SEO for Ecommerce Has Changed Post Panda & Penguin
Recently a new client was asking about essentially “buying links to get more free traffic by getting your site ‘listed’ faster.” My how SEO for Ecommerce has changed but the same old spammy marketers have not.
Please permit this cautionary tale, a true story.
We have a wonderful client who was getting over 1 million visits per month in the Pre-Panda era. Post-Panda, his traffic is now less than half that. Essentially many of his links coming in were recategorized by Google as spammy, and he was quickly penalized or ‘blackballed.’
The general consensus in the industry formerly known as “SEO” is that “link building” doesn’t work any more. What does work is consistently producing quality content that is worthwhile for people to link to and to share.
Dear Client, Please don’t waste your money on these people trying to sell you an instant fix for guaranteed rankings or free traffic without building quality content.
For small business SEO for Ecommerce today it is critical to Focus on what you can control.
Focus of the things that matter to your guests. Yes, I said guests. Visitors sound like invisible avatars. I prefer thinking of them as your guests, looking to find life and worth your preparation and hospitality when they arrive at your place on the web. Guests are real people coming to you with limited time, attention and understanding of who the heck you are. Lets ask ourselves: “how might we welcome them and share with them without ‘hard-selling’ them.”
SEO for Ecommerce is NOT about link building or trying to take ‘short cuts’. I like this advice so much I might have said it myself:
“You should focus on building a website that is easy for people to consume and navigate, create content that is worth peoples time, build a social media presence, and focus on customer service and improving your product/brand. ” -Bradley Knutson-Moz.com Forums
“Going forward, move away from a “link building” mindset.” -BruceClay.com
To help you learn more, here are a few recent articles from reliable sources on link building or directory submissions in a ‘post-panda’ world. To save you time, I have prioritized them from the most to least relevant for a small business like yours:
Reminds me of an Ancient proverb that even applies in the internet/digital age:
“Steady plodding brings prosperity; hasty speculation brings poverty.”
King Solomon, Proverbs 21:5 (TLB)
Keep plodding friends!
ps (Sorry, new businesses should be warned! When you register a domain or when you launch a new site, generally it is a magnet for all sorts of unseemly types of parasites er-“SEO Experts” to come out of the woodwork to try and catch a free ride on your bank account.)
