1. Stand E5050
OFF-SITE SEO STRATEGIES
FOR ECOMMERCE WEBSITES
Patrick Altoft
Director of Search, Branded3

2. Stand E5050
Search Engine Optimisation
• Most people think SEO is about
o Keywords
o Page titles
o Meta tags
o Site structure
• On-site optimisation is enough to rank for uncompetitive
keywords
• When all your competitors sites are well optimised who gets to
be number 1?

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Links are the most important ranking factor
• Links are what Google uses to differentiate between similar websites

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Links and PageRank
• Since 1998 links have formed the basis of the Google algorithm
• PageRank is a probability distribution used to represent the likelihood that a person
randomly clicking on links will arrive at any particular page.
• The pages that have the most incoming links will have been visited more times and
are deemed more important.

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PageRank ≠ rankings
• PageRank is quite inaccurate – a higher PR does not necessarily mean higher
rankings

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Links & Ecommerce
• Millions of links are created every day
• Linkable content is
o News
o Funny pictures
o Videos
o Interesting blog posts
• Ecommerce sites don’t have the same linkability as
other websites

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Competitor analysis
• Identify 20 target keywords
• Record domains ranking in top 20 search results for each keyword
• Remove duplicate sites

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Competitor analysis
• Export all links to Excel

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Competitor analysis
• Repeat for all competitors to create one giant Excel document
• Remove duplicate linking domains
• Sort by Domain Authority or Page Authority

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Competitor analysis
• Use filters to find valuable links
o URL contains .ac.uk , .edu , .gov , .nhs
o Anchor text contains target keyword

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Visualising your link profile

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Replicating competitor links
• Think about why each link was given
• Is it a paid link?
• Did the company attend a trade show or event?
• Is it from one of their business partners?
• What are your chances of getting the link?

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Link QA process
• Some links are better than others
• If we’re paying for a link is it worth the money?

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Link QA

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Making contact
• Speak to people over the phone
• Send personal emails, one by one, to people who run relevant
websites
• Make sure it doesn’t start with “Dear Webmaster”
• Ask about advertising
• Ask bloggers if they accept guest posts

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Using business relationships for links
• Talk to your suppliers & offer reviews
• Do interviews for industry news sites
• Give discounts to customers in return for links
• Offer to write news articles or guides for websites in
your industry
• Make friends with people who control websites

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Design
• Invest in stunning design
• Design makes a site more linkable
• Improving linkability dramatically increases the efficiency of
your campaign
• Allows the site to be featured in CSS galleries

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Content
• People don’t generally link to commercial content
• Informational content attracts lots of free links
• Think about added value
o Guides
o Reviews
o Blog
o News
o Photos
• Good content improves linkability

19. Stand E5050
Paying for links
• Google is against buying & selling links
• Any links that appear to be paid are likely to be devalued
• This is risky & delivers low ROI
• If you choose to buy links sure they appear 100% natural
• Be wary about using high profile link sellers......

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Don’t become a headline
• Buying links is a risk, do it right or don’t do it at all

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Learning more
• Read Blogstorm.co.uk - UK’s largest blog about SEO with over
10,000 daily readers
• Call in at stand E5050 and ask for some free SEO advice
• Visit our site at Branded3.com
• A copy of the presentation will be posted on Blogstorm.co.uk
next week