0:00

you Welcome

0:04

to another Mouthwatering episode of the

0:07

Recipe for SEO Success podcast. I'm

0:09

your host, Kate Toon, the head

0:11

chef in this delightful digital kitchen

0:13

where we whip up scrumptious SEO

0:15

strategies to elevate your online presence. Today,

0:18

you are diving into the

0:20

tantalizing world of e -commerce SEO,

0:22

sprinkling a dash of insight on

0:24

the latest search engine result,

0:26

Pages Changes. Joining us at

0:28

the table is the insightful Jason Munn,

0:31

who's here to guide us newbies

0:33

through this ever -ever evolving landscape. So

0:35

sharpen your SEO faults and knives

0:37

because we're about to serve up

0:39

some seriously actionable advice that will

0:41

have your e -commerce efforts rising

0:43

to the top like a perfectly

0:45

baked souffle. Let's get cooking! Hello,

0:52

my name is Kate Toon and I'm

0:55

the head chef at the recipe for SEO success and

0:57

online teaching hub for all things related to search

0:59

engine optimization. And today I'm talking

1:01

to Jason Munn. Hello, Jason Munn. Okay, how

1:03

are you? I'm good. Jason's in a cool

1:05

little podcast studio. He's got, you look like

1:07

a DJ. You look like a cool DJ

1:09

in a FIFA. That's what I'm saying. I'm

1:12

going to have to take a screenshot of him and put

1:14

it in the show notes so you can see he looks cool.

1:16

Let me tell you who Jason is. Jason

1:18

is the group. Chief Search

1:20

Officer for Overdose Digital, a

1:22

digital commerce agency focused on

1:24

helping e -commerce businesses thrive.

1:26

He spent over 15 years

1:28

helping businesses understand how to

1:30

get the most out of

1:32

their SEO and online marketing.

1:34

He thrives on the technical

1:36

aspects of SEO and is

1:38

a longstanding proponent of sustainable

1:40

white hat optimization that integrates

1:42

across businesses whole marketing function. And

1:45

Jason and I met recently at

1:47

the Newcastle SEO conference, which was

1:49

dead good, wasn't it? I really

1:51

enjoyed that. And running again this

1:54

year, I think. I think

1:56

September, I think. Yeah, yeah. Will you

1:58

be going again? I will be. Yeah,

2:00

it's very

2:03

fun. All

2:05

right, so we're going to dive straight in because

2:07

obviously you've got a lot of know -how and

2:09

I want to squeeze as much juice out of

2:11

you as possible. So we had a

2:13

chat with Louis Smith. I don't know

2:15

if you know him from LinkedIn. Great dude. Sorry for Leo with

2:17

his work. Yeah, about the changes happening in SEO.

2:19

But we're going to dig in a little

2:21

bit deeper today. And one

2:24

thing that I think is quite

2:26

overwhelming for e -commerce businesses are

2:28

the search engine results pages and all the

2:30

different features and we're not sure which ones are

2:32

paid and which ones aren't and how we

2:34

can get these different spots and we've got the

2:36

knowledge graph panel which we can't get but

2:38

we can get a brand. So

2:40

what Google SERP changes

2:43

are you noticing that could

2:45

impact e -commerce businesses? Yeah.

2:47

So one of the privileges of

2:50

my job at Overloads Digital

2:52

is we work with a broad

2:54

range of brands and e -commerce

2:56

businesses spanning different regions. So

2:58

everything that Google does when they

3:00

roll things out, they always start with

3:02

the American market. And we have

3:05

several American brands and clients that we

3:07

work with. And probably about two

3:09

and a half years ago, we're noticing

3:11

that the SERPs have been changing. Google

3:13

have been introducing

3:16

filters. to allow you to

3:18

slice and dice your product searches, introducing

3:21

little pills to help you with

3:23

quick filtering of SERPs as well

3:25

when you are conducting e -com

3:27

related searches on there. So we

3:29

noticed that about two and a

3:31

half years ago, I'm like, oh,

3:33

what is Google trying to do

3:35

here? Clearly Google is trying

3:37

to be the category page

3:39

or the comparison engine. And

3:41

I think they're trying to go head to

3:43

head with Amazon, because I think that was an

3:45

interesting. stat that was reported several

3:47

years ago to say that 90 %

3:49

of e -commerce related or transactional searches

3:52

when someone's ready to purchase something happens

3:54

on Amazon and maybe Google saw

3:56

that stat and go, oh, let's try

3:58

and take a slice of that. So

4:00

what we're noticing that surf is changing

4:02

now is no longer the 10 blue

4:05

links. In between those 10

4:07

blue links, you're going to get a

4:09

carousel of product recommendations, popular

4:11

products. And if you're in

4:13

deep in that purchase mode, They're

4:16

going to serve you different features

4:18

like products on deals or products

4:20

that you can pick up at

4:22

your local store that's closed by

4:24

the offer click and collect. So

4:26

there's a lot of those kind

4:28

of information and search features that's

4:30

currently popping up. Great. I might

4:32

dig into a few of those. I think that's a really

4:34

interesting perspective that it's trying to go ahead to head with

4:36

Amazon. And it's, you

4:38

know, this whole evolution of Google, it's

4:40

not, you know, we say now it's

4:42

not so much a search engine. It's

4:44

an answer engine, especially with started with

4:46

the future snippets. And now we've got

4:48

the AI overviews. And, you know, now

4:50

it's really giving us a lot of

4:52

ability to hone our purchase decision in the

4:54

search before we even hit a site. So let's

4:56

talk about a few of those elements. You

4:58

talk about the carousel. So that's what appears at

5:00

the top. the little images, people

5:03

get very confused about whether that's a

5:05

paid element or organic element. So can you

5:07

talk us through that? Yeah,

5:09

so those features I mentioned

5:11

that get slipped in between

5:13

the organic listings, those are

5:15

organic. They're free. They're totally

5:17

free. But in order to

5:19

be featured in those features,

5:21

you need to enable the

5:23

free listing feature within your

5:25

Google Merchant Center account. So

5:27

a lot of brands, when

5:29

they first start up, they'll

5:31

fire up their Google Merchant

5:33

Center account, no problems. They'll

5:36

link up their store and their product feed

5:38

into Google Merchant Center. But oftentimes, they

5:40

forget to take that little box that

5:42

says that I want to be opted

5:45

in to the free listing

5:47

feature and that's how you

5:49

get into those listings. I

5:52

guess does this

5:54

do the same optimization targets, impact

5:56

your ability to appear there?

5:58

So you've got products, we're

6:01

going to do all the standard optimization that

6:03

we are, we're going to name it well, we're

6:05

going to have well -named images, detailed information, yada

6:07

yada. Does that impact your ability

6:09

to peer? Because often in that in

6:11

that merchant carousel, you see multiple products from

6:13

one site. And so like, what

6:15

are they doing? How are they doing that, you know? So

6:18

everything starts with good product data.

6:20

So Google Merchant Center is there

6:22

to aggregate all the product data

6:24

so that they can understand who

6:26

has the best deals, which

6:28

product has the best reviews. And at the

6:30

end of the day, Google is trying to

6:32

serve up the most relevant product to that user

6:34

search query. I'm going to use

6:36

your little bookshop. example, right?

6:39

So if you intend to

6:41

then sell online via your own

6:43

website, what you want to

6:45

do is make sure that all the

6:47

books that you want to sell online, they

6:49

all have the correct information. So the

6:51

ISBN number needs to be accurate. You can't

6:53

recreate a brand new ISBN number just

6:55

because you want to. So want to make

6:57

sure that your product data is right

6:59

so that Google can curate all of that

7:01

together in that massive, massive little database

7:03

and go, okay, so I'm searching for this

7:05

specific book. Who has the best deal?

7:07

And so happened that Kate's little bookshop there has the

7:10

best deal. They have 25 % off right now. Then

7:12

they can go, all right, that's the best deal.

7:14

I'm going to serve that up. The

7:16

usual ranking signals are still the same.

7:18

So you need to have good product

7:20

reviews. You need to solicit that and

7:23

make sure that your products are getting

7:25

good reviews, rave

7:27

reviews from users, your pricing.

7:29

Processing comes into play as well. Google likes

7:31

to show the cheapest products with the best

7:33

deals. And also imagery. So

7:36

if you have a single product image, that is

7:38

going to be at a disadvantage. So

7:40

Google wants to see more variety of

7:42

images. So the more you have, the

7:44

better. So the name of the game

7:46

here is that whatever you can feed

7:48

to Google via product feed, you should

7:50

fully utilize all the attributes that's available

7:53

to you. So getting your product data

7:55

enriched from the get go

7:57

is the most important thing. So don't

7:59

go with the basic of product name, product

8:01

description, product image, product price, and

8:04

that's it. You've got to

8:06

go above and beyond that. Got to

8:08

go above and beyond. And some of those

8:10

above and beyond features would be, as you said,

8:12

multiple images and detailed images, care

8:14

instructions. I think it's

8:16

a good idea to have some FAQs

8:18

and turn on your reviews. A lot of

8:20

e -commerce people are terrified about turning on

8:22

reviews in case they get negative reviews,

8:24

but you would advocate turning on. And it's

8:26

user -generated content. I often see that sites

8:28

are ranking for terms in the review

8:30

that they haven't actually used in their core

8:33

content. So are you a big advocate

8:35

for product reviews? 500%.

8:37

So there's no

8:39

way of gaming

8:41

organic Google shopping. You

8:44

have to be a business practitioner.

8:46

You have to demonstrate that you

8:48

have good operations in terms of your

8:50

shipping timelines, your refund policies, and

8:52

everything like that, because everything gets measured.

8:55

So one of the core ranking

8:57

factors to be eligible to

8:59

be considered as part of those

9:01

organic shopping carousels is what

9:03

we call top quality score badge.

9:06

So within Google Merchant Center, When you first

9:08

start up your new e -commerce store, you're going

9:10

to get a really low rating. So

9:13

as you gather more reviews

9:15

and people provide feedback to go,

9:17

I trust this store. I

9:19

got really good shipping thresholds. Like

9:21

I got my product really

9:23

quickly. Google is going to curate

9:25

all of those reviews and they're going to

9:27

go, all right, this guy is qualified for

9:29

the top quality score badge. So it's a

9:31

little badge. In Google Merchant Center, if you

9:34

go to store quality report, it will show

9:36

you where your account the ad and we're

9:38

currently deficient. So it could be as simple

9:40

as your page speed is too slow. Google

9:42

has validated that and users have complained

9:44

that the site is loading really slowly

9:46

through quote vitals and all of that.

9:48

And then that gets marked down a

9:51

little bit. So all your traditional SEO

9:53

optimization techniques still is still at play

9:55

here with the addition of more scrutiny

9:57

on your business operations in terms of

9:59

your shipping times and refund policies and

10:01

stuff like that. Yeah, I mean, with

10:03

our little bookshop, we can't compete. We

10:05

can't offer the deals. We can't offer the

10:07

range. The online

10:09

store has been on a bit on the

10:11

back burner, but as we were going

10:14

through Google Merchant, one of the things that

10:16

they do requires a really good returns

10:18

and shipping policy, which many sites don't have,

10:20

and they don't actually have it in their

10:22

footer or it's not linked to from the

10:24

products. So it really is getting that admin

10:26

side of things sorted as well. You wouldn't

10:28

think that that would have impact, but it

10:30

does because it's that customer trust, right? Absolutely.

10:33

So that's where I think Google is

10:35

trying to force people while trying to

10:38

eliminate all the shortcuts. You know, people

10:40

say that, oh, you can just buy

10:42

reviews or get people to pay people

10:44

to solicit some 5 ,000 reviews to your

10:46

website, but it's not going to work

10:48

anymore. Google is now trying to connect

10:50

all the pieces and trying to reward

10:52

people who are doing good business rather

10:54

than trying to gain the system. Yeah,

10:57

now this isn't one of the questions we

10:59

had in our sheet, it's just something that's

11:01

come up to me. You talked about deals

11:03

and one of the things that's a bit

11:05

confusing for product descriptions. You've got your product

11:07

description, you've tried to make it unique and

11:09

interesting and add some emotion, you've got

11:12

your reviews, your FAQs, your video, everything's there,

11:14

but now you want to offer some

11:16

kind of discount. Should you

11:18

be changing title tags and product descriptions

11:20

on a whim like that? Like, oh, it's

11:22

Christmas. We're offering 25. Should you be going in

11:24

and changing all your title tags and changing all that? Or

11:26

is that going to mess things up? It

11:28

is going to mess things up. So

11:30

the best practice here is to utilize

11:32

what we call labels within Google Merchant Center.

11:35

So if you're running a site -wide sale

11:37

at the moment, and you want to

11:39

say 20 % off site -wide, you can

11:41

actually go into your Google Merchant Center feed

11:43

and utilize that promotion label. You

11:46

know, sometimes you see listings where they go,

11:48

yep, recommend it with your prices. Then you

11:50

see at the top right -hand corner of

11:52

your listing where it says minus 20 % off.

11:54

So that's how you utilize the product feed. The

11:57

lines are going to get blurred.

12:00

It's already getting blurred. responsibility

12:03

of the paid search or Google

12:06

marketing team that does that? Or is

12:08

that the SEO team going into

12:10

Google Merchant Center to make those tweaks

12:12

via their product feed? So

12:14

whatever you do on your onsite

12:16

SEO work, on your PDP and

12:18

your product page, it really doesn't

12:20

impact Google Merchant Center too much.

12:22

So your title tag doesn't have

12:24

to match what you feed into

12:26

Google Merchant. And

12:29

within Google Merchant Center, you can't

12:31

put promotional messaging in your

12:33

product title, whereas on site,

12:35

you can. On

12:38

site, if you want to go, I don't

12:40

know, what's the latest book that's really hot?

12:42

Onyx Storm. If you go Onyx Storm, Black

12:44

Friday Deal, no problems. You can do that

12:46

on your product page. But within Google Merchant

12:48

Center, you can't actually do that. So lot

12:50

of people get confused to think that The

12:52

title tag that I have on

12:55

my product page needs to match what

12:57

we feed into Google Merchant Center

12:59

is completely false. You can do a

13:01

lot more optimization via the Google

13:03

product feed because it doesn't have that

13:05

60 character limit that all the

13:07

tools are recommending. They actually want

13:09

you to be a bit more specific. For example, the

13:12

little t -shirt that you're wearing right now. If

13:14

you would describe that t -shirt, it

13:16

would be a fluff you yellow

13:18

size M for women's, right? So

13:20

you probably want to be as

13:23

descriptive as that. So in your

13:25

PDP, you might just say fluff

13:27

you women's t -shirt. That's

13:29

your product name. But then it's a merchant

13:31

center. You can use those little attributes

13:33

that you already have within your product data.

13:35

So you've got different sizes. You've

13:38

got different styles maybe as well

13:40

with the fluff you think and

13:42

you've got maybe for men's and

13:44

women's. So you can utilize those

13:46

attributes to then build a more

13:48

specific searched product name or product

13:50

title within Google Merchant Center and

13:52

you can build a new one

13:54

to go yellow women's fluff

13:57

you t -shirt

13:59

size. L, for example.

14:01

You need to be very specific with that.

14:03

And because the product data contains all

14:05

the different sizes or different color schemes as

14:08

well, it allows you to just match

14:10

and match it. It sounds like a lot of

14:12

work. So not only have we got to set up

14:14

all our beautiful products on our site, we then

14:16

have to go and do a mirror version of the

14:18

more similar version of Google Merchants, or pull it

14:20

through, or, you know, because you mentioned

14:22

before all with the SEO team to it,

14:24

or the e -commerce. It's like, oh, most

14:26

of us, the people are follow this podcast

14:28

is one person one person and they're like

14:31

oh my god i've just got my product

14:33

descriptions up today i've done all my title

14:35

tags and now i have to go to

14:37

google merge extension kind of replicate this all

14:39

again question on that i mean

14:41

that's probably a misrepresentation but

14:43

With lots of e -commerce sites,

14:45

when I worked with providers,

14:48

they weren't really focusing on every

14:50

single product in their site.

14:52

They would pick best sellers, highest

14:54

recurring value. Is

14:56

there a way of reducing the workload

14:59

to really hone in on core products?

15:01

What do you think about that? Yeah,

15:03

so the 820 rule still applies. typical

15:06

for any e -com business where 20

15:08

% the products bring in 80 %

15:10

of revenue. So definitely focus on that,

15:12

that way optimization doesn't change. I

15:15

think there's a lot of

15:17

good quality product feed management

15:19

tools out there right now

15:21

that can help you facilitate

15:24

the creation. and enrichment

15:26

of the product feed very,

15:28

very easily. But

15:30

that all starts with good product

15:32

data getting inputted into WooCommerce

15:34

or Shopify. So

15:36

all these third -party feed management tools act

15:38

as a bit of a middleware to help

15:40

you enrich it. And within there, it's

15:43

just a drag and drop. So as

15:45

lots of data is there, you can

15:47

use and build and enrich your product

15:49

feed based on that. Hello.

15:53

Kate Tune here interrupting my

15:55

own podcast to remind you to go

15:57

and grab your copy of Six Figures

15:59

in School Hours, how to run

16:01

a successful business and still be a

16:03

good parent. The book is

16:05

available on Amazon, Booktopia and

16:07

at all good booksellers as

16:09

well as on my website

16:12

at SixFiguresInSchoolHours .com. It's packed with

16:14

doable practical tips to help

16:16

you feel more productive, make

16:18

serious money and never feel

16:20

like the worst parent ever

16:22

again. Do

16:25

you have any data about the percentage

16:28

of clicks that go to that carousel, that

16:30

shopping carousel versus the organic? Because I

16:32

would expect that a lot of clicks are

16:34

going to those, because they're so compelling,

16:36

they've got the image, they've got the price.

16:39

Do you have any data around that? I

16:41

don't have any updated data, but I

16:43

can quote some of the clients that we

16:45

work with. Usually,

16:48

if SEO is done right,

16:50

organic search should account for about

16:52

50 % of overall traffic of

16:54

the website, right? That's the

16:56

best practice. But we've

16:58

been observing the last two months

17:00

is that organic Google Shopping accounts

17:02

for 25 % of their 50%. Right,

17:04

okay. And then let's talk about

17:06

another search feature, which for the

17:08

newbies on the side, it's the

17:10

panel that appears on the side.

17:12

Sometimes it's called a knowledge graph

17:14

panel. And for e -commerce stores,

17:17

obviously there's a bit of debate about

17:19

whether you can have your Google My Business

17:21

page because most e -commerce stores do not

17:23

have a physical presence. So you

17:25

can set a service area. You're probably

17:27

not going to rank in local. I mean,

17:29

the point of that Google Business section

17:31

really is for local listings, but I'm noticing

17:33

more and more e -commerce

17:35

stores are getting a brand panel now. Are

17:37

you noticing that? Like really different in the

17:39

last, even in the last couple of weeks,

17:41

it's popping up so much more. What's happening

17:43

there? Absolutely. So that's where

17:45

our friend, Jason Barnard, does his

17:48

work the best, right? Yeah. So

17:50

yeah, what Google is trying to

17:52

do is once you built up

17:54

your brand and Google... synonymizes you

17:56

as an entity. That's when your

17:58

brand knowledge panel will start kicking

18:01

in. And that's that's all the

18:03

good stuff that schema tags will

18:05

do for you. But more importantly

18:07

is the rave reviews that you

18:09

get off your brand and your

18:11

store that Google is curating from

18:13

other places, not just on your

18:16

website, you know, people who shop. who

18:18

probably leave you a review

18:20

on TrustPilot or any of

18:22

those aggregator websites, Google

18:24

curates all of that. And then they

18:27

go, all right, these guys are making some

18:29

waves here. So I think they are

18:31

eligible for a brand panel now. And with

18:33

your schema tags, syncing everything up together

18:35

to say, this property is also mine. People

18:37

are saying good things about me on

18:39

Instagram and Facebook and Twitter or sorry, X.

18:42

They'll curate all of that and go, yep, these guys

18:44

are now. I

18:46

think there, so this is something that I

18:49

think e -commerce people really need to wrap

18:51

their head around. There's this whole focus, you

18:53

know, I work with a lot of smaller

18:55

e -commerce brands of getting the inventory on the

18:57

side and putting new products out and doing

18:59

wheels and doing TikToks. But I think about

19:01

individual products, but I think the real thing

19:03

I'm noticing more and more this year is

19:05

everyone is talking about the need to be

19:07

a brand's entity to build up that. you

19:10

know, branded search, as you know, Jason Barnard

19:12

has been on the podcast a few times

19:14

talking about it. And personal branding is something

19:16

that's really important to me. So for me,

19:18

you're working with more larger brands. I'm

19:20

working with smaller brands. And it's give

19:22

me a reason not to buy it from

19:24

Kmart. Give me a reason not to

19:26

buy it from Amazon. Make me care about

19:28

your brand. And, you know, when we're looking

19:31

at the search, the terms that are driving

19:33

your traffic, It's great if

19:35

a large majority of them are branded searches,

19:37

that people actually want you because they're much

19:39

more likely to convert, they're much more further

19:41

down the funnel. What advice do you have

19:43

for e -commerce stores who are trying to build

19:45

up that brand entity? Yeah,

19:47

it's not just the responsibility of

19:49

the SEO team to build a

19:52

brand. It actually needs to be

19:54

genuine, just like you. You

19:56

need to stand for something and

19:58

illuminate the why we're doing this

20:00

out there into the market. We

20:03

work with a client called Adore Beauty.

20:05

They've been a loyal client of ours

20:08

for a very, very long time. And

20:10

they often don't have the cheapest prices.

20:12

but people still come back and buy from

20:15

them. They've built that little loyalty, you

20:17

know, and people look forward to receiving a

20:19

package from them because it's packaged really nicely

20:21

and it's throwing a little Tim Tam on

20:23

the side as well. Gotta have a Tim

20:26

Tam. Gotta have a Tim Tam. So I

20:28

think, I think all boils back down to

20:30

how you want to do business and how

20:32

you want your end

20:34

user to portray you as a business.

20:36

If you're just purely transactional and just

20:38

go, yeah, I'm going to offer you

20:40

cheaper prices like Kmart and Target and

20:42

those kind of places, then there's no

20:44

personalization there. But I don't have a

20:46

direct answer of how we can influence

20:48

brand. Just going to be fabulous and

20:50

give 10 thumbs out. Just lots of

20:53

Tim Tam. I mean, I can see

20:55

it from our perspective at the shop.

20:57

It's been such a good experience to

20:59

have a physical shop because literally there

21:01

is no reason to buy a book

21:03

from us. Zero reason. We are twice

21:05

as expensive as Kmart. Kmart can buy

21:07

books cheaper than, sell books cheaper than

21:09

we can buy them. We

21:11

can't be Amazon. We can't offer free

21:13

shipping. There's just literally no

21:15

reason and yet people do

21:17

because of the vibe that we

21:19

built up, the trust, the

21:22

values. their morals about wanting to

21:24

support local businesses. And

21:26

I think it's the values -based marketing, which

21:28

is a whole other podcast. But I think

21:30

it's something that e -commerce people need to

21:32

wrap your head around. I love what you

21:34

said about, you can't just be transactional. You

21:36

can't just trade in lower and lower shipping

21:38

prices and lower and lower discounts for first -time

21:40

customers. It doesn't wash in the long term.

21:43

If people are there purely for price, they might not

21:45

be loyal in the long term because they're just

21:47

going to find the cheaper price, right? And

21:49

Google's going to serve them the cheaper

21:51

price. as well. So yeah. So

21:53

that's why, you know, sometimes when you

21:56

do searches or you work optimizing for

21:58

a client's website, you go like, oh,

22:00

why is this website ranking outranking my

22:02

client for no bizarre reason? And it's

22:04

When you dig deeper into it, I'm

22:06

like, oh, they're super popular on Instagram,

22:08

on TikTok or whatever. It's like, there's

22:11

no direct link. No. Social media to

22:13

SEO. There's no like link juice flowing

22:15

through to there. But because the brand

22:17

recall is there. The brand recall. Yeah,

22:19

the brand recall. That's the thing that

22:21

we can't really measure is the brand

22:23

recall. We can measure search volume and

22:25

stuff like that. But that's still, you

22:28

know, a Google metric that they give

22:30

to you, whether it's right or wrong.

22:33

We're not sure. But I think, yeah,

22:35

measuring the brand recall somehow is going to

22:37

be quite important moving forward. I mean, it's

22:39

a bit of a vibe thing, isn't it?

22:41

Let's talk about measurement. So we talked about,

22:43

you gave a great stat before, which I

22:45

100 % agree with, which is that about 50

22:47

% of your traffic is organic. And then

22:49

you also mentioned that about 25 % of that

22:51

might be that carousel element. You

22:54

know, when we're looking at our site, it can

22:56

be really easy to look at ranking, which is

22:58

obviously uncontrollable to a

23:00

degree, we can try, but we can't. Are

23:02

you looking at engagement metrics as well,

23:04

like how long people are spending on individual

23:07

products and how many products people look

23:09

at before they convert? What metrics do

23:11

you look at for your clients? What do you report

23:13

back to them? Yeah,

23:15

so as an agency, we

23:17

report on direct sessions

23:20

to those PDPs. Previously,

23:24

the other way around. We measure direct

23:26

sessions into a category page, but

23:28

then Google is now blurring the lines.

23:30

In between those template listings, we

23:33

get direct PDP carousels being injected in

23:35

there. So we are starting to

23:37

measure more of that. And

23:39

obviously the add to cart. from

23:41

the PDP. If there's any friction, we'll

23:43

measure that as well. And that's

23:45

when we'll start pulling in our CRO

23:47

team to imagine having a CRO

23:50

team. How cool. That's

23:53

where I think from an SEO

23:55

perspective and as an SEO team,

23:57

we are responsible to driving qualified

23:59

traffic. But as the traffic is

24:01

getting stuck and not converting, then

24:03

yeah, we have to understand the

24:05

why. And yeah, we definitely look

24:07

at dwell time and why it's

24:09

someone not checking out after they've

24:11

added it to cart. It could

24:13

be because you did not offer

24:15

PayPal or maybe you didn't integrate

24:17

any of the digital wallets that

24:19

is best practice. simple

24:22

things like that. And shipping as well,

24:24

you know, the whole the whole joke

24:26

of like, it's $300 with free shipping

24:28

or it's $250 with $50 shipping. Yeah,

24:33

it really, really is. So I like that, you

24:35

know, and it's a message that I say a

24:37

lot, you know, that SEO will get the right

24:39

people to your door, hopefully, not just random people,

24:41

but the CRO drags them through, makes them stay,

24:43

makes them buy. And again, you know, it is

24:45

the pricing, it is the shipping, but often it's

24:47

the trust as well. Like people want to feel

24:49

good about the purchase they're going to make. Is

24:51

there a review? Can I see a video of

24:53

this thing? Is it really as big? We've all

24:55

had the Temu experience of all buying the thing

24:57

and then finding it's that big. So, you

24:59

know, yeah, it's all

25:01

those trust factors as well. So you

25:03

mentioned that this is my story. I've got

25:05

two crazy birds outside fighting. So I

25:07

hope you can't hear that. You

25:13

mentioned category pages and category pages were a

25:15

big push for a while that we must

25:17

have a good copy on our category pages,

25:19

that they were driving a lot of traffic.

25:21

But as you've said, Google's to a degree

25:23

circumventing a lot of category pages now and

25:25

drilling straight down to the products. Do category

25:27

pages still have value? Should we still be

25:30

working hard on those? 100%.

25:32

So they're still taking

25:34

a lot of... prominence

25:36

in the Google search results. And

25:39

we can't avoid it. That's top of

25:41

the funnel traffic that we need to

25:43

still continue to optimize. But

25:45

now a lot of people, including

25:47

ourselves, were shifting. So

25:49

optimizing your category pages to table

25:51

stakes. That's as you

25:53

want to one. You have to

25:55

do it. You have to

25:58

do it. So our responsibility is

26:00

now is to divert our

26:02

attention into optimizing at PDP product

26:04

page level now, too, in

26:06

addition to category pages. Yeah. Today,

26:08

traditionally, we rarely touch product

26:10

pages because all the traffic is

26:13

funneled through category pages. But

26:15

again, for the size of stores

26:17

that I'm working with, maybe

26:19

you've got you know 10

26:21

core categories and then five subcategories in

26:23

each like that is an achievable thing to

26:25

work through those over a period of

26:27

two or three months and then they're done

26:30

you know they're pretty much done you

26:32

don't need to be re -optimizing and fiddling

26:34

with them again and again and then you

26:36

can hone in on your maybe your

26:38

top 10 best sellers or your top 10

26:40

highest revenue or whatever it may be

26:42

and just learn how to optimize so that

26:44

every new product you put up. has

26:46

all these elements that you're talking about from

26:48

the get -go. Jason, we're wrapping

26:50

up. If I have a small

26:52

e -commerce store listening today, and you

26:54

can leave them with one tip, I

26:56

think I know what it might

26:59

be, but what's one thing they could

27:01

focus on tomorrow to see some

27:03

kind of improvement? Yeah, definitely

27:05

get your store at Google Merchant

27:07

Center set up. That's the number

27:09

one thing. Whether you want to

27:11

run ads or not, it doesn't

27:13

matter. Get your product feeds into

27:15

Google Merchant Center. So you start

27:17

to. inform Google

27:19

that I'm selling a bunch of products.

27:21

I have these products right here.

27:23

Here's how much they cost. Here's the

27:25

auto images and they can start

27:27

to include your website and your products

27:30

into the mix. That's the most

27:32

important thing. And always make sure that

27:34

you ensure that the free list

27:36

tick box is ticked. Yes, the most

27:38

important thing and spend time in

27:40

enriching your product data. So, you know,

27:42

if you're reselling other people's products, find

27:45

other ways to describe that product

27:47

and utilize every single attribute that's

27:49

available to you via Google Merchant

27:51

Center. That's my number one pro

27:53

tip. I'm going to leave this

27:55

podcast and immediately go and check that I've ticked

27:57

that box for the bookshelf because I don't think

27:59

I have. So thank you for

28:01

that, Jason. Awesome.

28:03

Well, thank you so much for your time

28:06

today. Where can we find out more

28:08

about you? Fairly

28:10

active on LinkedIn, Jason Mann looked

28:12

me up. I think there's not

28:14

many of me in Australia, so that

28:16

would probably be the best place to hit

28:18

me up on. Fantastic. We'll include links

28:20

to your websites, your socials and all of

28:22

that. And if you're coming along to

28:24

the Newcastle SEO Festival, you might see Jason

28:26

there. Thank you so much for

28:29

coming on today, Jason. Thank you very much. What

28:31

a smashing episode. What a smart man. I

28:33

love that. Really articulate and I felt like

28:35

I learned a lot there as well. So

28:38

that's the end of this week's show. If

28:40

you have questions about Ecommerce SEO, Google

28:42

Merchant Center, remember you can always head to

28:44

the I Love SEO group on Facebook. Also,

28:47

I have an SEO

28:49

friendly product description. template

28:51

in the recipe for SEO Success Stores.

28:53

If you're not sure how to

28:55

write these really strong product descriptions, that

28:57

might be worse, a purchase. It's

29:00

not very expensive. So we

29:02

have a review today, and that is from

29:04

uni on Winner Zach from Australia, who says,

29:06

great way to learn SEO. I love listening

29:08

to Kate's podcast over the past year, currently

29:10

doing her big course, which is helping me

29:12

concentrate more on managing my own SEO. Do

29:15

yourself a favor, subscribe to this

29:17

podcast. So if you've just come across

29:19

this, add it to your list

29:21

and you will get updates every time

29:23

we release a new episode. We're

29:25

pretty much weekly at the moment, maybe

29:27

fortnightly, and we vary between tips

29:29

and interviews. So some short episodes and

29:31

some slightly longer ones. So

29:33

thank you for that lovely review and thanks to you for

29:35

listening. If you have time right now to look at

29:37

your app and leave us a little review, I would be

29:40

so grateful. You'll help others find

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29:44

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29:46

get a shout out as well. So

29:48

yes, head to the rescue first year success,

29:50

where you can learn more about e -commerce

29:52

SEO, check out the useful links and

29:54

leave a comment. So until next time, happy

29:56

SEOing. You