If you run or work on ecommerce sites you are likely to be in a competitive vertical. As Google clamps down on the guys that have used quick wins and less than desirable tactics to dominate particular verticals it is time for the those that have always played by Google’s guidelines to step into the limelight.
But:
What can you be doing for your site that will help you rise in the search results?
What can you do for your site that will help attract natural links?
What can you do for your site that will help you with social traction?
Today I am going to look at some sites that have used original or unique approaches to their sites and campaigns in order to gain search engine wins.
Enjoy!
Amazing Product Pages
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Take a look at Firebox. This is one of my favourite ecommerce sites and their product pages are generally pretty awesome.
Firebox create some of the most amazing product pages in the gadget vertical thus allowing them to related for all kinds of products and categories – as well as some high volume search terms as well:
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Firebox go all out on their product pages to make sure there is enough high quality (and useful) content on their pages to rank almost across the board for the long tail product specific search terms. Their pages provide information that people looking to purchase theses products will actually need. Lets take a look at this page for a cool camper van tent:
What we can see here are:
Great pictures
Clear calls to action
A simple design
An attention to what drives conversions
Related products
Easily sharable
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If that was all that they did that would be fine – but they take it further. the guys and gals at Firebox know that providing value for their customer and potential customers can have a great impact on their search rankings and their conversions. Thus, we see this:
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Firebox take it to the next level including:
some great copy – original, written with wit and a consistent style and with the user in mind
multiple pictures- including diagrams
videos
user generated content
technical information
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Want to see the whole page? Check out this quick video!
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Has it been successful? Well if you check out the number of linking root domains in the screen grab below I think you can say that it has been fairly successful!!
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Create Unique Products
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There have been a few instances of the last couple of years of sites that have created a unique product in order to drive potential customers to their site – these are often designed with the idea of also getting links to the page or site and social shares.
One of the sites that has best demonstrated this tactic is Wish.co.uk. Essentially an experience days site Wish have gone on to add more and more unique and extravagant experiences. This of course means that more people talk about them (both offline and online) which in turn turns to links and social shares – which of course turns into more people talking about them – and the cycle continues.
So what have wish come up with that has resulted in the links and social shares that you need to succeed online?
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The Romantic Break for Three
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Yes, that’s right for three! for the more liberal minded Wish offers this as an actual product!
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Has it been successful? Well it isn’t the best they have ever produced with only 12 linking root domains and a few hundred social shares – but this is evergreen, this is slowly going to be grinding away in the background earning Wish links and social shares for months and months.
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Zombie Boot Camp
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What geek doesn’t want to go on a zombie boot camp? This is a case of Wish understanding where all the link authority is on the Internet (it lies with the geeks), but also taps into the kind of day experience that you would want to share socially.
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Has it worked? Er, yes this one has been a bit of a success:
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Be Rubbish
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Okay, this maybe isn’t the greatest idea in the world and potentially it is quite hard to pull it of. I include it here just an example off how sometimes left-field thinking is sometimes chanced upon rather than created. Even you haven’t seen this site before you are in for a little treat. Ladie’s and gentlemen I present Lings Cars (as a video so that you can appreciate it without having to visit!!)
Has it been successful? The question is how could this fail to be successful? An outstanding success…
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Create Inventive Category Pages
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Whoever said that your category page should have a pretty picture, be well optimised and have 300 words of terrible SEO copy may need a reality check. Whilst you should always make sure that your pages are accessible and optimised well that doesn’t mean over optimisation is ok!
Check this video of the category page from the Dutch online retailer HEMA, this is what happens when you select this page:
Was it successful? This is without a doubt incredibly successful – pulling in loads of links and social shares, no doubt doing wonders for this company’s bottom line!!
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The (Not So) Hidden Amazon Review Extras
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King of ecommerce Amazon knows the value of this kind of content and there are often pages on their site that get flooded with odd, funny and sometimes not safe for work (a quick warning before you click the following links) that get them links and social share deep in their site. Note: We all know that Amazon has a shed load of links, but every little counts, right?
Do they know about these comments and reviews? It would be naive of us to think not! Will they take action? Probably not -they are too valuable to them. Read some of these reviews and try not to share them – it’s like trying not to lick you lips after a doughnut!!
These kind of ideas can’t be used across all verticals and niches – but what you can do is apply some left-field thinking to how you approach promoting your site. Whilst you shouldn’t ignore the tactics that you are using at the moment you need to expand your horizons and think about what your customers would find useful or funny.
Google havn’t finished with their war against spam and over optimsation – you are going to need to be creative if you want your site/s to continue flourishing – hopefully these examples can serve as inspiration.
The images are indeed awesome! The Wheel Desk is the third Amazon link in the list above, click on this and navigate to the images, then flick through until you come across the images uploaded by Amazon customers!
Thanks Nick – setting yourself apart from the competition is getting more and more important, if you invest the time and budget into new and (granted, sometimes experimental) and exciting ideas you can get some great wins.
Wow, I actually learned a lot from this post. I usually do think outside the box for ideas that will work, but these examples you showed are drool-worthy. I liked the Zombie Outrbeak Bootcamp idea, which will be quite a hit these days..I think? (Walking Dead will be airing soon)
There are many other out-of-the-box ideas that e-commerce sites can dive into. For example, do you sell cool lights? Provide a product page that features your products in a Jedi Lightsaber show or something (could be a video by the company). It will cost something, but the possibility of investment returns might be a big hit.
Thanks for your kind comments John – glad you liked the post! Of course it always helps when you have cool products like the Zombie Bootcamp, it is always going to make it easier to come up with great ideas for making the product pages link worthy or at least create some discussion around them. It gets a little more difficult when you have less than exciting products that aren’t going to appeal to those that link on a daily basis.
Have a look at the images for the Wheel Desk for bonus points…
The images are indeed awesome! The Wheel Desk is the third Amazon link in the list above, click on this and navigate to the images, then flick through until you come across the images uploaded by Amazon customers!
great article guys
Thanks Nick – setting yourself apart from the competition is getting more and more important, if you invest the time and budget into new and (granted, sometimes experimental) and exciting ideas you can get some great wins.
Great post Wayne!
Wow, I actually learned a lot from this post. I usually do think outside the box for ideas that will work, but these examples you showed are drool-worthy. I liked the Zombie Outrbeak Bootcamp idea, which will be quite a hit these days..I think? (Walking Dead will be airing soon)
There are many other out-of-the-box ideas that e-commerce sites can dive into. For example, do you sell cool lights? Provide a product page that features your products in a Jedi Lightsaber show or something (could be a video by the company). It will cost something, but the possibility of investment returns might be a big hit.
Again, cool post!
Thanks for your kind comments John – glad you liked the post! Of course it always helps when you have cool products like the Zombie Bootcamp, it is always going to make it easier to come up with great ideas for making the product pages link worthy or at least create some discussion around them. It gets a little more difficult when you have less than exciting products that aren’t going to appeal to those that link on a daily basis.
Saying that, there is always some way that you can make exciting pages for ‘dryer’ or less exciting products – if you think that your industry is boring then you probably aren’t thinking hard enough. Check this video out:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/ecommerce-seo-making-product-pages-into-great-content-whiteboard-friday or this post from Lee Odden http://www.toprankblog.com/2012/04/boring-products-marketing/
“if you think that your industry is boring then you probably aren’t thinking hard enough”
Exactly! No industry is boring when you are facing it with a creative mind. Thanks for the videos! I’l definitely take a look at them