Ecommerce is experiencing unprecedented growth with consumers shopping online more than ever before. Don’t miss out on this opportunity for more customers and new sales just because your SEO isn’t up to snuff. There’s never been a better time to use SEO to maximize ecommerce performance. Join Catalyst and OnCrawl’s new webinar to learn how. After this session, you’ll be able to: - Leverage user generated content to maximize relevancy and performance across shoppers and search engines alike - Optimize crawl frequency - Use structured data to enhance listings in search results - Develop strong on-page content and user experience - Utilize and implement strategic internal linking - And more

1. WEBINAR
SEO & Ecommerce:
6 Tips for Optimizing Product Pages
Presented by &

2. Speaking today
Brad McCourt
Organic Search Manager
Catalyst
Clément Hochedez
Technical SEO Lead
OnCrawl

3. Agenda
1. Give Google a Reason to Rank Your
Content
2. Take Advantage of User Generated
Content (UGC)
3. Use structured data to enhance
listings in the search results.
4. Optimize internal linking and website
architecture
5. Focus On Google’s Search Signals for
Page Experience
6. Make sure that bots do not crawl
excessively parts of the site less
relevant to the user.

4. 81%
of online shoppers use a search engine
before making an online purchase.
46% of online shoppers begin their
journey on a search engine.
The State of Ecommerce 2021. Kantar and
Catalyst, 2020. Page 8.

5. Tip #1
Ensure product page content is
unique to your brand, covers
frequently asked questions and
follows Google’s guidelines for
Expertise, Authoritativeness and
Trustworthiness (E-A-T)
Give Google a Reason to Rank Your Content
Provide useful information
Provide high quality images and
supporting documents
Avoid duplicate content

6. At the end of the day,
Google still needs
content to understand
what your product pages
are about.

7. Produce Content that is:
Unique to Your Brand
Provides Useful Information as Well as
Additional Context for Search Engines
Visually Engaging or Even Interactive
Covers Frequently Asked Questions
Follow’s Google’s E-A-T Guidelines

8. “Companies that lead the way do not view PDPs
as a one-time investment...”
The State of Ecommerce 2021. Kantar and
Catalyst, 2020. (page 33)

9. What is E-A-T?
Google’s Official Search Quality
Evaluator Guidelines
xpertise
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf
E
A
T
uthoritativeness
rustworthiness

10. How to E-A-T?
1. Create great content that is well sourced
and cited by authoritative sources.
1. Find out what is useful and informative for
the customer.
1. Foster good will in the form of positive
feedback across the internet.
This takes a long time, there’s
no silver bullet in becoming a
trusted source of information.

11. 41%
The percentage of online purchasers
that said product description pages
(PDPs) had the greatest influence on
their purchase.
The State of Ecommerce 2021. Kantar and
Catalyst, 2020. (page 15)

12. Tip #2
Take Advantage of User
Generated Content (UGC) to Beef
Up Your Content
<insert screen grab>

13. “Google is the connective tissue for shoppers
to discover, see reviews, compare products,
and ultimately purchase.”
- Jane Butler, Managing Director of Pure-Play Retail, Google
The State of Ecommerce 2021. Kantar and
Catalyst, 2020. (page 16)

14. Implement a customer
review section
Great way to add personal testimonials,
additional context, further insight and help
reinforce potential shoppers that they’re making
the right purchase.

15. Implement a customer
review section
However, there are potential unintended
consequences.

16. Implement a Q&A section
Great additional context for the
product being sold, answering
common questions missing from
the product description.

17. Implement a Q&A section
Not always perfect.

18. Most important:
Learn from the UGC
Listen to your customers and potential
customers.
Revise on-page content reflecting concerns,
praises and answering commonly asked
questions.

19. Just starting out?
Use crawlers like Oncrawl to scrape sites for
ideas. You can use Xpaths to pull in all the
questions and corresponding answers on a
page. Great for research and initial ideation.

20. Tip #3
Use structured data to enhance
listings in the search results.

21. Use Google’s Structured
Data Testing Tool
If you don't know where to start or if you
want to make sure your structured data is
valid and error-free, you can use Google's
Structured Data Testing Tool. You also have
the ability to view the structured data used
by competitors.
https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/

22. The essential: reviews
Reviews are nowadays a must for e-
commerce sites.Not only from a user
experience point of view but also because
they are a direct eye catcher in a SERP and
have a positive impact on the crawl budget
and the CTR, therefore on the traffic (as long
as they are good!).

23. Number of reviews
● The more reviews, the more
crawled the page is.
● The product is highlighted by the
user rating (more conversions!)
● More content on the page thanks
to user reviews

24. What about bad
reviews?
● The quality of a review can
sometimes play on the crawl
frequency

25. Impact on SEO
Traffic
● CTR is more important when the
scores are rather positive.
● Negative ratings tend to lower the
SEO traffic on a product.

26. A common question
https://www.distilled.net/resources/tips-for-structured-data-on-e-commerce-sites/
Most third-party review apps now allow
display of reviews in SERPs.

27. Also… FAQ markup is
great!
FAQ markup is a great way to gain
visibility on the SERP, allowing you to
post product or service related
questions. It is relatively easy to set up.
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/faqpage

28. Did you know that an
extremely well-known e-
commerce site chose not to
display structured data a long
time ago?

29. 2012
2019
2020?
Theories

30. Tip #4
Optimize internal linking and
website architecture

31. Make the Most of
Internal Popularity...
Structure the site to ensure
that money pages are as close
as possible to the home page in
terms of depth. Flat
architecture lets link authority
flow to all pages.

32. ...And Monitor it Over
Time
Know the internal linking state of the site, follow
it over time and make sure it is relevant. Like link
optimization for cross sell for example.

33. Manage Seasonality
in Terms of Structure
● "Sustainable" categories
● Monitor pages out of stock (redirection,
page maintenance, replacement by content,
410, etc.)

34. Talking About Stocks...
In Stock Out of
Stock
● Pages with an out of stock product are less
visited by crawlers...
● … and users
In Stock Out of
Stock

35. Avoid Orphan Pages
and Identify Them
Google has a hard time finding orphan pages. So if
you want to get the most out of your crawl budget
and your SEO traffic, make sure that there is at
least one internal link pointing to every page on
your site. Make sure that those pages don’t
generate a lot of traffic, if there are, reintegrate
them into the structure.

36. Tip #5
Focus On Google’s Search Signals
for Page Experience
Core Web Vitals (2021)
Mobile Friendliness
HTTPS
Non-Intrusive Interstitials

37. Core Web Vitals
● Visual Load Time (Largest Contentful Paint)
● Time to Interactivity (First Input Delay)
● Visual Stability (Cumulative Layout Shift)
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520

38. 66%
The percentage of online
purchasers that say convenience is
the reason why they chose to
purchase at specific retailers.
The State of Ecommerce 2021. Kantar and
Catalyst, 2020. (page 9)

39. HTTPS
Ensure all images, links and
scripts are updated as well.

40. Non-Intrusive Interstitials
Avoid pop-ups that take up the majority of the
screen to improve user experience. Exceptions
being in cases for legal obligations (GDPR) or non-
indexable content.
Non-intrusive interstitials minimize
the space they take up.

41. Tip #6
Make sure that bots do not crawl
excessively parts of the site less
relevant to the user.

42. Crawl Budget is the
number of pages
Googlebot crawls and
indexes on a website
within a given timeframe.
https://www.oncrawl.com/technical-seo/how-to-define-crawl-budget/

43. Why is Crawl Budget Important for SEO?
1. Google crawls a limited number of pages
per day on your website (its crawl budget).
1. It depends on the size and "health" of the
site.
1. If Google doesn’t index a page because it
can’t crawl it, it’s not going to rank for
anything.
This only concerns sites with
several tens of thousand pages.

44. Optimize internal linking
Make sure that your important pages are the ones
that receive the most internal popularity. In other
words, Googlebot prioritizes pages that have lots
of external and internal links pointing to them.
Maintain a certain balance between directories.

45. Limit duplicate content
Google does not want to waste resources by
indexing multiple pages with the same content.
Make sure that 100% of the pages on your site are
made up of unique, quality and sufficiently long
content.

46. Remove 301 Redirect
Chains
Chain redirects are unnecessary, messy and
misunderstood. When Google reaches a URL and
sees a 301, it doesn’t always follow it immediately,
it instead adds the new URL to a list and then
follows it.

47. How to optimize the crawl budget?
Improve site speed
Optimize internal linking
Avoid orphan pages
Limit Duplicate Content
Optimize website architecture
Remove 301 redirect chains

48. Thank you for
watching!
Available as handouts:
OnCrawl
latest case study
Catalyst
ecommerce whitepaper
Download them now!

49. Recordings Available On-Demand
www.TechSEOBoost.com

50. Discover
’s Sunshine mission Summer Campaign
This week’s special offer:
-25% on Explorer Plan
& -15% on Javascript Crawl
www.oncrawl.com/sunshine-mission

51. Time for Q&A!