SEO Hacks

One of the most powerful ecommerce SEO strategies right now.

Used by the fastest-growing brands.

• Publish consistently, update regularly.
• Not thin, randomly created content. I'm talking about building the best.

Here's how you get started

• ✅ Choose a topic to start focusing on - go broad, such as one of your products or collections (think: 'lighting' or 'cricket bat')
• ✅ Find every keyword variation around your core topic. This should be hundreds (or thousands) of keywords.
• ✅ Cluster these keywords into specific pages or content to be created.
• ✅ Create content SO good that it is a no-brainer for Google to rank it.
• ✅ Consistently publish as much as you can, velocity matters.
• ✅ Each time you publish new content, add internal links from older content to the new content.
• ✅ Build links into your content.
• ✅ Continue to add internal links to distribute equity within this topic cluster.

And, voila.

Patience + consistency, once you get traction you will see ever-increasing results.

The power of good SEO🔥

Here's how I did it...

• 👉 Created bottom of the funnel content consistently (1/week cadence). Such as 'best X for Y' keywords. I reviewed the SERPs and found low competition but high intent opportunities.
• 👉 Optimised collection pages - updated page titles, added on-page content and internal links between collection pages.
• 👉 Built out more content on product pages, added FAQs, collected reviews and added structured data.
• 👉 Used HARO to build ~10 links in total from relevant high-authority publications in the niche.
• 👉 Got featured in over 40 gift guides from relevant publications.

The result? 📈

• - 400% growth in daily clicks (150 to 750)
• - Over $70k in organic sales/month (up from ~$10k)
• - 6.7 ROI (so far, increasing every month)

SEO doesn't have to be difficult.

Stick to the fundamentals and you'll see results.

How I created a £10,000/month side hustle ecommerce brand:

(Read to the end for a real-life example)

Quick checklist:

1. Define a problem you have
2. Source a product (doesn't need to be super unique)
3. Buy a domain and hosting
4. Set up Woocommerce or Shopify
5. Find high-intent search-focused topics
6. Publish 1 high-quality blog post per week
7. Set up an email list and capture subscribers
8. Talk with your customers and email subscribers
9. Watch your traffic + email list + sales grow over the next 12 months
10. Launch new complementary products
11. Maximise revenue with email flows for new subscribers and customers
12. Continue publishing high-quality articles

Here's what the 12 steps look like in practice:

1. Website

Niche: Cricket

Domain: villagecricket.co

Hosting: Kinsta

WordPress: Astra Theme

2. Content

Used Ahrefs + Keyword Insights to find topic clusters quickly.

Examples:

• Best cricket bat for beginners
• Pre knocked in cricket bats
• How to find a cricket club
• Cricket batting tips
• Best junior cricket bats

3. Email list

Use Bento for smart email marketing & building the email list.

We used a monthly giveaway to build our email list - which pulls in ~500-1000 each month.

4. Products

First product: cricket bat

Supporting products: pads, gloves

Upcoming products: bag, more sizes of other products

I use Elementor to create better product pages

This doesn't get you rich quick...

But with hard work, consistency, patience and great content, you can build a full-time income online.

I now have 76 posts on Village Cricket Co + an email list of almost 10,000.

For transparency, the margins are ~60%.

Questions? Ask me anything.

SEO best practice only gets you so far.

Anyone can 'put the target keyword at the start of the page title'.

And if you are already behind your competitors - it likely won't be enough.

You need to get creative.

• 👉 Make custom images for your content to make it stand out and clearly better
• 👉 Rewrite your page title to entice clicks not just rankings
• 👉 Get creative to get links they don't have - do a PR stunt
• 👉 Test, fail, learn, improve. Eat, drink, sleep. Rinse, repeat.
• 👉 Engrain SEO in all parts of your business to maximise all of the opportunities

Being different helps with SEO.

12 high-intent keyword frameworks that drive high conversions

I've personally used these on my own DTC brand and they drive over £10,000/month!

• ✅ best {product} for {use case} - 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗯𝗮𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗯𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀
• ✅ best {product} under {price} - 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗯𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗯𝗼𝗻 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 $𝟭𝟬𝟬
• ✅ {competitor brand} alternatives - 𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗽𝗼𝗱 𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀
• ✅ {your brand} reviews - 𝘃𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗰𝗼 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝘀
• ✅ {product} reviews - 𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗯𝗮𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝘀
• ✅ {brand} discount code - 𝗿𝗶𝗱𝗴𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗱𝗲
• ✅ {keyword} shop in {location} - 𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽 𝗶𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗰𝗵𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿

1.2 million monthly visitors 🔥

With no link building.

Because it already had them.

What this site didn't have was a technically sound website.

It was a mess from an SEO perspective.

It had:

• ~ 30,000 products
• ~ 300 categories

Yet it was trying to show Google over 4 million pages 😬

The biggest impact we had on this site was:

Fixing their mess of a faceted navigation.

The filters were causing havoc, creating duplicate pages, crawling issues for Google, all sorts.

We reviewed the long-tail opportunities in their categories.

Think:

• Cushions
• Cushions > Velvet Cushions
• Cushions > Velvet Cushions > Red Velvet Cushions

We (mainly their developers) reword how their faceted navigation works.

Made it simpler to crawl for Google.

Made the pages we wanted indexable, more visible to Google.

Optimised these new pages with basic meta titles, descriptions, etc.

Added internal links from product pages to the new pages.

And it worked.

👉 From 400,000 to over 1.2m monthly visitors

👉 3.3x more revenue from organic search

It's fun when a plan comes together.

143% growth year on year 🚀

Village Cricket Co. is flying right now.

Cricket is an industry still notoriously behind in the digital age and it is so fun to capitalize on the opportunity.

We're only scratching the surface so far.

So far:

• ➡ Created BOFU content targeting high-intent keyword opportunities
• ➡ Purchased some expired domains from old cricket brands to redirect (none of these cost more than $50)
• ➡ Created dedicated landing pages for product variation keywords - dedicated to different sizes of junior bats
• ➡ Optimized product pages with in-depth content and as many reviews as we could get

In 2023:

• ➡ Launch 5 new products + double down on BOFU content around these
• ➡ Create more top-of-the-funnel content to drive awareness and build our email list to over 20,000 subscribers
• ➡ Consistently build relationships with relevant journalists to get our products to feature in round-ups
• ➡ Run 3 data-led digital PR campaigns (first launches next month)
• ➡ Create a sponsorship campaign aimed at cricket lovers, not just the 'best' players (I am super excited about this one)
• ➡ Test out paid search as a new channel

We are on track to hit over 6-figures in 2023 from SEO alone.

Have any questions about ecommerce SEO? Feel free to DM me anytime.

Content that converts 💰

A journey to over £10k/month in sales from blog content.

Bottom-of-the-funnel content is often a huge untapped opportunity for ecommerce brands.

Keep reading for real examples of content that drives sales for my ecommerce brand Village Cricket Co.

What is bottom-of-the-funnel content?

The best way to describe BOFU content is, content that drives a high likelihood of a conversion whilst still being informational in nature.

Essentially, Google ranks blog posts for these keywords. But they have high conversion intent.

Some examples:

• Best mattress for lower back pain
• Best fishing rod for beginners
• Best sunglasses for cricket

You get the idea.

How to create BOFU content for your brand?

You must be the best for something that you offer (otherwise why are you in business?).

There are two core ways to create product-led content like this.

1. Pitch your product as the only solution to the topic.

   • Only feature your product
   • Describe specifically why it is #1 solution
   • Can be seen as biased

   Real-world example: Link

   We pitch ourselves as the only option featuring our key benefits. This post alone drove 22 sales in July 2022.

2. Feature other products and showcase yours as particularly #1 for a certain angle.

   • Feature some other products (great for boosting the depth of content)
   • Pitch your product as #1 for a specific angle (like cheapest, or best in summer, etc)
   • Usually considered less bias

   Real-world example: Link

   We feature us as the best value rather than the only choice. We also use price anchoring to showcase much higher price point products other than ours.

Now go find your opportunities and start creating content that converts!

Impactful SEO is rarely executed by a lone wolf.

SEO is more than publishing content and building backlinks.

Although that is a great place to start.

An effective SEO strategy involves various many areas working together:

• product development
• marketing
• website development
• PR
• SEO
• content
• branding teams

🔎 Ecommerce keyword research 🔎

My 3-step process to find most of your opportunities

Using only 2 tools:

• Ahrefs
• Keyword Insights

and barely 2 hours…

Going to walk through a step-by-step example using my own ecommerce brand Village Cricket Co.

I sell cricket bats so I put that top-level keyword into Ahrefs Keyword Explorer.

Also, I added the plural ‘cricket bats’ to capture as much variety as possible.

Selecting the ‘Matching terms’ gives you every potential variation within the Ahrefs keyword database

Next up, filter the list.

I wanted to keep it broad but relevant so I:

• Removed brand names, and products we weren’t going to sell
• Removed random other keywords that weren’t relevant (like crossword clue).

You can do this inside Ahrefs, or in the Excel export.

Now the real fun starts…

Head over to Keyword Insights

Start a new project, name it and set your targeting.

Select Cluster and Context to find the best opportunities (add rank if you have a site).

I leave the standard settings as they are, they know what they are doing.

Then upload your Ahrefs keyword export.

They even have a cool duplicate detection feature so you don’t overpay.

Then generate your report.

Wait patiently, grab a coffee, and before you know it…

🤯 BOOM

You have:

1. Keywords clustered into what keywords should be targeting a single page
2. The clusters are grouped into topic hubs so you can create the content within specific hubs

I then mapped the keywords to different types of pages:

1. Product Page 🏏
   I have a long-term goal of ranking the product page for the highly competitive ‘cricket bat’. Example page: Link
2. Commercial Landing Pages 🏏
   Relevant product variations that I couldn’t rank for just one page, such as:
   • Size 1 Cricket Bat
   • Short Handle Cricket Bat
3. Blog Posts 🏏
   For keywords with more ‘informational’ intent but still highly commercial, such as:
   • Best Cricket Bat For Beginners
   • Best Cricket Bat For Defensive Players

Decent ecommerce SEO comes down to four things in most cases:

1. Building a solid website structure
2. Optimising your category pages
3. Solid product-led link building
4. Creating topical relevancy via blog content

If you do these four things correctly and consistently, you'll have a profitable store.