AMA: SEO

[Laughingman21]

From my basic knowledge of SEO, I understand that backlinks are important, but I find getting these can be quite hard.

If I'm in the market for selling widgets and notice that blue widgets are going to be the next best thing so want to be top of the rankings. However, Googling "Blue Widgets" brings up low quality pages for people looking to buy.

What would be your tips for getting to the top of "Blue Widgets" or buyer intent pages like "Best Blue Widgets"?

Would hiring a number of bloggers and sending them samples to write reviews on my blue widgets (with backlinks) be a strategy you'd recommend?

 

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[lludwig]

From my basic knowledge of SEO, I understand that backlinks are important, but I find getting these can be quite hard.

If I'm in the market for selling widgets and notice that blue widgets are going to be the next best thing so want to be top of the rankings. However, Googling "Blue Widgets" brings up low quality pages for people looking to buy.

What would be your tips for getting to the top of "Blue Widgets" or buyer intent pages like "Best Blue Widgets"?

Would hiring a number of bloggers and sending them samples to write reviews on my blue widgets (with backlinks) be a strategy you'd recommend?

You should always focus on what you can control. You can't control if some site will link to you (other than paid backlinks which I'm not a fan of doing blackhat SEO) but you can control the quality of your content.

You can control the UI/UX experience. You can control your menu structure. You can control links within your content to other articles on your site. You can control adding schema markup to your pages.

All of these are factors that determine ranking. It not just backlinks. In fact if you are an authority on a topic, it's possible to rank for a keyword at low to moderately competitive with ZERO backlinks.

Let me repeat this again. For keywords that have little competition, you can rank for that keyword. But only if you improve the things above. I've proven this many times in my tests.

Backlinks are like two job applicants when you are looking to hire one. If both are equally qualified (ie content, UI/UX, menu, content links, schema, etc..) the one with better grades and college (backlinks) will get the job.

Yes getting backlinks isn't easy, but not impossible and there are methods to get them, but first you need the content and the reason WHY some would want to link to your content organically. If it's crappy content, no one will link to it.

Though it can be said I would recommend going with long-tailed keywords. I've recommended using the Golden Keyword Ratio as a technique that you or any blogger just starting out. It's a great way to start from nothing IMHO.

Read up on it here: Keyword Golden Ratio: Learn How to Rank in 48 Hours

 

[Laughingman21]

You should always focus on what you can control. You can't control if some site will link to you (other than paid backlinks which I'm not a fan of doing blackhat SEO) but you can control the quality of your content.

You can control the UI/UX experience. You can control your menu structure. You can control links within your content to other articles on your site. You can control adding schema markup to your pages.

All of these are factors that determine ranking. It not just backlinks. In fact if you are an authority on a topic, it's possible to rank for a keyword at low to moderately competitive with ZERO backlinks.

Let me repeat this again. For keywords that have little competition, you can rank for that keyword. But only if you improve the things above. I've proven this many times in my tests.

Backlinks are like two job applicants when you are looking to hire one. If both are equally qualified (ie content, UI/UX, menu, content links, schema, etc..) the one with better grades and college (backlinks) will get the job.

Yes getting backlinks isn't easy, but not impossible and there are methods to get them, but first you need the content and the reason WHY some would want to link to your content organically. If it's crappy content, no one will link to it.

Though it can be said I would recommend going with long-tailed keywords. I've recommended using the Golden Keyword Ratio as a technique that you or any blogger just starting out. It's a great way to start from nothing IMHO.

Read up on it here: Keyword Golden Ratio: Learn How to Rank in 48 Hours

Thanks for that info and I'll definitely look into that ratio for the blogs I'm adding to my site.

However, I don't think I was clear in my question. I want people to link to my product listing for "blue widgets" on a Shopify store. I'm not trying to get backlinks to a blog.

From what you've said above, I should make sure that my site is easy to use and each of my product listings has the information users want to keep them on the site.

I'll continue to look for areas of improvement and collect user feedback, but I think my product listings are now as good/better than my more established competitors, but they are well established in the "widget" market with a number of backlinks whilst I'm relatively new.

I'm now trying to find a niche within the market that I think I can get ahead, so I'm trying to target "blue widgets". This is where I think I stand a chance of getting better listings as my competitors haven't focused on these yet and have average product listings and very few backlinks.

Would asking other bloggers to review my blue widgets (by sending samples) and then linking back to the product page on my store help its ranking?

 

[lludwig]

Thanks for that info and I'll definitely look into that ratio for the blogs I'm adding to my site.

However, I don't think I was clear in my question. I want people to link to my product listing for "blue widgets" on a Shopify store. I'm not trying to get backlinks to a blog.

From what you've said above, I should make sure that my site is easy to use and each of my product listings has the information users want to keep them on the site.

I'll continue to look for areas of improvement and collect user feedback, but I think my product listings are now as good/better than my more established competitors, but they are well established in the "widget" market with a number of backlinks whilst I'm relatively new.

I'm now trying to find a niche within the market that I think I can get ahead, so I'm trying to target "blue widgets". This is where I think I stand a chance of getting better listings as my competitors haven't focused on these yet and have average product listings and very few backlinks.

Would asking other bloggers to review my blue widgets (by sending samples) and then linking back to the product page on my store help its ranking?

Hi Though product pages are high in transaction and yet low in information. it is hard (not impossible) to get a product page for very long-tailed information. Meaning product-specific info when people are searching. Things like:

• product ID
• product attributes
• product description

Though in general Google likes organic search to be more information than transactional. I've mentioned this before in this thread. Most product pages from a store like Shopify are not much in information but high in transaction. The likelihood of ranking for popular keywords (like 'brandname' review) is almost zero. This is why you need a blog as well. The blog is for articles to help educate and add value to readers and is where most of your SEO ranking will come from. If you only have a storefront you are IMHO limiting your self to only highly transactional keywords and that is an arms race. For some of those keywords you might be better off paying for traffic.

As far as your mentioned backlink strategy isn't a bad idea and could be a method to get backlinks.

 

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[Kal-El1998]

It depends upon the niche. SEO is a long game. You need to spend 6-12 months if just starting out to start seeing any results. If you want instant results to look at paid traffic instead. It's very rare today to go from 0 to say 100,000k/month of traffic in under a year.

Yeah 100k traffic a month is insane! IMO even sites with 15k+ a month are damn good!

 

[rudi4wudi]

In my opinion, SEO is now one of the best ways to promote a business. However, the choice of strategy should be approached very carefully. It all depends on the product, the site, the concept. Using the wrong methods, you can get a zero or negative result.
The region where you are located largely affects. If you live in Canada, then advertising to the European market will be meaningless. A friend of mine from Australia faced such a problem when he started to promote his own clothing store. And as a result, he turned to WebsiteStrategies Australia for help. After working with this company, he finally felt what kind of influx an SEO can bring.