Ted Kubaitis once managed organic search for a retailer with 25,000 SKUs and 500 categories. He feared competing against Amazon for rankings until he realized most of its product pages had zero external links. Then an epiphany hit.
“All it took was 25 backlinks,” he told me.
Ted is now the founder of SEO Tool Lab, a prominent agency and software provider, and the host of “SEO Fight Club,” a YouTube show.
He and I spoke last month at a conference. I asked him about today’s SERPs, keyword priorities, content marketing, and, yes, competing against ecommerce giants.
The entire audio of that conversation is embedded below. The transcript is edited for length and clarity.
Eric Schwartzman: Search engine result pages have changed dramatically over the last few months.
Ted Kubaitis: Right. There are keywords now where the first organic result is below the fold — effectively page two. Those keywords aren’t worth targeting anymore.
The Google search result page is now a universal search. It’s multiple blended result sets — ads, products, “People also ask,” local packs, all kinds of things are now above organic listings.
Search engine optimizers must consider two things: Where do I rank organically, and where does the listing appear among all those options?
Schwartzman: What are the best keywords to target for an online store?
Kubaitis: It’s an important question because if the targeting is wrong, the SEO is wrong. It requires a lot of time and effort to figure out. I would start with the names of products and categories. Names are so impactful.
Look at the links in SERPs; many are the actual search terms. A merchant might have a “Gifts and Delights” category, but how many people search for “gifts and delights”? What the heck is a delight? I guarantee “gifts and delights” is a zero-volume keyword.
So even if you rank number one, you’ve won nothing. But if you change the name to “Unique Gift Ideas,” you will now have a search term worth winning. Go through all of your categories and product names. Make sure they’re all named something that has search volume.
Google Trends can help identify those high-volume names. Look at the trending cluster topics for ideas. Consider, too, adding a widget or word cloud to a product page with keyword variants and even typos.
Merchants with multiple SKUs of a single item could name each with a top keyword variant.
Schwartzman: How did you learn ecommerce SEO?
Kubaitis: I was a web developer for a large online retailer. They saw that I was good with SEO, so I took it over as a primary responsibility. I ended up doing SEO for that retailer for almost 20 years. I helped them grow from $5 million in annual revenue to $65 million with a $40 average cart size. So a lot of carts. High volume, low margin. We had 25,000 SKUs across 500 product categories.
We competed against Amazon and all the big marketplaces. A lot of sellers think they can’t compete against those sites, but Amazon’s product pages often have zero external backlinks. You can beat them with 25 backlinks. I spent years being afraid to compete with Amazon. I finally mustered up the courage; all it took was 25 backlinks.
Don’t make my mistake.
Schwartzman: Let’s switch to content marketing. Ecommerce stores often launch blogs to attract traffic for products. What are your thoughts about that?
Kubaitis: Blogs can help, but executing the strategy is often flawed and ends up causing more harm. Most online retailers have a problem with keyword cannibalization between their home page, categories, and product pages. Then they publish blog posts that overlap with the same keywords.
A better ecommerce strategy involves multiple websites. For example, a seller of high-end poker tables could launch a blog site about poker rules, professional tournaments, and related — and then advertise the tables there. The seller would have multiple marketing assets and free advertising. The seller can test keywords that the store couldn’t otherwise target. And since they’re on different domains, they’re not cannibalizing each other.
I tell retailers a blog is helpful on a different domain, but four out of five have a problem when it’s on their ecommerce sites.
Schwartzman: Tell us about your company, SEO Tool Lab.
Kubaitis: Our primary tool is called Cora. It uses statistical analysis to determine which elements on your website and your competitors’ impact rankings for a keyword. Cora reduces the possibilities from thousands to a few dozen to focus on.
Plus, we host a weekly YouTube show called SEO Fight Club. It’s an open debate and peer review of SEO tactics, tools, and trends.