eCommerce SEO for Google Is Not Enough

From my perspective, AI is not a real problem.

For many years in SEO, the same rules have remained valid:

• Create good content
• Build a strong brand
• Demonstrate differentiation in the market

To achieve these things, you do link building, PR, and more.

Many SEOs regret this because they live in their cave.

And they think things exist only in black or white. But both white and black exist.

Now, it is important to understand what moves the needle.

The SEO specialist is dead; now you have a different role, like Search Marketer or whatever you want to call it.

The concept is to understand and create a strategy for search.

Searches happen on social media, forums, marketplaces, price comparators, Google, AI, etc.

It is necessary to take different placements in the SERP

If before you only needed to publish SEO articles and optimize categories, now that isn’t enough.

If you search “shoes for running every day,” you see different things.

On Google, you can appear in different zones.

This SERP is rich because you can appear in videos, online debates, or in the marketplace.

Here, you need to have a good understanding of the entire search landscape.

Because if you have a long-term plan, you’ll probably build a solid strategy that will cover the marketplace, content, or videos.

Example

You have an e-commerce site that sells running shoes.

You have different options:

• Testing the market: A good solution would be to put your products into marketplaces to take advantage of their internal traffic and domain trust. These products can also rank on Google. This is not an expensive solution.
• You can create product content.

The importance here is to have a good eye to identify what works and what doesn’t.

Because your business is at a different stage of growth.

Don’t be present on every single platform, channel, etc.

Try to obtain results on one and then add new channels, platforms, etc.

Interesting example in AI mode

I searched for (Brand) + clothing in Google Shopping and in ChatGPT.

In many cases, ChatGPT showed me the same carousel of products as in Google Shopping.

This appears in many of my searches.

So, if the view is the same, what changes here for people?

It’s subjective.

Because each person thinks differently.

You continue to work WELL in SEO on:

• Link building and PR
• A proactive on-site approach
• Creating content useful for users. Here, I also include content for pre-purchase and post-purchase, and content for forums, social media, etc.
• And more.

Don’t try the easy method to rank fast; you’ll gain short-term and controversial results.

Build valuable content

It is very important to pay attention.

In fashion/luxury, for example, it is often not a good idea to create a blog for many brand-related reasons.

But it is useful to enhance our product pages with more information like FAQs, additional content with photos, etc.

Because people are interested in the brand, they will probably seek information in forums, and it will be better if you appear there.

For example:

I navigated in ChatGPT…

I wrote: “I want to buy Nike shoes for running every day.”

Then, ChatGPT wrote descriptions and linked to a few products.

There is much good content around this product.

But many e-commerce sites don’t have product content.

If you look at Reddit, reviews have many interactions because they are detailed and useful.

Also, many sites like Running Shoes Guru have good content, but they are affiliates.

So, what do you do?

• Create a good link-building campaign to appear on these sites that mention the product.
• Publish videos and content on your blog/social media showing your products.
• Add more information to your product pages, like videos, details, comparisons with other products, etc.
• Create online discussions. For example, publish similar content on Reddit and observe the desires/problems of the people.
• Create different sites (PBNs) to dominate the search results (you must have a budget).
• And more.

So, optimizing SEO for your products isn’t enough.

Many SEOs who operate in e-commerce talk only about:

• Optimizing product grids
• Optimizing product pages

Yes, these are important.

But products also need a content strategy.

If you have this content knowledge, you can achieve better results.

So, create a solid strategy for product content.

So, how appear?

Many SEOs create unnecessary paranoia.

You should always work well in these aspects:

• Make good link-building and PR efforts to build a strong brand
• Work to obtain easy wins like long-tail keywords and pursue harder wins in the long term.
• Optimize aspects that competitors have neglected, like HTML5, internal heading structure, etc.
• And more.

So, SEO has changed, yes, because now you are a Search Marketer.

You don’t optimize only for Google but also know how to create an entire search strategy.

I mean:

• Know the basics of social media → Can we rank there?
• Know the basics of Marketplace, price comparators, etc. → Can we earn money from this platform?
• Know the online discussions → On Reddit, many questions appear about products. On social media, if you read the comments, you can refine your product pages or create new content for them, etc.
• …

Create filters for long-tail keywords

In many sectors, to compete better with giants and obtain results, you need to rank long-tail keywords through filters.

It’s a technique that’s still valid.

Many e-commerce sites use noindex and block filters via robots.txt, but in my experience, in many cases, they are a goldmine.

And this is also good for the AI landscape.

If you have different, specific indexed pages, you’ll probably have a good chance of appearing there.

Example of Marketplace

When I worked at NowArc, I didn’t think only about SEO optimization or AI, etc.

We saw a good opportunity to receive leads from Pinterest, and we worked with this social platform.

Here, a logical structure is created to help people and the Pinterest bot understand our structure.

It was a goldmine.

Also, if you think about the entire search landscape and not only SEO.

Many competitors don’t exploit Pinterest, and we positioned ourselves as number one.

This was an easy win with a very low budget.

We achieved a good conversion rate from Pinterest to our Marketplace.