, what you want to communicate as a company, your vision, mission, selling points, and what your customers say about you. Okay. What products, solutions, and services do humans look for online?
[00:02:50] So keywords are proxies to express these, these queries. If I'm looking for, and this is a real item that you can buy at Costco, but also online am home pizza oven, pandemic let's have fun. If there's another peak, let's go, well, this is something that I'm wanting to express in different ways, but these ways.
[00:03:15] Sometimes a bit similar to the ways I'm going to be Googling how to build my pizza oven. That's also something I discovered people did during the pandemic. So you need to consider what humans are looking for and how they're looking for it. And then at the end of the spectrum, you would think that all of these things align, but that's not the case, what Google fevers and shows for each type of query.
[00:03:36] And if you think that. I have figured out the right keywords and the right company. Let me produce the right content. Google will favor me. I have news for you. There are still many, many crappy websites that still make it onto the rankings. So you have to take the time for key queries to figure out what is Google showing.
[00:03:57] So concrete example, tied to a brand that has disastrous impacts for some people. I have a client of mine, their names. This is what people are looking for in Canada when they look for their name, but their name is announced. So Google translate sometimes will pop it up in the results and like bring everything down.
[00:04:18] Can I compete with Google trends? No. So be careful and do check this out. You have to make sure that these things are considered even though, even though they may not always align perfectly, keep that in mind. Why? Well, let's look at what you know, SERPs look like. You have to understand that this is a battle Royal ecosystem image, search map, search the local back, Google news.
[00:04:48] There, each of these things are separate entities battling behind the scenes to be shown. They have their rankings they're on the results. And there was like, pick me, pick me and Google adjusts. So this means that if I'm looking for Anita. For example, and I love this example. I'm not design-oriented.
[00:05:07] That's why you have a 1, 2, 3. Imagine you're scrolling once, twice, three times. Okay. Well, you, you have a query where Google will go, Adidas. I know this, this is e-commerce. And then it's like, okay, let me show you some shopping ads. This matches. Then it's like, you know what, let me show you another ad. This time it's a website just in case I didn't get it right on the right.
[00:05:29] You have the knowledge graph, everything that could go. No. How about this brand. Okay. That's important. They come from different sources. Then we finally make it onto Adidas, Canada, which is the first SEO result. And then Google-like. If you don't want this, you may want to go to a store. Let me show you the local pack.
[00:05:51] Let's go. And I was like, you know what, maybe I got it wrong. And this is something else. Canadians hate. Let me show you our website. Because here's the rule in e-commerce. If I am finding the product I want online and it's available and the price is great, this means I'm on the dotcom and that's the version of the brand.
[00:06:11] That's what I have learned frustrations about. And then how did Adidas make it into the news? Well, always something related to Kanye. Hmm. Okay. So we have Kanye west news to give you, and these are judged to be rather important. Sometimes he will even pop up at the top underneath the huts. Then Google was like, you know what?
[00:06:31] This is such, an ambiguous and ahead term that I don't too many people are hiding in that overcoat here. Edina is, could mean many things. So here are some questions to refine. If somehow that still doesn't qualify. Well, Footlocker is a reseller. So I mean, we're giving it our all, and if you're not looking into transactional intent, we have everything.
[00:06:56] You have to know whether Wikipedia, we will inform me one, the brand, and then an image is worth a thousand words. Here are the image results. Isn't always like that. Not very often for e-commerce queries, you will have the images up at the top. Look for a lilac sweater. Let me tell you Google images there to sell you stuff.
[00:07:15] So it depends, but I like this example because it shows you how Google is trying to match the searching deck. No matter how all over the place it can be. And this is e-commerce in-depth like it's understood. You want to buy something. So there are three big intense categories. Do you want to navigate to something?
[00:07:34] Let me get to the Adidas store or let me get to wherever I'm going online. There's the information side. So one question you may have missed in the previous slide. How do I tell what Adidas shoes I have? I'm not looking to navigate. I'm not looking through transactions. I need the information.
[00:07:55] And then you have the transaction shut up and take my credit card. These are big and intense. What is very difficult is that many people want navigation and information queries to be transactional. And I'm like, no, no, it just doesn't work. You cannot transform it. So sometimes you have to be smart.
[00:08:16] And let me explain this. Sometimes people are looking for information to make the right choice. It's not transactional yet, but you could compare two burdens or two tomorrow. Okay. Information. And then you push them along to transaction, but you cannot force these queries. People are looking for what they're looking for, even though they don't always know exactly what they're looking for.
[00:08:37] They can tell what they're not looking for. And you've seen, Google's like, okay, I'm trying to satisfy you all. Let's figure this out. As a side note, this is still included in e-commerce if you type your query and you see a video. Don't try to compete with a piece of written content. It's not going to work.
[00:08:57] People want to see how it's done to produce a video. So how do people search for things? And as a side note why am I qualified to talk about this? I worked for many, many, many years as a librarian. I was the person in college who told you? No, no. Let me look. No. I have been faced with so many ways. People will look for information and how they're confounded by search catalogs.
[00:09:28] And I can tell you, some people are going to look for an exact search. I know the name of my product right down to the model. Like we're good. Let's go compatible search. Well, I already have this camera. I need this. Product type search. So product type search would be like high-waisted pants. I'm looking for a type of thing, not a brand, and a specific model-related product search.
[00:09:52] So related product searches. I'm looking for, you know, something that is not complementary to what I already have necessarily, but that is related. So what would be a good example? I had a few, but if, if I'm looking for, for example, baby stuff, and I'm buying a bunch of gifts for bringing your mom, these items are related, they're not necessarily in the same type search by.
[00:10:24] If you have a white sofa and you spilled some red wine, you are searching to fix a problem. You don't care about the name of the product or the type of the product. If they told you it was a powder that you could just blow on it and it would go away, you would do it. You don't care about the product itself.
[00:10:41] You care about fixing your problem. And then there's product adjacent queries, the delivery refunds. The related product search. The example that I use most often is Tom Hanks. And now this is a bit confusing, but this Tom Hanks shows you how good Amazon's internal search is. If you're looking for movies that have Tom Hanks in them, or that have been directed by Tom Hanks, he'd still come up with the answer.
[00:11:10] So basically anyone's older drunken relative at a party telling you about whatever movie. Go to Amazon and try to figure it out. See if it can guess it faster than you can because it probably will. So now that we've outlined the big intense and how people will think about their searches, like what are their motivations when searching for a product?
[00:11:37] What are their criteria's while the criteria are color, I'm the type of person. If you tell me. My outfit is available in brown. We're not talking to each other. I will never find you. I look for black stuff, the end materials. Some people will not buy leather. Some people will seek exclusively leather performance.
[00:12:00] So performance, you would think automatically, maybe laptops can it, can I have a gaming laptop? Yeah, let's talk about performance differently. Does this go in the dishwasher? Is this microwave? Performance format? Well, I had a miniature Wiener dog. I can take her in a backpack on an adventure. Not that she would enjoy it and all that I would, but it's a thing it can happen.
[00:12:27] Now, if you have a sub. And you want to go with your dog and have an adventure. You are going to buy a dog carrier. That dog carrier is an Excel dog carrier. It's a special one. The format does matter for some folks. Pricing does matter as well. If you're looking for the cheapest headphones, my wonderful comparison of the best noise-canceling headphones in the market is not going to reach you because that's 200, 300, or $400.
[00:12:55] Plus you're not here. The. So this one I deeply enjoy because the example I use is Yeti because multiple brands are called Yeti. So it's amazing to see these brands fight each other for recognition and how Google understands. Oh, you're looking for a cooler. You're looking for this. You're looking for that brand is also a criterion.
[00:13:18] If some folks have learned that they prefer some brands, that's good. If some folks have learned that, you know, some brands genuinely do bring out in quality, it goes back into performance, but the way it's. Vibrant. It's a criterion. So gifting. So a lot don't mind me, people will also search my theme. That's good because it's traditional, you know, this you're comfortable with this winter coats, summer dresses, seasons matter intended use for the office, for the garden, for that colleague's retirement party.
[00:13:51] Most of the time the answer is jewelry. Get them to. Special occasions. Well, every time maybe it was a special, special occasion, but usually intended use. I plan to use this for that one colleague leaving special occasions is more like birthday wedding, a side note. Divorce products are having a huge boom special occasion divorce cakes, those happen events, elections, you know, field talking.
[00:14:18] Hmm. Okay. That's genuinely a thing. Whenever a specific team wins in Montreal, you get free fries at McDonald's. That's a huge event. If you're on that level of event, maybe you can offer something, but you have to understand that people are motivated by it. Extrinsic factors will motivate them to look for stuff.
[00:14:37] Okay. It's not just you having a wonderful product and then you're going to convince them they need the product. That's old-school marketing. Great. I know we have convinced quite a few people to do quite a few things as marketers like Bernard Travis. This will probably shock you, but women shaving their armpits did not happen.
[00:14:54] Naturally. It happened with marketing in 1910, the universal. Marketers created a need for this cause they had too many razors. Let's go. So we can't do that for e-commerce most of the time we're trying to optimize for SEO. So it is back on how we can get around these things, a surgeon by compatibility, we talked about it, but what does it look like?
[00:15:19] Brand name plus accessory type. This should be maybe in your content. Either a category page or if you only have one of these accessories in the product page makes sense. Simply like you don't necessarily need to do keyword research. That's super heavy. If you have, this type of content matrix in your mind, once you understand what people are looking for brand name plus the type of spare part that also matters a lot, product name, model, and accessories.
[00:15:50] Product plus need. These are very important ways that people will like to type into Google when they search for your products. Subjective searches. This one is tricky and we do not cater for it quite well, but Google does. So when we're looking for a delicious snack, what does it mean? Is it salty? Is it sweet?
[00:16:16] Is it spicy? Is it fatty? I mean, if you go to Texas is deep-fried there are many questions to deconstruct this subjective qualifier are often vital in customer's buying decisions. So, we tend to kind of ignore them, but they're very, very important. So another subjective search that could turn into a real search depending on the store, but if you're looking for a wedding.
[00:16:45] And you're not looking for wedding shows, on a wedding website, but just a generic place, because let's say I'm made of the owner and I have to go seek out a pair of shoes. I'm looking for something subjective here. Help me find it. Which one of your products or which one of your collections matches this better?
[00:17:05] Why do I see this? Why am I using wedding? Because I have worked with jewelers and they are not specializing with. Yet people seek their brands and there are models for this specific time to wake up. I may be catered to this because it's subjective, but if you have been assigned this category, brighten with it.
[00:17:27] So people will start with head terms and refine their searches over time. That's why there's a lot of ambiguity in high-volume keywords. Welcome to the theory of the long term. Had terms are hiding lots of intense, lots of people. And then as we go, we refine and there's less and less volume because there are fewer and fewer people who want the same specific thing expressed this way.
[00:17:54] They could express it in another way and look for the same product. So keep that in mind. So since we refine, we don't want to be number one, we don't want. To have like the best position for head terms that may bring people who are looking to maybe build their pizza oven instead of fighting it. So you need different types of content to meet various e-commerce search patterns.
[00:18:22] And that's very, very important. If you want to make a dent at all in your SQL ambitions, like if you want to reach your goal. Because if you keep optimizing content that is not made to even be considered, well, you're not showing up. So there's, there's a hierarchy of needs when it comes to SEO. Is it crawlable?
[00:18:48] Like, can I connect. Is it indexable? Can I bring pertinent stuff home? And is it rank-worthy? Should I be showing up for this query? And most people forget that. So if you're showing up with the wrong content, it's not going to work. And on top of this, there's an added layer. Google has stated, Hey. We, want certain content to be there on e-commerce sites.
[00:19:15] Look for contacting information, including the stores, payment exchange, and return policy. This information is sometimes listed under customer service. And now, you know why it was talking about the customer service pages being key agents. They're not key necessarily to you, but they are to Google and the order to your customers, once they decide to look for specific information.
[00:19:38] So. Getting back to our list. On the first page, the homepage, you would be surprised how many online stores have cruelly lacking information when it comes to their homepage? Like, what do you do in life? I get the pretty pictures, but what do you do? So the homepage or the website usually contains important information about the site or links to that information.
[00:20:07] I know this is not mind-boggling yet. Somehow we tend to fail at this. So in practice, the speech has to direct users to categories or products and highlight key products. It gave the best sellers, introduce a brand, and perhaps direct shoppers to help and or provide contact information. Not everyone is coming to your page to buy.
[00:20:27] Some people are looking to talk to you, you know, like customer feedback, looking for other things. We have to be careful and give them this information. So how do we approach this? Because most of the time we take this for granted as SEOs as a general rule, the first down element is the fewer visitors will see it.
[00:20:51] Okay. So if you're ending up with a giant pizza, make sure that the elements that are less sought out more niche, but still very useful at the time. The top part should present information that is most relevant to users. What do you do for a living? So I have worked online I'm French.
[00:21:10] So if somebody in the chat can give the translation very quickly, like darn bread, breadmaker. Whatever it is, they provide you with carbs and delicious carbs, and they do it online because they're gluten-free. And most people order huge batches that they will freeze. Because if you have celiac disease, you need them in your life.
[00:21:30] Like all the other options are much less. They stay and some of them can be downright dangerous when they lie. So tell me you do that. Tell me each one, your name, and then online. Bluenose the gluten-free. And if you want the gluten-free version in French is someone who did great. So now this needs to be said and ask people will scroll down and they will find the rest of the information that you will order that the end, you can take this slide and justify, bring it into many, many corporate fights, practical advice, have your unique selling proposition or special offers at the top of the.
[00:22:10] If you have a wide range of products reserved in niche items for the bottom of the page while keeping the top sellers, I ended up how you structure the homepage will depend on your business just because this burn has done this doesn't mean you have to like replicate their mistake or what works for them, but not for.
[00:22:28] So be careful about this and always make sure you have a very clear age one that contains the main keyword that describes the online store. Not necessarily the products themselves don't fall into that fallacy. Like what does the store do? Because I had a client incredible mix selling heroin seeds and handmade soaps, interesting type of Hone to create you can't come at me with just specific.
[00:22:57] Wellness is like holistic wellness. Was there a trend? I was like, no, for me, we need to be clear on what we do now. Category pages. Ah, yes. So category pages are. There's like purgatory, like where most people go, but we're hoping that you will translate to some somewhere else. And as a customer, a category page is where I spend most of my time, either scrolling, filtering, or whatever, if I don't know a brand, I just want to know what you offer.
[00:23:27] This is where I'm at. We have multiple situations with category pages. They were either bearing wasteland. Full of products, but no other context or they're just so optimized with so much fluff that the text takes up most of the space. And then you don't even see the products. Google Google's an entity.
[00:23:49] No. John Mueller from Google has stated, Hey, you can fill this with junk. It's not going to help you. Please stop. How do we handle it? Well, you have to understand why they were for these pages is great to target more generic terms like black men's jeans. Or a vaccine type, make sure that these category pages are indexable because sometimes if you go in the lower category, so subcategories, for example, in Shopify, it's a nightmare and enough, you will not have those, those great opportunities. After all, it will be chemicalized into the main category.
[00:24:25] So be careful about this. If you can optimize them, step one is all you have to do. Step one, don't go overboard. Optimize yours. Okay. For the key category pages that you need, and then you can refine section pages can also be very, very interesting. What is a section page? Well, it's an umbrella for categories home office before the pandemic, this category that hot.
[00:24:51] Now that section is very important. Isn't a category though. No, it's an umbrella because it will pick up from printers that are great for your home. Tears are great for you. That's got our great for your home, but for the home office, so different criteria, this is where it matters. I'm not lying. Here are the examples of the sections.
[00:25:12] We can go into ink plus office machines, and then you have office supply and you have ink and toner printers, office machines. It truly does exist. And then what else? Well, the new item. Your items are a bit tricky when it comes to e-commerce content types. Do you have it in your item section, do you not?
[00:25:36] Can you make a blog post? What happens? So let's be clear, be aware of cannibalization. So if you're a big brand, we'll talk about that in a second, but if you're a regular brand, not Ikea, you may cannibalize yourself because if you have a section that is called new shoes, In the women's section, it could compete with your category page for women's shoes.
[00:25:59] You don't want that avoid that. However, if you're health stuff and people look for what you do every year, then that collection page, that new items, new, whatever is important because the Ikea catalog used to be an event. It's of interest for SU the same goes for trends. If you have, for example, new specific road bikes.
[00:26:25] So specialized is a brand. And let's talk about that now. And for a brand name specialized has each year, new collections, new items that come out. People are very interested in road bikes, road bikes. They could have a dedicated section there, on their website. And this one is for my reseller.
[00:26:46] Please have brand pages. Please, please, please. So, as I said, I enjoy Yeti because you have the Yeti bike. He had, he kept getting monkey Scrabble. Hmm. Interesting. Is it a real animal? Does it count as a real word? I don't know what's going on, but it's there and you can notice that Yeti, the animal is just so much lower down.
[00:27:09] Most of the time consumers use a Brent identifier in their searches. It's, it's a criterion that you use to filter stuff. So Brian becomes interesting in internal linking prospects and to position himself on generic terms related to the brand. So pizza ovens that you could buy for your home are available in Costco, but also online
[00:27:31] Oh, and I, you and I would not search for. But if we're in the business of looking for this right now for this summer, well, that pizza oven you have read probably that this is one of the best brands and you're looking, where do I buy it? If I do not have a concerted category page? Well, not a category, but a brand page telling you, not only do I sell these, but like, They're our best model, the cheapest one, the most expensive one, et cetera, and explaining how that works and helping remove the friction that remains you're not, you're, you're losing an opportunity.
[00:28:09] Brands are very, very important and they're a great way to, like I said, bring about some interesting internal linking opportunities. Another opportunity for brands is that most of the time. The brands that come to Canada will do their best to not translate their content into French. So there are manuals that are pretty terrible because they're either Google translated or they don't exist.
[00:28:32] Period, taking the time and the brand page to answer some common questions in your native language, that that brand is not handling is a huge bonus. We're pages if you have resellers yourself. So if she wants to list where your soul does great for a local SEO, and if you have stores, how do you go about this?
[00:28:54] Well, almost half of the queries have a local search intent. That's important to keep in mind. During the beginning of our situation, many people have said, Hey, a third of them have said, I want to support more local businesses. Why? Well, because Hey, it's important for your community. Be better. Quality. See fewer delays as well.
[00:29:19] Logistics. Failing lately. So you can bring a local touch to your store pages. You can talk about neighborhoods, traditions, and local slang. It's all good. It's great. A store listing page should have a home with a brand and a location. Now I'm going to go back just a bit to say something.
[00:29:40] What are people looking for when it comes to the store pages, and the hours of operation. Tell me when you're open when you're close like just say hours of operation of this store. Plus the location. People will thank you for it. If you have a store that sells certain items and not all of them that you sell online, a clear example, some brands have clothing and home decor, but not all the stores have the home decor.
[00:30:07] Tell me what you have.
[00:30:11] If you do not have a store that is physical brick and mortar, you knew this better than anyone else. Sales online are incredibly important. So folks are looking for specific items or are motivated to shop because they know that it's a promo period or, or they're the type of people who even if they make a really bad choice.
[00:30:36] They can tell you that they got the cheapest price for it. If you that shout out to my brother if you are facing these folks, if they were price sensitive, optimize your promo pages, even though you may not use them all year round, keep them on your website, remove them from the menu if they're not necessary for now, but keep them on.
[00:30:59] Because it works. A lot of people are looking for sales items, cheaper items end of year sales, or collections like this like clearance. They are looking for this. Then another option on those sales pages offers a wishlist option. When you have a wishlist, you can see what people are interested in, but you also can optimize it.
[00:31:20] A bit better when it comes to sales? No. Okay. What are the best sellers and offer guides and show customer reviews to push that along just you don't need to necessarily have content dedicated to how to purchase the best or cheapest, et cetera. You just need to guide people. So you know that they're here, that they're price sensitive or they're, they're motivated by a sale.
[00:31:46] Tell them. Okay. The sale is already made. You have the right price, you have the right product, and you know how to use it. We're here to show you that don't worry. You will be using it. And here are the others that made that choice before you, and they're happy. Some best practices when it comes to promo pages, the page should be made available as soon as possible.
[00:32:05] So that Google bot has time to detect it and exit, if you don't have some, some websites choose to like turn them on and off. That's why I'm saying this. That's why I recommend also keeping them, even though they're not in the main navigation that avoids this issue, but Google bot needs to be able to detect any index your, your sales page.
[00:32:21] So if you start your black Friday promo night, two days before or a week before. I had a link to the landing pages from your homepage. So whenever you have different sales, those links go on the home page. Basic recommendation, use a recurring URL, no black Friday, 2019, that you're going to keep recycling.
[00:32:43] Do not use a new URL every year, please. Okay. And that will help you a lot. And when it comes to SEO, Keep the accumulating gains. So include relevant high-quality images with UpToDate, for representations of the promotion. So if it's not up to date, you're going to have issues because people will be wondering what's going on.
[00:33:05] Another element that is important for images is to show me why it's a good deal. Like, highlight this. Don't use the same first picture for everything. Like, be careful. To whatever sale is going on and have Google crawl your page again if you already have it on the website. So your content is updated more quickly.
[00:33:26] So like inspected maybe in Google search console, something paying Google via different means, but you need to make sure that your new content, once you update it is taken into account product detail, pages, PDBs for Google. The purpose of the product page is to sell or give information about the. I understand this, but also I see so many e-commerce situations where it's like, they're trying to not sell you the product.
[00:33:55] They're so little information. So maybe doing some guidelines, for the product, they should include the manufacturer's product specifications, user reviews, shipping and return information, several images of the product, and product innovation. Itself. And that's not me. That's Google saying it. Okay. Like we can, we can fight about this if you want, but I got nothing to add.
[00:34:27] What does it mean? It means that the product specifications are not enough by themselves. You can slap that stuff on there and expect to sell. It's not going to work, which brings me back to. The reasons people buy this. What are the occasions? Is this a great gift for that retirement party for that birthday, for that graduation, or for divorce?
[00:34:49] Does it go into the dishwasher? What's the performance like wonder about, okay. Are there colors, are there specific things that people are looking at? So the ideal product page targets, long-tail high conversion keywords. Remember the category page black men's jeans. Okay. If you were targeting a long tail high conversion keyword, for example, for a pair of jeans would be like Levi's black men's jeans and then boot cut or something like this, or the specific model.
[00:35:19] Okay. A short description, which includes secondary keywords. If we're talking to each other and you don't know what secondary keywords are, all. Don't feel bad, like I'm cool. Let's explain this. So secondary keywords are keywords that would make you doubt yourself if you didn't see them. If I'm, if I'm considering, for example, I don't know weight loss for summer while I'm expecting to see calories, exercise hydration.
[00:35:50] Kilos or pounds if I don't have any of these and somebody is talking to me about this, I'm a bit worried. Oh my God, what are you describing? Exactly. So when it comes to products, there are specific things for the car. For example, the mileage, like how much gas. Per like how many kilometers can I get per gallon?
[00:36:13] Huge question. Mainly when you're buying a car because it costs a lot. So these are like secondary things that you need to see as a parallel. If you get on to a basket-like you go into checkout, you go to the checkout and you do not see those little like PayPal and that other logo with the little E or the credit card logos.
[00:36:37] You're thinking either I'm going to receive this product or I'm going to get scammed. And my identity is probably going to be stolen. It's just secondary stuff that makes us feel uncomfortable. So keep that in mind. Secondary keywords are not necessarily what describes your product the best that's.
[00:36:53] Those are your main keywords. As the main thing you're going to target secondary keywords are like, if I didn't have this in there, am I talking about what I'm talking about? You need to also have the feature. I know this sounds weird, but many people forget them. Several images are welcomely pressed.
[00:37:12] So they don't take too long to load long descriptions. So there's a short description. Usually, at the top, we convinced you to give your features, and then there's a longer blurb of product suggestions. Underneath internal linking is great, from an SEO standpoint, and then reviews as an option, you can have a link to one or more shopping guides or tutorials on your blog.
[00:37:34] If you have made that content like checkout or pillow buying guide. Yeah. That would help me, amongst the 30,000 Tempur-Pedic options that I have I'm on this one, I'm knocking just for me. And use structured product data. So that's code-wise, but that also provides more information for bots and humans when they do show up on known product pages yes, these are not very much loved and they should be your customers have questions before they feel comfortable, forking over some cash buyers.
[00:38:10] Often ask questions about, you know, product support returns, lost account passwords. Do you want to spend time on the phone with these people? Do you want to answer emails? No. I think you've said Sean's provides a self-help space to resolve common issues. If you're fed up with having to explain this, or in your case if the sales department is fed up, make content for this.
[00:38:37] I know this because I have one of these I, not just one. I have so many articles that are just self-help. Oh, you don't know how to add me to Google analytics and you want to send me your login and password. Here's the article showing you how to do it with a video. Oh, you know, here's a video of how I'm equipped.
[00:38:55] Same for e-commerce. Except that when it comes to e-commerce, it's a double duty, you saved some money on support and you gain some things in terms of SEO, people that are hesitating to buy you're removing the friction. What are those nonproduct pages, and their return policy? I know we don't want anyone to return anything, but come on.
[00:39:21] We do need to have this. If I don't see this, I'm slightly worried. And we also agree as human beings. I know I have a regular standard, large size in North America, but in China or conference merge stuff, I'm a double to triple XL depending on the day. And if I'm in Europe, I'm. Depending on the country like Germany, like, Hmm.
[00:39:46] You're maybe a large or maybe a medium. If I'm going to France, let me tell you I'm considered plus size already by having the size that I have, but 42 is not a large inference. It is a plus size. So please make sure I can correct any issues we have together and me as a customer and you. That will enable me to continue this fruitful collaboration and, you know, keep giving you money shipping.
[00:40:13] Same game. I don't want to pay duties. I don't want to pay extra. I want to know how fast it arrives. A friend of mine had to keep emailing a luxury chair designer for her chair because it was lost in transport. Lost in transport, ended up being delayed by eight months. And they thought she was just going to stand up the whole time at her desk.
[00:40:33] I don't know how they would plan this. Please be clear on your shipping payment or pricing details. Very important customer service page, please, please help people help themselves with delivery and returns, refund policies, and encourage customers to commit to a purchase. We know this your return policy needs to be visible.
[00:40:55] It's a trust. And those in the middle of the conversion funnel, while they often want to engage with your brand, they're not buying yet. So objections about anything under the sun need to be addressed in those pages. They're not just for people who already, to buy already bought your belt page also matters so much, and we have a tendency to set it and forget it.
[00:41:21] So if you aren't going to set it and forget it, that's fine. Just revamp it once after talking to. And then you're good for a little while until somebody else chain was doing, doing so. The about page, most websites talking about us or an about page side note, do not think you can be cute and rename this.
[00:41:38] Okay. I don't, I don't want anything fancy. I don't want to meet the rainbow unit about I'm good. And this is important because this is how Google is going to decide. Are you a legit store? Are you a legit brand? Do I trust you? Do I show you? Otherwise, they are opening themselves to a few lawsuits when it comes to this information.
[00:42:01] So it applies to everyone including e-commerce sites. And please Monte, I presented the brand team, and the collections. What inspired you to put a CDA in the Indian CTA call to action. What next? I like you. I'm ready to go next. The next back with you. Usually, that's very often forgotten or it's a call to action.
[00:42:23] Like send us your CV. And I'm like, no, this should be different. Your content strategy overall, now that we have covered all the different types of fit you could have on any commerce store, let's talk about how you get people in beyond this. So higher up in the. Your blog is key. Your blog must support your category and product pages.
[00:42:50] It allows you to introduce inspirational content and inspirational content doesn't necessarily happen in product detail pages. It doesn't happen on the contact page. You need a spot to do this, and usually, that's your blog that content will complement or reinforce like semantic positions. You're telling Google I'm an expert at this.
[00:43:10] And I also have. So here are some content ideas, tutorials, detailed advice, shopping guides, and specific lists behind the scenes. Let's dive into them. If you can understand how each page works on your store, you have an edge because then you can figure out what fits into your blog. Your blog should aim to align with search intent, to the best degree you remember, some people are looking for transactional content.
[00:43:42] You have your transactional content pages. Some people are looking for. Information or navigation. This is where it gets pertinent to have a blog to provide information. Well, some people want information about a specific product, product detail page, fine, but most people are looking to compare brands, compared models.
[00:44:01] Look for the best as you view, when you have kids look for them. And this is a real query in Canada. Look for the best electric vehicle to carry your hockey stuff, because you need a bigger one. So these things matter aligning with the search intent. So when it comes to what you want to write, keep in mind, that you have 52 weeks in a year.
[00:44:26] You're not going to be able to create magic. In that time, you are going to be able to advance your objectives, but you have to be mindful of, Hey, I can't do everything. So what do you do? All the processes? Step one, define the topics that are related to yours. Step to validate topics by conducting a keyword search, because in step one if you have a blog post that worked super well, but that doesn't bring you any purchases.
[00:44:54] It's empty, it's a hobby. Great. Your ball dealer doesn't bring anything. So they find the topics, validate them, making sure that people are genuinely looking for this stuff and how they're looking for it. Right. And include at least one link to your approach. And never skipped the previous steps. Otherwise, you're going to have a very expensive hobby on your hands.
[00:45:15] So when we're talking about inspirational and transversal content can look like guides, comparisons, tutorials, product demos, FAQs, experts, Roundup trends, lists of news, images, and videos. That's a lot. Don't tell me that you're out of ideas or that you're going to repeat 15 times huge outfit ideas for addressing this winter on Instagram.
[00:45:39] Because I saw a brand that produced three of these, each winter for the past 10 years. I don't want anything years not. Sorry. They did this for six years. I think it was, it was intense, but like so intense and same thing nonstop. I will break it down for you. Gentlemen if you want to dress up this winter and be cute for Instagram, it involves a skirt.
[00:46:02] I'm not sure how that works. Once again, in Canadian winters, you can offer buying guides. Please make sure that these have been on your website. It's a great opportunity to produce useful content and bring people along the funnel. You can rank on terms that answer genuine questions that lead to a purchase, which product do I choose?
[00:46:25] What sells. Et cetera, et cetera. To help people who are already looking for your product, how, how to change an iPhone screen would be a great tutorial to sell the kits and show me how it's done. I have an inverse. How does this install your competitor? If you're selling software, that's a great one. Like, Hey, we're helping you leave.
[00:46:46] That that does perform well trends and uses best road bikes for 2022 wifi six routers, trending nail Polish this summer in 2022. Okay. Those are great trends. Please surf on them. You can recycle them. Remember there are seasonal trends as well. And now they're like trends. Timely queries. I can help you.
[00:47:08] So find out about our fire alarms that complained about law 1276. This is another made-up example, by the way, it's not, it worked. So keep this in mind, even if you sell what you would consider the most boring thing in the world. It's not to some people, if you sell some pool parts right now, people love you.
[00:47:29] You are going to be in high demand, optimized, please. Lists. I don't have to go too deep into it. You have been on the internet long enough, you know, they work. I can tell you why they work, but TLDR is the way our brains are made. It's genuinely like candy to us. So how do we make this genuinely relevant instead of producing empty content for e-commerce 10 tweaks to lighten your road bike, you bought a bike.
[00:47:59] Your next step is to gain performance very often. Like this thing is too heavy. I'm too tired. It's one of the reasons why we don't like public bikes. It's like trying to take up a Boulder with wheels up a hill. It doesn't work. So some slight tweaks to lighten the load, show me what I can replace or upgrade to help myself a great list, great search intent.
[00:48:21] A product demo or test helps as well. And it can be video. It can be a mix of image and content. Do whatever fits your brand. Ranks well in Google. So test articles or demos are interesting because it helps you rank on specific queries are just right before the sale, not too top of the funnel, but if people are researching, they're interested, they're wanting to know this image and video content well image and video is great to bring that inspirational content into the product detail page.
[00:48:53] Show me. Live broadcasting is also a great opportunity to interact with you. When, when customers want to talk to you, that's great. You can build closer relationships and reuse, and recycle this content later. Blog posts, including videos. That's great because you can share reviews. You can share, and people will talk about your product or test it.
[00:49:15] Does it need to be your content to be in the blog? Now I have ranked with embeds that are not. As long as it aligns with the search intent and your content around it is the best answer that needs Google will position the video and lead to your website. And images are very important for the e-commerce period.
[00:49:33] Visual commerce should not be discounted. You saw it with Google IO. Now we can take pictures and it will just tell you contextually what's around and help you shop. They want an image-like visual search to work and it works well. The next step for them is to monitor. The crap out of it, be there to help them because if you are invested in visual commerce, you are most likely going to be reaping the benefits while others are catching up.
[00:50:04] And I believe that we have reached the end of this presentation. I felt like a freight train, but I hope this was useful.
[00:50:12] Travis: Yeah, that was awesome. Thanks, Myriam. We do have a couple of questions and a little bit of time for some questions. So kind of kicking it off Bernard and Kristen had a question. What's the best way to deal with products that are no longer in stock forever.
[00:50:25] Do you keep the product page around with the banner alert or do you.
[00:50:31] Myriam: Okay. So, so, so, so, so do not redirect blindly to another product. If a person is not informed, because for example, I was looking for a fridge and they pointed me to another fridge that didn't have the feature I was looking for. And there wasn't a filter for that feature.
[00:50:45] So I thought I was going crazy. Don't do that. So what you would need to take into account is, is a product similar. And in that case, maybe you can redirect, but be careful if the product is discontinued dead, but it was really. Keep it up, keep it up because you going to lose these positions.
[00:51:03] So keep it up and say, this is no longer for sale, but we offer this evolution of the model. For example, if you have a new one or you can say, Hey, I'm signed up for the newsletter or sign up for an alert, we will tell you when we have something similar coming in. For example, it depends. Oh God, it depends.
[00:51:20] So, so, it does vary based on your situation. Please be careful about this. If you need to kill it you may choose to redirect it. If you need the SEO assets that you have like gained. If you know that another product of yours needs that boost, you could take the risk to redirect that.
[00:51:42] Just be once again, very careful that the product is genuinely a good replacement that that matters. Or you could maybe. Okay. I've had enough reflection regarding this. I, I can maybe if you want some more, just put it in the chat. I will maybe write an article about this. Remember I debug this way.
[00:52:00] That's how I write my stuff. So
[00:52:03] Travis: awesome. So the next one is what are a couple of the best-in-class e-commerce brands that are doing SEO correctly?
[00:52:11] Myriam: Ooh, not all of them do it. Like, I don't know how to explain it, but some of them are the best in class when it comes to internal search. Some of them are best in class when it comes to like optimizing their facets and filters.
[00:52:22] So it depends once again on what I do, this is going to sound weird, but Well, one of the brands that I liked a few years ago was a health brand. I don't remember if it was Welsey or, or our brand health, something, but you could type in like diet, pregnancy, diabetes. And they were like, here are all our products and they also have a dog.
[00:52:46] That was amazing because I didn't know, like, those are nailed a product and problem fit type of content. I love like how to use this other company that I like income. Oh, oh, oh, that's a difficult one. Can we move on? Cause I'm, I'm going to keep thinking. Yeah.
[00:53:04] Travis: It's a Bernard had another question around the search criteria is when, when does a.
[00:53:09] Regarding like subcategories. When do you need to set it up with a, an example would be a shoe folder and then leather versus just a filter on the page.
[00:53:20] Myriam: Whenever you actually, it can be a filter page that you allow being indexed instead of chemicalized or no index or whatever. But a clear example that I have is if we take tights.
[00:53:32] So women's tights, that's a category page. If you have a secondary category, Vaccine tights. And you have 200 people or 500 people a month looking for this, should this. It page. Yeah, it should, it should be optimized for it because there's a clear intent there you have the volume, you know, that people are looking for this, if you're thinking, okay, so how do I subdivide this because I have some vaccine types.
[00:53:57] So the line, and then I have some that have hearts and stars, et cetera. And there's no demand, please. Don't, it's just a very easy way to think about this, but this brings me to another question. What about your product detail pages and various. That's a big one too. Should you create a dedicated page for a variant or should you keep them all on one product page?
[00:54:20] So once again, depending on the volume of search, maybe like I said, I'm the type of person where if you show me that even in the category page that a wallet is brown and leather, I'm not clicking on it. I'm not even looking. If there's an option for black, I take it for granted, this is not. If you show me the black one, I'm automatically going to click.
[00:54:39] I'm sure some people are like brown leather inverted to me. Okay. So it's one of those situations where maybe you will have, one product detail page with all the funky variants, like all the colors of the rainbow. And you have one dedicated one that is blocked because you knew there's demand for this.
[00:54:54] You have validated this.
[00:54:59] Yeah, I think we have one
[00:55:00] Travis: more time for one more question. So Kristen has another question. Is there a fear that by including a buying guide, you might move people at the bottom of the funnel back into the consideration phase.
[00:55:15] Myriam: But let me explain why it's just that some people are really detail oriented when they buy things, they want to make sure that they have the best value for what they're looking for. Exactly. If you have somebody who's OCD about this, your buying guide may send them in like an existential crisis and then they will have to climb out of it.
[00:55:34] But most of the time. You sometimes say to yourself and go, oh my God, I almost bought the wrong thing. And they were like, thank you that you helped me. Like with this mind guide, I'm going to follow everything else that you recommend. So maybe this buying guide is not going to recommend all the brands, but that's the one I trust now because it saves me time.
[00:55:52] So it depends once again, on the human being. But buying guides is amazing because they tend to be longer. They allow you to. Target every single search intent that could be tied to these products. And I know this sounds strange, but when you purchase, for example, a computer for work, you have to know exactly what you need.
[00:56:13] You don't want to be disappointed. You have specific habits. So you look for this. Like, I use a lot of buying guides when picking a computer.
