attract links & influence buyers - matthew jackson at ecommece expo 2013

Attract Links & Influence Buyers

By Matthew Jackson, Head of SEO Strategy

@M4Jackson

Apologies

≠

What are we talking about?

Ecommerce sites have a difficult task in the modern search landscape.

Selling a product does not make you link-worthy

• How it has worked in the past

• How it works now

• What can we do to make you link-worthy?

Category

Links

Rankings

Ecommerce SEO In 2002-2011

It worked #1

Google is was stupid

Everybody was doing it

But mainly, it was cheap!

#2

#3

#4

This categorically does not work anymore

If this is your strategy, please STOP.

Unnatural Links

Bad Strategy Penguin 2.0

But also because….. • Disavow data

• Devaluation of other signals

• Network discovery

• Webmasters are more inclined to report

The current

CITATIONS

BUILD

CONVERSATIONS

NEWS

Sentiment

SOCIAL

Authority Relevance

Freshness

is listening to…

DESIGN

CONTENT

BLOG

Engagement

Satisfaction

Structure Quality

The Future (& present) of SEO

Google’s thoughts Want to sell products? - Adwords

- Google shopping

- AKA: You pay us for it

Want to rank organically?

- Add value

- Become a brand (the result people want)

- AKA: Pay someone else for it

Put your site at the centre of

Feeds the

This gives you two key benefits

#1 Gets you in the conversation

#2 Makes you worth talking about

You have to promote

Your new link strategy

• Create something to talk about

• Promote to a relevant audience

• Be a part of the conversation

Don’t worry about… • Anchor text

• If the content is related to commercial products, the anchor text will generate itself

• Keyword relevance • Create content to be proud of sharing, not content to boost rankings

• Target pages (unless it’s based on link worthiness) • Build your brand, build overall site authority, rankings will come

Biggest challenge for ecommerce

You need a new

approach

Publishers are becoming retailers & vice versa

A few tips…

Pay a popular writer #1

Paid media = Earned links #2

Work with the right people #3

Thank you!

Please email any questions to matthew.jackson@branded3.com or get in touch on Twitter: @Branded_3