How to Improve Position in Google Search Results

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. The key term above is quality. You can send all the traffic in the world to a site but if it isn’t quality, it isn’t worth much. Meaning that if you create content that isn’t relevant to what you do or sell (that ranks well and brings in traffic), it’s not going to bring in quality traffic. SEO isn’t a one-and-done task–it’s a continuous blend of science and strategy that takes time. There are numerous steps that need to be taken that range from standard to advanced, such as:

Standard Services
Keyword research and rankings
Page-level SEO analysis
SEO Element Optimization (Page Titles, Headers, etc.)
Content optimization analysis
Advanced Services
Site crawls & analysis
Search intent-based analysis
And more

What is new in SEO?

SEO is always changing as Google is constantly updating their algorithm to serve up the best results. The new hot trend in SEO is EAT or Expertise, Authority & Trustworthiness.

Expertise – Is the content written by someone very knowledgeable on the subject? How to attain - thorough research and execution.
Authoritativeness – How are you proving the content was created by an expert? How to attain - authorship, reviews, bio, sources.
Trustworthiness – How is the site showing users they can have confidence in the content?
How to attain – SSL certificate, structured content, clean site structure.
And more

This may not be a tangible direct ranking factor, but this is the thought process for success. When creating content or developing an SEO strategy, always think of how the site, page, or product will help the end-user. This thought process will force quality. If you cannot achieve these three points, your site will lack the quality Google is looking for.

What is eCommerce SEO?

eCommerce SEO follows the same principles mentioned above but with a few key areas that sites need to focus on. It usually means dealing with larger complex sites so XML sitemaps will be your SEO best friend. XML Sitemap best practices include:

All Sites Should Have One!
200 Status Code, Self-Referencing Canonical Links (indexable URLs only)
No Crawl Errors!
Submit Through Google Search Console

You should also follow these same practices for a frontend crawl in addition to:

Limit Crawl Errors (Redirects & Broken Links)
Make Sure All Links Are Accessible
Try and Match It With The XML Sitemap through a Screaming Frog crawl (Image Below)
Monitor Crawl Errors In Google Search Console
eCommerce SEO Checklist
XML Sitemap
200 status code, self-canonicalized URLs that you want to rank
Submit to Google Search Console
Monitor and fix any issues
Product Pages, Sale Pages, Priority Pages

How to Check?

Screaming Frog, Google Search Console, DeepCrawl
Frontend Crawl
Limit crawl errors – dead pages, internal redirects

Internal link priority pages to signal importance to the search engines. How to check?

Screaming Frog, Google Search Console, DeepCrawl
Keyword Research
Ensure you are using keywords customers are searching for
Use them in all SEO Elements – Page Titles, Meta Descriptions, Headers, Internal Links
Content eCommerce sites still need this
Thorough, well-thought-out content that has keyword research and intent in mind
Product Descriptions, Images with Alt Text, Reviews, etc

What is New in eCommerce SEO?

Recently Google has updated the UI of the search engine result pages (Image Below) to heavily favor paid ads and Google-owned properties (Map Packs, Organic Shopping Ads, etc.). It is a tough battle to fight, but the goal is still to rank in the first position. It is unlikely Google will ever revert this type of layout so it’s important to adjust your strategy for this layout.

With Google constantly making updates that can drastically change SEO success and plans, we strongly recommend an Omni-Channel approach that includes Paid, Organic, Email, & Social. All channels of digital marketing should be pushing the site in the same direction. The Rule of 7 states that ‘A prospective buyer will need to hear or see the marketing message at least 7 times before they buy it from you.’ It would be pretty difficult to get your site or product in front of someone 7 times with only one channel. Focusing on all areas of digital marketing will make this much easier. If you live by one digital marketing channel, you can die by one digital marketing channel.

How to Use This in HawkSearch with SEO Influencer

HawkSearch tool that allows merchandisers to expand the number of URLs crawled by search engines without creating additional landing pages. You will need to make sure of the following:

Existing landing pages setup are included in Sitemap
Specify combinations of facets that are relevant/not relevant
Popular Searches need to be included
This will help push more relevant content out to search engines through improved relevancy, usage of correct filters, as well as customized Page Titles, Meta Description, Content, and H1’s.

Without SEO Influencer this could be a time-consuming process for merchandisers to create landing pages for all facet combinations. The SEO influencer helps by:

Using existing landing pages
Checking facet combinations that work on those landing pages
Ignoring facet combinations with 0 results
Using strategy to reduce crawl budget
Selecting only facet combinations of 2 (Course Category, Course Topic, Course by default)
Creating combinations like (Blue Fabric, Green Fabric) but ignoring (Blue Green Fabric)
Adding all of the appropriate URLs to the sitemap
It can also help push popular search URLs to the sitemap to highlight the most often searched terms

The first step in SEO Influencer is to look through your organic search terms and analyze how users are searching on your site. Pick the set of facets that make the most sense based on your analysis and configure them in the dashboard. From there, order the facets logically so that order drives the H1s on the page, the order of key/value pairs in the URL, and the order of facets in the meta descriptions.

Where do I Start?

Clean XML Sitemap Crawl‍

What if I don’t? Google will be hitting broken URLs that will negatively affect the organic presence.

Limit Frontend Crawl Errors‍

What if I don’t? Google will constantly be hitting errors instead of crawling & ranking quality pages.

Ensure Google Search Console Is Setup & Tracking

What if I don’t? The site will be missing tracking visibility directly from Googlebot.

Create Content For Priority Pages

What if I don’t? Pages will struggle to rank for competitive target keywords.

Research SERP Competition

What if I don’t? The various digital marketing channels will struggle if not properly tracked and invested in.

HawkSearch SEO Influencer Tools

As you examine your SEO strategy, by now you see how on-site search can drive better results for your business. This is often done by utilizing powerful tools to affect SEO for relevant products, categories, and content when indexed by any search engine crawler.

Here are some helpful ways to drive results:

Sitemaps - SEO Influencer is designed to strategically create an automated and expansive sitemap that represents relevant landing pages exposing long-tail keywords. Scanning the live HawkSearch engine for active search landing pages and specified facet combinations generates SEO-friendly sitemaps.
Exclusion Control - Exclude facet combinations that have a negative impact on SEO indexing. For example: Color, Brand, Style, Material, Vintage.
Popular Searches - Leverage previously captured data from your most popular searches and send that information to the primary search engines to drive additional traffic and higher page rankings. Control the quantity and date range of the popular searches delivered.
Facet Expansion for Spiders - Create additional descriptive facets that enable major search engines to crawl for more detail, leading to higher page rankings. Example of multiple facets.
URL structure: http://www.hawkstore.com/landing_page_url/?color=blue&brand=adidas

These are some ways to enhance your SEO results using HawkSearch on-site search. Want to learn more? Contact us at info@hawksearch.com or go to our website for details about the robust functionality offered by the HawkSearch platform.

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