SEO at the Scale of Walmart

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*all material in this presentation is the opinion and viewpoint of
the presenter and does not represent Walmart or its
subsidiaries. The numbers and business information
presented are publicly available and not to be construed as
proprietary company data. Do not distribute.

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* SEMrush data (this is not internal Walmart data)
4x Growth in 5
years

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* SEMrush data (this is not internal Walmart data)

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Credit: ProductBoard
The traditional value
prioritization model used
by many product
managers is good as a
last step of prioritization,
but a more specific model
of thinking is a
prerequisite step

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SEO is a 2 Funnel Paradigm

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SEO Metrics by Funnel
- Crawl statistics
- Page performance
- Error rates
- Indexation rates
- Indexation ratios
- Impressions
- Rankings
- Clicks
- Revenue
LEADING METRICS LAGGING METRICS

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Marketing/Ecomm/Retail Focus
Tech SEO/Eng Focus
Silos create misconceptions,
and there are misconceptions
on all sides
Mgmt
focused
SEO functions are typically fragmented in large orgs

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We need a holistic approach across the funnel
SEO functions are typically fragmented in large orgs

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Thus, the 2 SEO objectives are...
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1. Don’t show Google pages that
have no search value...
2. In order to optimize Google’s
crawl
3. So that the ratio of pages
crawled to indexed moves
towards 1:1
4. Improve keyword coverage,
impressions, ranking position,
clicks and ultimately a
conversion
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SEO Objectives Can be Visualized Along the Funnel

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SEO Tactics for Ecommerce Should be Driven Through Different
Activities Along the Inflection Points of this Funnel
Manage what you expose to Google:
1. Canonicalization (ex, variants)
2. Faceted browsing (ex, product attributed)
3. Internal search pages (ex, related search links)
4. Use of JavaScript (ex, onclick events)
5. Redirection or deprecation (ex, unpublished products)

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SEO Tactics for Ecommerce Should be Driven Through Different
Activities Along the Inflection Points of this Funnel
Manage Google’s consideration set:
1. Sitemap management and refresh
2. Robots.txt
3. Meta-robots
4. Redirection

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SEO Tactics for Ecommerce Should be Driven Through Different
Activities Along the Inflection Points of this Funnel
Match content with intent
1. New SERP opportunities (ex,
Google Shopping)
2. Content generation (ex, match
search intent with the right
content)
3. Internal link signals (ex, modules)
4. On-page signals

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SEO Tactics for Ecommerce Should be Driven Through Different
Activities Along the Inflection Points of this Funnel
Refining SERP display to match
intent
1. On-page KW and intent
optimization
2. Structured data
3. Rich snippet optimization

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SEO Tactics for Ecommerce Should be Driven Through Different
Activities Along the Inflection Points of this Funnel
Optimize for conversion
1. On-page CRO experimentation
2. Match of KW to lander intent

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