Tricking Google kills your ECR.
All your efforts should be directed at your shoppers. Content marketing to improve SEO is a complete waste of time and resources. You’ll end up attracting heaps of traffic that are seeking information, not products to purchase. This will kill your organic ECR. Everything you add to your site should be in the best interests of your shoppers.
- Focus on the shopper.
- Why content marketing is bad.
- Does your local shop have a library section?
- Speed test your eCommerce site.
- Build your brand.
Transcript
Hey, welcome back Rankers. How you going? From the state that everyone wants to flee; Victoria. Why? We’re getting new laws being passed in parliament this week that will give our Premier more powers than Adolph Hitler I believe. Anyway, interesting times. Don’t know how long I’ll be here. Ha-ha-ha. Anyway, I want to talk to you a little bit today about a few things I’ve discovered over the last couple of weeks talking with a lot of retailers. And the reason I haven’t done a show for… so erratic these days, is because we’re so busy. And I want to talk to you a little bit about just focusing on the right things. Just always remember to focus on the shopper. Because if you don’t, that’s when you end up doing things like content marketing for SEO, which is rubbish.
Don’t waste your time.
Content marketing for Google rankings is one of the worst wastes of resources that I’ve ever seen in digital marketing. And we used to do it, but that was probably eight years ago we stopped. And the reason for it is, is that you’re trying to make Google think you’re a good site so people come to you. Right? That’s the idea of it. And this all stemmed from back in the early days with Matt Cutts back then, which was saying, provide valuable information. So we carry that into retail. But you go into a retail store, no one is there, they don’t have a library section. Right? Most retail stores do not have a library where you can go in and just sit and read content all day. And that’s what we do with our e-commerce sites. And guess what that does? It gets you ranks for people who are looking for that information. And guess who’s looking for that information? People who want to read about it, not people who want to buy stuff. Right? So you’ll get bucket loads of traffic that doesn’t convert.
And I guarantee if you are doing content marketing for SEO, go into Google Analytics and have a look at your e-commerce conversion rate for, say organic, compared to direct. And you will find out that organic is through the floor. That’s because the people you’re bringing to your site aren’t there to buy. The other thing I’ve seen this week is, in this endeavour, and there’s a lot of e-commerce people who are really entrepreneurial and they’re looking for the latest, greatest tool. They attend a lot of webinars, they read a lot, and they’ve usually been in business for quite a while, and they know what they’re doing with e-commerce. However, when they start looking at these latest techniques, latest endeavours, we’re going to want to do some upsell, we want to do some cool shipping apps so people can see how much they have to spend to get free shipping as they… all this stuff, a wishlist over here.
All of these things, you’ve got to look at them in the big picture, because if you run… I’ve got a few clients that convert quite well, but when you go and have a look at some of their product pages, you go and do a speed test on product pages, go and do that. Go to web.dev/measure, and also go to webpagetest.org and have a look there. Because when you go and have a look at those tests on your product pages, you will find usually, if you’re one of these e-commerce sites that’s looking for the greatest next best thing to make the experience better and help you sell more, you may find that those pages are really, really slow. I had one this week where the category page took 90 seconds to be interactive. I am not kidding. And that was just because of all the extra things on the site that we try to make it do more, look pretty. You just have to understand the impact on everything when you add something to your site.
Focus on the shopper.
If you’re using Hotjar and Crazy Egg, and things like that, get the data and then switch them off. So many sites leave them switched on and they just add load, and it’s messy and it’s untidy. And if you’ve got legacy code, get rid of it if you don’t need it. Find a way, it’s worth getting rid of. And we have seen, once we speed up sites, mobile conversion rates go up 50% overnight, and I’ve shown you that video. So you can go and do these things yourself. You’ve just got to understand, before you install these things, what the impact’s going to be. And the way that you can do that is you can find out from the vendor, some other sites, and go and run tests on theirs. That’s what I do when someone says, “Hey, look at this great app.” We go and test it. We go and research it on other people’s sites that are already working.
So just remember to focus on the shopper. And remember, high Google organic rankings are a sign that you are the best site for the shopper. Because they’re looking for that thing and you present it in a way that’s clear, concise, fast, easy, and you’re trustworthy because you’ve got a great brand. They’re the things you need to work on. You need to work on your brand. You need to work on the performance of your site. And when you get the site faster, guess what happens? Basket sizes go up. You know why? Because people are probably spending the same amount of time there, but because things are loading quicker, they can get to more products. People think, “Oh geez, we’ve got to get a longer time on site.” No, not for shopping. People don’t want to spend more time at your shop. They want to get the things that they need and go, unless you’re doing… Now, if you’re going to do content marketing for your customers, great, just do that. Don’t do it for Google. Don’t do anything for Google, always do it for the shopper. Hopefully that’s helpful. Hopefully, I’ll be here in… whenever.
If you want a second opinion on your website, send an email to [email protected]. And sign up for our email list. Stewartmedia.biz. You can go there, or www.stewartmedia.com.au, of course, we have both. And please like, share, subscribe, tell your friends. Stay free and I’ll see you next week. Thanks very much everyone. Bye.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
