Advanced on-site SEO case study

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University of UlsterDigital Media Communication

A case study in technical SEO

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Bedeck

• Seller of luxury bed linens

• Own brand as well as third party brands

• Ecommerce website: www.bedeckhome.com

• Re-launched site in October 2011

� Strong visibility on branded search terms

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� Strong visibility on branded search terms

� Zero visibility on generic search terms

Bedeck SEO project

• Targeted keywords:

bedding sets

designer bed linen

designer bedding

duvet sets

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duvet sets

goose feather pillows

hotel luxury bedding

hotel luxury bedlinen

luxury bed linen

luxury bedding

quality bed linen

Basic On-Site SEO

• Title tags:

• Meta descriptions:

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• Content.

Special Challenges

Special challenges with large ecommerce websites:

• Large amount of pages:

� Homepage

� Category pages

� Subcategory pages

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� Subcategory pages

� Product pages

� Supporting information (delivery, T&Cs, stores, etc)

� Blog/News pages

• Getting product pages in Google’s index

• Potential duplicate content issues

Advanced On-Site SEO

• Indexing

� XML sitemaps

� Duplicate content

• Structured data

� Schema.org

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� Schema.org

• Load speed

� Faster = better

Indexing

• Has Google indexed all pages?

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This used to be a very

inaccurate ‘guesstimate’

Indexing

• Google Webmaster Tools – Index Status report(Since July 2012)

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Indexing

• Google Webmaster Tools – Index Status report

What

happened?

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happened?

Index Status advanced report

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Is this a good thing?

A lot of

pages not

included

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Huge

gap

Yes, that’s a good thing

• Bedeckhome.com uses ‘faceted navigation’(a.k.a. ‘layered navigation’ or‘additive filters’)

• This almost always causes duplicate content issues:

� Page after page after page of product lists

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� Page after page after page of product lists

� Google not sure which to include

Ensuring Google indexes the right pages

• ‘Index sculpting’

� “noindex, follow” meta robots tag

� Robots.txt blocking

� JavaScript-generated faceted links

� Rel=nofollow links

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� Rel=nofollow links

• Google Webmaster Tools

� URL Parameters configuration

URL Parameters in GWT

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XML Sitemaps

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Structured data / microdata

“On-page markup enables search engines to understand the information on web pages and provide richer search results in order to make it easier for users to find relevant information on the web. Markup can also enable new tools and applications that make use of the structure.”

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applications that make use of the structure.”

Quoted from schema.org

Structured data

hProduct structured data

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What does it do?

In theory, it turns this:

…in to this:

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…in to this:

(In practice, Google wants you to pay them first.)

It does do this (for free):

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hReview structured data

Load Speed

• Quicker = better

• Users don’t like to wait

• Search engines don’t like to wait

� Crawl Budget: how much time Google spends crawling your site until it goes ’screw this, I’m

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site until it goes ’screw this, I’m outta here’.

How to improve load speed

• Faster hosting environment

• Tidy HTML code

• Minimal JavaScript

• Minimal external calls

� Facebook & Twitter integrations

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� Facebook & Twitter integrations

� Third party functions (ex. booking forms)

• Small image filesize

Bedeckhome.com’s load speed

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Just about OK

Did it work?

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Google.co.uk keyword rankings

Keyword Oct-11 Sep-12 Change

bedding sets (outside top 100) 9 +91

designer bed linen 9 5 +4

designer bedding 4 3 +1

duvet sets (outside top 100) 16 +84

goose feather pillows 25 9 +16

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goose feather pillows 25 9 +16

hotel luxury bedding 91 2 +89

hotel luxury bedlinen 35 4 +31

luxury bed linen 68 5 +63

luxury bedding 17 5 +12

quality bed linen 5 6 -1

Generic search growth Oct 11 – Sept 12

8000

10000

12000

Visits from Generic Search

£6,000.00

£7,000.00

£8,000.00

£9,000.00

Revenue from Generic Search

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0

2000

4000

6000

£0.00

£1,000.00

£2,000.00

£3,000.00

£4,000.00

£5,000.00

Year on year comparison

60,000

80,000

100,000

120,000

Growth:

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0

20,000

40,000

Oct 2010 - Sept 2011 Oct 2011 - Sept 2012

Generic Search traffic Generic Search revenue

Growth:

Branded Search traffic 31%

Generic Search traffic 117%

Generic Search revenue 151%

Questions?

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Questions?

badams@piercecommunications.co.ukhttp://twitter.com/badamshttp://www.piercecommunications.co.uk