This Month In eCommerce SEO – July 2024

Google: Core Update Expected In The Coming Weeks

📝 Read the full article here: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-core-update-expected-in-coming-weeks-37739.html

Have you been negatively impacted by any of the recent Google Core Updates? Well your opportunity for a reversal could be right around the corner. Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan expects the next Google Core Update to rollout in the coming weeks.

Key takeaways 👇
✅ During the Core Updates, Google does a heavier evaluation of websites to determine which ones should be ranking higher or lower.
✅ Typically websites negatively impacted by previous Core Updates will need to wait for future Core Updates (like this one) to have a chance at recovering their rankings.
✅ The last Core Update was in March 2024.
✅ You can learn more about Google’s Core Updates from their official documentation.

Google’s John Mueller On How To Verify An SEO Agency’s Work

📝 Read the full article here: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/googles-john-mueller-on-how-to-verify-an-seo-agencys-work/522449/

Working with an SEO agency? Google’s John Mueller shares tips on checking if the SEO company you hired is actually doing the work they promised. These tips can help make sure your agency is doing good work and you’re not being taken advantage of.

Key takeaways 👇

✅ Hold frequent meetings with your SEO agency to discuss the work they did, request consistent progress reports detailing the traffic trends over time, and ask about future SEO plans.

✅ There’s a few critical times when it could be worth hiring an SEO: Google isn’t indexing your site, you’re migrating or redesigning your website, organic traffic drops significantly, and when current SEO strategies aren’t yielding results.

✅ When hiring an SEO, ask about their experience, SEO techniques, case studies, references, and expectations for results. Google has a very helpful Guide to Choosing an SEO that’s definitely worth checking out.

4 Ways PPC and SEO Can Work Together (And When They Can’t)

📝 Read the full article here: https://ahrefs.com/blog/ppc-seo-working-together/

Combining PPC and SEO together can significantly boost your marketing ROI. PPC can be used to promote SEO content and help build valuable backlinks. While PPC delivers immediate results, SEO offers long-term benefits.

Key takeaways 👇
✅ You can use PPC to drive traffic to your higher-converting content. This can be a great way to promote your content and possible even drive additional conversions.
✅ Ahrefs was able to build 16 backlinks from $1,245 in ad spend ($78 per backlink). This approach is most effective for statistics pages (ie. “Top Interior Design Statistics of 2024”).
✅ Running retargeting ads for higher-converting topics can help drive conversions (ie. “Best Espresso Machines”, “Espresso Machines for Commercial Use”, “Espresso Machine vs Coffee Maker”).
✅ PPC is a great way to see how well potential keywords convert before focusing on them with SEO.

I Disavowed Every Link To My Website. Here’s What Happened

📝 Read full article here: https://zyppy.com/seo/google-disavow-experiment/

Will spammy backlinks negatively impact your rankings? Should you spend the time and energy disavowing junk backlinks? In this article Cyrus Shepard disavowed every link to his website. This includes great backlinks from high-authority sites like Moz, Ahrefs, Semrush, Backlinko.

Key takeaways 👇
✅ Despite disavowing over 10,000 links from 1,473 domains, there was no noticeable impact on rankings or traffic.
✅ Based on this test, eCommerce stores probably shouldn’t worry about disavowing junk backlinks.

Configure Your Shipping And Returns Directly In Search Console

📝 Read full article here: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/07/configure-shipping-and-returns-search-console

Google Search Console has a new feature that allows eCommerce stores to specify their shipping and returns information. This additional shipping and return info can improve how product pages are displayed in search results, potentially resulting in higher click-through rates and more search traffic.

Key takeaways 👇
✅ Commerce sites must be associated with Google Merchant Center for the shipping and return options to be available in Google Search Console.
✅ You can access these settings in Google Search Console by going to Settings > Shipping an returns and then click the Add shipping policy or the Add return policy buttons.
✅ These settings take precedence over any product-level shipping and return information using structured data markup.
✅ Google says any shipping details are automatically approved right away. However return policies are manually verified and can take about 10 to 13 days to be approved.

Google AI Overviews Only Show For 7% Of Queries, A New Low

📝 Read full article here: https://searchengineland.com/google-ai-overviews-visibility-new-low-444048

Are Google AI Overviews going to kill search traffic? Well not yet, at least not for eCommerce websites. Google’s “AI Overviews” are the AI-generated results that appear at the top of some search result pages. A new study from BrightEdge shows that these AI Overviews only show for about 7% of queries.

Key takeaways 👇
✅ The presence of AI Overviews across eCommerce queries dropped from 26% to just 9%, indicating that eCommerce sites are relatively safe from AI Overviews stealing clicks from organic listings.
✅ There were significant changes in the presence of AI Overviews for other product research queries: “Best __” (+50%), “Vs” (-20%), general product (-14%).
✅ Google has shrunk the size of the AI Overviews by 13%, making them slightly less prominent in Google search results.

💡 Tip Of The Month

Have a keyword that’s struggling to rank? Here are 12 things you can do right now to increase your rankings 👇

✅ Add the primary keyword near the beginning of the title tag, and make it compelling for higher click-through rates.
✅ Write a captivating meta description. Include your target keyword, any unique selling points, and a call to action.
✅ Make sure your pages have enough content to compete with other pages ranking on page 1 (usually 250-500 of category/product pages, and 1,500+ for blog posts).
✅ Add related keywords to your content. If you need keyword ideas, search your main keyword into Google Image Search and look at the refinement bar.
✅ Ensure your content is concise, provides real value to the readers, and avoids unnecessary fluff. It’s better to have 300 words of value-packed content than 500 words of fluffly/salesy content.
✅ Ensure the type of page you’re trying to rank (category, product, blog post, homepage) is consistent with what Google is already ranking on page 1.
✅ Build enough backlinks to your page to outrank your competitors. Most of the time this is the main reason why you’re not ranking high enough.
✅ Add internal links to the page from the homepage and other relevant pages.
✅ Make sure your prices are inline with the other products ranking on page 1. Premium products just don’t rank as well as lower cost products because the bounce rates are usually higher.
✅ Make sure your pages look just as good on mobile as they do on desktop.
✅ Focus on increasing your site speed. Not only is site speed a ranking factor, but it can also have a significant impact on bounce rate and conversion rates. An Amazon study found that every 100ms in additional page load time reduced revenue by 1%.
✅ Increase your engagement metrics (bounce rate, time on site, etc) with A/B split testing software like VWO or Optimizely. The recent Google Leak confirmed Google is likely using these signals as part of their ranking algorithm.

🎁 Free Download: The 15-Minute SEO Success Checklist

⬇️ If you don’t have a copy of this checklist yet, download it here.

This is the same checklist our team uses internally to improve rankings for 1,000’s of keywords across 100’s of eCommerce sites. It provides a simple troubleshooting guide to get those stubborn keywords to the top of Google.

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