SEO For Ecommerce & The Future Of Google Shopping [Podcast] via @sejournal, @lorenbaker

Sometimes SEO and other marketing integration can be overlooked when you’re doing migrations or other developmental projects, especially on the ecommerce side.

Holistically, you can’t do one without the other. So the search engine and conversion pieces are equally as important as the technology pieces.

Ethan Giffin, the founder and CEO of Baltimore-based Groove Commerce, joined me on the SEJ Show to discuss overall SEO for ecommerce & DTCs, Google Merchant Center / Shopping, the importance of CRO & Upsells for SEO (and other channels), and ways to prepare for the 2022 Holiday Shopping season.

Shopify Plus can be a good fit if you have a simple business. However, you need more customization if you have a more complex interaction with more business rules and logic. Big-commerce people generally float over to the big commerce side of things. –Ethan Giffin, 12:38

Programmatically create the best framework. The best framework is thinking about how the template is laid out. What is the hierarchy of the template, what are the components, and how do the sites link together from an internal linking standpoint? So I’m just a believer that many things we did back in the day still work. –Ethan Giffin, 16:11

Suppose you’re new to a company and you hear a migration. In that case, hopefully, there are archives within the company that people used before you. There are lists of the redirects that were integrated and implemented into the site. Just cleaning that history up can be incredibly impactful. But again, it gets into human behavior and the ability to make things more efficient. –Loren Baker, 20:37

[00:00] – About Ethan.
[12:14] – Most commonly overlooked issues during migration.
[24:44] – An essential factor to consider in building an ecommerce site.
[31:48] – What to do when a product is no longer sold.
[35:18] – FAQ schema recommendation.
[37:23] – What is rendering on the ecommerce side?
[41:29] – Recommendation on optimizing from an ad script perspective.
[43:01] – Optimizing schema integrations on the catalog side.
[48:55] – Ecommerce companies Ethan has worked with.

Resources mentioned:

Groove Commerce: https://www.groovecommerce.com/

Every app that you install into your store has overhead. Every kind of front office sales-related app, reviews, upsells, cross-sell, site search, out-of-stock notifications – everything has a component to it that loads into the browser, and that creates a heavier page. –Ethan Giffin, 25:15

People don’t think about margin enough. So how do you promote those products and get people to buy things with the best margin versus the most popular ones? So really, it’s thinking about how to optimize the catalog. –Ethan Giffin, 47:32

If you have a business and you’re moving to another building, you don’t just bring the storefront with you. You got to bring everything you got to bring the offices, the desks, everything. So if you’re migrating a site, you don’t just redirect the front page and the top like collections or categories. You must take care of everything –the blog, subdomains, subfolder structures, etc. –Loren Baker, 22:56

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Connect with Ethan Giffin:

Ethan Giffin, GrooveCommerce’s CEO, has been a leading ecommerce and web analytics expert for most of his career. Conversion rates, search engine visibility, and web analytics are all things he knows inside and out. However, he is passionate about helping businesses succeed online without having to become experts.

There are only a few people like Ethan. His love for SEO, conversion rates, and ecommerce go hand in hand with his passion for traveling and DJing in between – not to mention those pocket squares!

Connect with Ethan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethangiffin/
Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/opie

Connect with Loren Baker, Founder of Search Engine Journal:

Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/lorenbaker
Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenbaker