man thinking about something with graphic light bulb

My Reasons For Keeping Bulk Text On Product Pages

So, DistilledODN did a study the other day on how effective it would be to remove SEO text that is below the fold (you have to scroll to see it) on your product pages.
 
Now, there was no definitive answer to this question and their recommendation was to test it for yourself and see.
Here's a snippet and quote  from Jon Muller (Google) below:

"Many e-commerce websites optimize their categories by adding a big chunk of text under the product listings. Nothing except an h1 heading above the fold. I don't consider this good usability since users need to scroll all the way down to read this. Does Google treat this content the same as any other or would you for improving rankings recommend putting the category text above the fold?"

"From our point of view, that's essentially keyword stuffing. So that's something...which I would try to avoid".

"I’d try to stick to really informative content and put that in place where you think that users will be able to see it. Especially if it is content that you want to provide for users. And more than that I would think about what you can do to make those pages rank well without having to put a giant paragraph of content below the page".

"Fair enough," I say.
 
However, from personal experience and following a flexible content marketing strategy. I only see 100% upside to having a bulk of RELEVANT AND USEFUL text below the fold on your pages.
 
Studying the heat map results on our product pages, I can see that a percentage of our customers do read this content.
 
Also - Our customer service teams have the ability to point customers in the right direction to answer a question or query and can also copy and paste this text into email answers to customers.
 
SEO WISE - I think having "relevant" and "useful" content on any page has to be encouraged, I think. The more relevant the content, the more useful it is in the search results.
 
Do your product pages have a lot of text content?
 
Is it right to have so much on a product page, or is it just overkill?
 
Let me know your thoughts. 👇

by Des Dreckett

malibu-how-to-curl-straight-hair

How Beauty Merchants Can Also Win At Search

How Beauty Merchants Can Also Win At Search

Anyone in the beauty niche knows how competitive it is and most aren’t taking advantage of the high upper funnel keywords.

Searches for beauty-related tutorials are on the increase and terms like “how to style short hair” or “cute and easy hairstyles” are low hanging fruit for those that are willing to go the extra mile and actually help their customers by providing them with useful info.

Interestingly, brand paid visibility for these terms has actually decreased and organic visibility has increased. Go figure.

Google Prefers To Show Organic Results

It seems as though Google’s search algorithm is prioritising this type of organic content by showing 95% organic listings which is up 13% year over year.

Instead of writing really generic posts like top 5 this and top 10 that, eCommerce merchants need to focus their efforts on producing helpful articles based on user questions and also partnering with brands that want to promote their products whilst also getting their message out there.

These types of keywords are being targeted by the likes of Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire who make up a whopping 72% of total search results. Since these keywords are not “buyer intent keywords”, they normally lend themselves for organic targeting rather than paid targeting. However, these upper funnel keywords allow you to compete head to head with larger brands by writing really great content and publicising it on social.

Elle.com did a great job with this exact strategy by writing a tutorial article entitled “how to curl short hair.” I fact, it is position number 1 in the Google search results for this exact phrase.

tutorial-focused-search-by-elle

What Elle has done differently to others is position products directly below the content to be helpful to their readers.

So, how exactly do you go about this?

  1. Ensure you have your own website with blogging capability.
  2. Take a look at your Google Analytics to see which search terms people are using to find your store.
  3. Research and write an in-depth article answering the specific question or term people are asking Google.
  4. Publish and publicise your content on social media.
  5. If you can produce a video, post on YouTube and then embed it into your post. Great! If not, do a search on YouTube and find a video that you can embed.

Paid placements is a billion-pound industry. If you stock these types of products in your store, linking back to them allows you to be both helpful whilst promoting your store products at the same time.

Photo Credit: INSTAGRAM/@MILABU.CO

by Des Dreckett