@stevejlock

International SEO on Magento

@stevejlock

What I Am Covering Today...

=> How we executed an international campaign on a small budget for a luxury ecommerce website

=> Magento SEO & Magento Multi-Site

=> Overcoming technical problems

=> Full details on the work completed for a campaign that resulted in traffic increases of 250% in 4-6 months

@stevejlock

Magento SEO

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@stevejlock

Magento Projects Require Homework

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Preparing Technical Optimisation

=> Make sure you read both the GPMD (recommended) and Yoast blog posts

=> Install Magento SEO Pack

=> Setup Fooman & GA Ecommerce tracking

=> Use the canonical tag on every page and consider trailing slash canonical issues

=> Consider submitting removal requests if working on an existing site with junk in the index (default Magento generates lots!)

@stevejlock

International Implementation=> Decide between local TLD's, sub-domains or

sub-folder structures for the international sites

=> Plan for translations, I recommend starting with one language then scaling

=> Implement hreflang

=> Really important to setup a GWT account for each international variation and set geo-location

=> Generate and submit international sitemaps

=> Look for examples in rank tracking where the wrong country might be ranking in your SERP!

@stevejlock

Canonical Problems

=> There are always issues with any CMS

=> Unfortunately ecommerce is normally the worst :-(

=> Magento has trailing slash canonical problems with URL's that break the admin section when you try to resolve them with redirects

=> You need to use the canonical tag, but be careful to point to one canonical URL either with or without the slash

@stevejlock

Duplicate Content & Junk Pages

=> Filter Pages (block with meta robots)

=> Sort Pages (block with meta robots)

=> Session ID's (GWT parameter handling, set base URL's in Magento admin)

=> Pagination (rel=next, rel=prev, rel=canonical)

=> Duplicate product descriptions

=> You can also add the nofollow attribute to junk pages which most Magento experts recommend

@stevejlock

Shallow Site Architecture

=> Shallow site architecture is SEO 101

=> It's really important with ecommerce

=> It's really really important with ecommerce sites with thousands of products that are getting translated into many languages ;-)

=> I would also recommend using top level product URL's with 301 redirects e.g. example.com/product.html

=> You can use regex to then segment product pages easily by using .html as a rule

@stevejlock

Filter Pages → Static Landing Pages

@stevejlock

Process To Retire Products

=> SEO Pack can orphan pages in the Magento back end with no technical knowledge required

=> Personally I prefer 301 redirects, but these always require developers :-(

=> Very large ecommerce sites retain tens of thousands of links per month from retiring old pages with 301 redirects

@stevejlock

Buyers Guides

=> Buyers guides can be really powerful

=> It's a useful place to build landing pages that might not fit elegantly into the taxonomy otherwise

=> Great for the long tail

=> Obviously don't forget to show lots of products on these pages :-)

@stevejlock

Hybrid Magento Sites

=> Pure Magento sites are a good option, but they come with a steep learning curve for non-technical staff (HTML knowledge required)

=> Most hybrid solutions come with inevitable issues and development work becomes more complex

=> WordPress and Magento are probably the easiest to use with the Fishpig connector

@stevejlock

Analytics Events & Goals

=> Useful to gain insights on user behaviour

=> Work well to test if users are engaging with new functionality and responding to design changes

=> Goals for time on site with different variations

=> Goals for pages viewed with different variations

=> Goals for moving around different sections of the site e.g. blog → product pages

@stevejlock

Analytics Events http://w

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@stevejlock

Speed #Winningdailym

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Every 100ms of latency costs them 1% in sales!

Amazon Case Study

@stevejlock

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Half a second of speed changed their bounce rate by 20%!

Google Homepage Case Study

@stevejlock

=> Price and stock availability

=> Reviews through Feefo or TrustPilot

=> Video via sitemaps

=> Try to implement ASAP if launching as it can take many months to start to show in SERP's

=> I've seen client sites that have taken over a year

Schema & Structured Markup

@stevejlock

=> This can be really hit or miss

=> Some clients have leveraged really well and it generates many more sales for them

=> Can be used as a method of data collection and for CRO changes e.g. if customers can't locate delivery options

=> Snap Engage is my favourite and can even support free VOIP calls

Live Chat

@stevejlock

=> Look for strategies that can be scaled across languages e.g. competitions

=> It's important not to have a go with an in-house team without being honest with the client

=> Many countries can communicate well in English and therefore some outreach can be achieved with English teams

=> Guest posting we found to be far less effective

=> It's likely that using a specialist partner will be best

=> Watch out! Many partners we considered proposed low quality links

International Link Building

@stevejlock

Link Building For Ecommercehttp

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Expedia: Flight To Marshttp

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Competitions

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International Infographicshttp

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@stevejlock

Scaling Across All Countries=> Firstly we nailed English, during setup we also

focused heavily on link building

=> Setup Magento Multi-Site and translations

=> Implemented hreflang and 301 redirects

=> Setup Google Webmaster Tools for each country setting geo-location for each

=> Generated international sitemaps and submitted to GWT

=> Planned for international outreach 2 countries at a time

@stevejlock

ALL Links Help ALL The Sites Rank

@stevejlock

Content Creation

=> Trial a number of writers and keep the best performers

=> Focus on one or two languages at a time

=> Look for a team of writers with the most output and look for the best writer as a proofreader

=> Form teams with one proofreader per language

=> Rinse and repeat...

@stevejlock

Key Takeaways

=> Magento is a powerful platform, but has plenty of pitfalls you need to avoid

=> Avoid using modules for Magento Multi-Site as they often use parameters you would want to avoid

=> Focusing on two countries at a time for link building was effective (although it's still early days)

=> Using sub-folders can help with GWT especially removal requests

@stevejlock

Key Takeaways

=> Take Google's advice on hreflang, international sitemaps and geo-location in GWT

=> For the quickest results and to leverage domain authority use sub-folder structures

=> Our approach enabled translators to be trained and work on optimising the different countries

=> Focus on your primary country, get that right and scale (especially with Magento!)

@stevejlock

Thanks for listening :-)

Feel free to connect:

=> Slides: slideshare.net/stevejlock

=> Email: stephen.lock@linkdex.com

=> Twitter: @stevejlock / @linkdex

=> LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/stevejlock