SEO For Marketplaces: Overcoming Technical Challenges #WTSFest

#seomarketplaces at #WTSFest by @aleyda from @orainti

#seomarketplaces at #wtsfest by @aleyda from @orainti
SEO FOR MARKETPLACES
Overcoming Technical Challenges

Do you recognize
any of these
Websites?

#seomarketplaces by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://a16z.com/2020/02/18/marketplace-100/
These are the largest
and fastest-growing
consumer-facing
marketplaces

#seomarketplaces by @aleyda from @oraintihttp://blog.linnworks.com/complete-list-of-online-marketplaces
Marketplaces are some of the largest Websites in the
world, with the highest trafﬁc and online revenue

#seomarketplaces by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://a16z.com/2018/11/27/services-marketplaces-service-economy-evolution-whats-next/
They have evolved
and specialized to
connect and
support beyond
the initial,
discovery phases
of the customer
journey

#seomarketplaces by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://a16z.com/2020/02/18/marketplace-100/
… and can be found
across almost any
vertical now

From car rental to home decoration or sneakers
marketplaces

Although marketplaces share characteristics with
e-commerce sites…
Transactional Inventory Driven

… they have an additional layer of complexity due to its
two-sided platform nature and business model
Transactional Inventory Driven Two-sided

They need to attract and convert customers,
as well as the clients of their customers
Clients of
Customer
Customers

... at scale

With products/services that can be found with the same
descriptions across many other platforms too…

While trying to not
becoming obsolete
as an intermediary

Marketplaces can be
amazing sites to
sharpen your SEO skills
… or it’s SEO fun
Not sure if it’s fun…

#seomarketplaces by @aleyda from @oraintihttps://twitter.com/thetafferboy/status/1232068982045323265
…Particularly your
technical SEO ones

Internal linking
and indexing of
facets with non-
standardized
attributes
Optimizing
products pages
with limited control
and highly dynamic
inventory
Facing challenges like these, which are also common
across big e-commerce and inventory driven sites

Let’s see how to handle
them to help you win
survive your marketplace
technical SEO process!

#seomarketplaces by @aleyda from @orainti
Optimizing products
pages with limited
control and highly
dynamic inventory

All paths of your site lead to your products pages,
which can make or break conversions

Marketplaces need
to be ready to
index and crawl a
highly dynamic
product inventory,
driven by supply
and demand that
you don’t control

Your products
pages are
valuable
to attract bottom
of the funnel
searches

Product pages
tend to be also
highly shared
and a magnet
for backlinks

… which can end up making them some
of your top URLs traffic wise too

It’s easy to
generate
errors with
them though

Which at an
aggregated
basis, doesn’t
only hurt your
Website
crawlability,
products
rankability and
user experience
…

…But also
ultimately, makes
you lose trafﬁc
and conversions
that you could
otherwise refer
to other products

#seomarketplaces at #wtsfest by @aleyda from @orainti#seomarketplaces at #wtsfest by @aleyda from @orainti
Automated validation
for consistent indexing
and internal linking is
required through your
products lifecycle

Assist merchants
through the
product
publishing
process to give as
many details as
possible to better
describe and
categorize them

Establish minimum
descriptions
requirements within
the system when
products are listed

Don’t allow the same product to be listed twice by the
same vendor to add it in many categories or locations

Define a number of relevant categories the products
can be connected with, but don’t add to the URLs

Create SEO best
practices,
guidelines and
tutorials for
vendors to make
the process easier
for them, while
gamifying the
process

Use it to differentiate products metadata & descriptions
to be specific to target & rank with these characteristics

Each product should be listed in at least a full
categories>sub-categories>facets path that is indexable

These categories/facets should be linked through their
canonical URLs, avoiding the usage of parameters
Don’t link to
canonicalized
Category URLs

Linking and including in the XML sitemaps
the original products URLs too
Don’t link to
canonicalized
Product URLs

What happens when products are not sold anymore?

When the product goes out of stock, it should be then
eliminated from listings, internal search & XML sitemap
Don’t
link

If it’s a temporary
status or you’re
unsure, the
product page
should remain
indexable
recommending
related products
until it comes
back or during a
minimum time

Giving also the
option to users
to be notified
when the
product comes
back in stock
again

Feature a message explaining
why the user is redirected
If it’s permanent & the page has backlinks, traffic or
conversions, 301-redirect to indexable parent category

Avoid 301-redirects to generic or non-relevant
categories that won’t keep the old page relevance

Another option is 301-redirecting to similar product
but it can cause high volume of chain redirects

Avoid 302
redirects to make
sure you pass the
old product page
value while
making sure the
destination
actually works
and is relevant

Don’t show 404s for out of stock products
w/ backlinks, you miss value & is bad experience

You can use 410 http status for permanent out of
stock pages with no backlinks nor rankings/traffic
Personalize
your error page
to be usable
and relevant

Schedule continuous crawls to run & be delivered
automatically to identify remaining crawlability issues
Ryte

Set real time SEO
monitoring and
alerts, to be
warned if your
product pages
change their
crawlability or
indexing status
Little warden & content king

Integrate Web traffic
and rankings data to
alerts validations,
prioritizing the ones of
those product pages
with certain minimum
value
Little warden & content king

Configure the alerts
to be directly
delivered to your
communication or PM
system to facilitate
their validation
Zapier, Integromat

It's about
aligning the
crawling and
indexing of
your products to
their lifecycle to
maximize their
value

#seomarketplaces by @aleyda from @orainti#seomarketplaces at #wtsfest by @aleyda from @orainti
Internal linking and
indexing of facets with
non-standardized
attributes

Should a shoe query of a specific model and color be
targeted by a product or a listing page?

Should you
canonicalize a
facet after a
certain level of
depth to its
parent
category?

You want to avoid a sub-optimal targeting and
rankings with a too specific product page …

… or a still too generic sub-category that won’t be as
relevant for the user, who will need to filter further

Sometimes this happens because the relevant
indexable facet doesn’t exist on the site

Sometimes it
does exist but
is not self-
canonicalized

… or it hardly has internal links because the
navigation towards it is not crawlable

But you also don't want to waste your site crawling
on not worthy to be indexed nor ranked URLs…

#seomarketplaces at #wtsfest by @aleyda from @orainti#seomarketplaces at #wtsfest by @aleyda from @orainti
It's about aligning your
Web taxonomy
indexing and internal
linking with the
audience demand and
your providers supply

On one hand, it depends
on the demand volume
and intent: How many
searches does the query
have and what are the
characteristics?

… on the other,
the existing
supply: How
many of these
speciﬁc
products do you
have to offer?

Also, can these queries generate conversions that
will compensate the optimization efforts of the facet?
>

So, those facets
with too little
products or
targeting non-
popular queries
should be
canonicalized to
their parents
levels

While obfuscating
their internal
linking, to avoid
crawling not
meant to be
indexed pages

However, you want
to start indexing
and optimizing
facets that target
worthy queries for
which you have
enough products

How can you identify these
opportunities with so many
category levels, facets and
products on your site?

You can quickly
validate the most
popular sub-topics
searched along your
products categories/
brands with keyword
research tools that
will group and show
searches for them
directly
Semrush

#seomarketplaces at #wtsfest by @aleyda from @oraintianalytics
Monitor your internal search results queries:
repeated, relevant ones that you’re not targeting yet

Do the same with your trending products per category:
what are their brands, characteristics and/or locations?

#seomarketplaces at #wtsfest by @aleyda from @oraintisistrix
Look for ranked
but cannibalized
categories/
products queries
results w/ non-
trivial search
volume

#seomarketplaces at #wtsfest by @aleyda from @oraintisemrush
… Verify if your ranked pages are continuously
switching in search results for these queries

#seomarketplaces at #wtsfest by @aleyda from @oraintisurfer
What are the top
ranked pages
above yours:
What type of
pages are they?
What kind of
information do
they feature? Do
they provide a
better experience
than yours?

#seomarketplaces at #wtsfest by @aleyda from @oraintisemrush
Check and
compare the
indexable facets of
the competitors
consistently
outranking you

How can you differentiate and organize your Web
listings to better address users needs in their journey?
Category Sub-Category Facet Sub-Facet

Remember that is
not only about
start indexing and
linking to them,
but optimizing
their offering to
fulﬁll the user
search experience
and facilitate its
conversion

It should be about
effectively
showcasing the
existing supply to
satisfy a non-trivial
audience demand

... indexing &
linking your Web
taxonomy,
including facets,
accordingly

Remember that is
not about indexing
more pages, but
better pages

Sounds like too much and rather not possible?

It's doable when you have resources and ﬂexibility
to optimize the platform conﬁguration accordingly
When changes are released

Surviving winning
marketplaces technical
SEO challenges is
possible…

... and it can be
highly proﬁtable
and worthy when
it happens!

I’m Aleyda Solis
*SEO Consultant & Founder at Orainti
*SEO Speaker at +100 Events in +20 countries
*Author “SEO. Las Claves Esenciales.”
*Crawling Mondays YouTube SEO Video Series Host
*#SEOFOMO Newsletter Wrangler
*Blogger in Search Engine Land & Search Engine Journal
*Featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Hufﬁngton Post
*European Search Personality of the Year in 2018
Thanks! Questions?

SEO For Marketplaces: Overcoming Technical Challenges #WTSFest

Empfohlen

Empfohlen

Weitere ähnliche Inhalte

Was ist angesagt?

Was ist angesagt? (20)

Ähnlich wie SEO For Marketplaces: Overcoming Technical Challenges #WTSFest

Ähnlich wie SEO For Marketplaces: Overcoming Technical Challenges #WTSFest (20)

Mehr von Aleyda Solís

Mehr von Aleyda Solís (17)

Kürzlich hochgeladen

Kürzlich hochgeladen (20)

SEO For Marketplaces: Overcoming Technical Challenges #WTSFest