By Ola King
While search marketers can get bogged down worrying about high quality content, successful link building strategies, and technically sound sites, when it comes to SEO, we need to take a step back and look at the what and why in order to get results.
To that end, Moz’s own Ola King walks you through the three main pillars, or as he calls them, “bosses”, of SEO work. All of your SEO strategies feed into their demands, but they all need different things.
Video Transcription
Hi, Moz fans. I’m Ola King. I work at Moz, and I’m excited to join you today for this edition of Whiteboard Friday. I will be talking to you about the three bosses of SEO.
Creating high quality content, making sure that you have a solid link building strategy, making sure your site is technically sound, these are great things to do when it comes to SEO. However, none of them would be as effective if you’re not taking a look at things from a strategic, wider lens. Basically, it means you have to take a step back and look at what you’re doing and why you’re doing them in order for you to get the results that you need.
So for SEO, there are three main pillars really to consider. I call them the three bosses of SEO. So that’s really your business, your searchers, and your search engines. Each of these bosses have their own individual needs.
Boss #1: Your business
So let’s start with the business. So these are the needs of the business. This is by no means a comprehensive list. I’m sure there are things that I’m missing. So if there are things that you think should be here, please leave a comment and we can have a discussion on that so we can all learn from each other. But the whole idea of this is to get you thinking about things from a broader lens before you dive into tactics.
Key metrics and goals
So the first one is the key metrics and goals. Any activity that is done without a goal is essentially a hobby, which is fine. However, if you want to do serious SEO work, you need to have a goal. In order to know what your goals are, I guess you have to look at your business goals.
Then that determines your marketing goals, which then determines your SEO goals. So understand what your KPIs are, understand what your priorities are, and that will then let you know what your next steps are. So, for example, if your goal is to get more traffic, you need to focus more on the top of funnel types of content, so like an ultimate guide for example.
If your goal is to get more leads, you might start looking at maybe your product comparison pages. Then if your goal is to have more sales, then it might be time to start optimizing your product pages for example. So always look at your key metrics and goals and then work from there.
Competitors
So the competitors is also something you should really consider. A lot of people are very familiar with who their direct competitors are in terms of product or services.
But when it comes to SEO, there is also the informational competitors, so people that might not be doing the same thing as you, but they provide information to your ideal audience. So always keep an eye on those competitors as well.
Resources
The resources. So look at the resources that you have in terms of time, budget, and personnel. If you don’t have the time for SEO, you might be able to consider outsourcing it. Or if you don’t have the right talent for link building, maybe you might want to partner up with an agency that does that. So always take stock of your resources before you start thinking of what you should do.
Brand identity + recognition
The brand identity and recognition also determines the types of content that you go after. It doesn’t matter if the content has a lot of volume and it’s trendy. If it doesn’t align with your brand in the long run, it’s not really a very good use of your time.
Area of expertise
The area of expertise as well is very much related to this. So what are you an expert at? Try to lean on your expertise. If you don’t have the expertise but you want to provide that information to your audience, maybe you might want to collaborate with other people that are better suited to that so that you can still complete your goal for your business and audience.
Strengths
Strengths is very related to expertise, but this is in terms of what talents, what skills do you have. Are you better at doing research and creating long-form content, or are you better at creating things that go viral and are more like listicles? Lean into your strengths and collaborate as needed with people that can help you with your weakness.
Time in business
The time in business also the time is the approach you take for SEO. A brand-new website, what you would need would be completely different from a business that has been around for a long time, that has a great website, but they’re just trying to do a refresh, which is also different from a business that has been around for a very long time but doesn’t have a very good online presence.
All of this would affect the way you approach content, link building, and trying to rank for those tough content. So that’s your business. As I mentioned, I’m sure there are things I’m missing. So I’m very curious to know the other things that you might come up with as well.
Boss #2: Searchers
So next up let’s look at the searchers. So these are the people that you are serving as a business. The first thing, when it comes to the searchers, is look at your persona. So what are the types of people that you’re trying to attract into your website? There is no point in creating any piece of content if you don’t even know who you are trying to attract with that content. So start with the persona.
Search intent and relevance
Once you’ve identified the persona, you can then start looking at the search intent and relevance.
So what are they looking for? The good news is the answer is already right on your search engine results pages. Do a quick search for your ideal keyword and you’ll be able to see the results that the search engines have deemed as the most appropriate for what your audience is looking for, which matches the search intent. Once you’ve done that, then you’re going to want to create the right content to satisfy the searcher’s intent.
Topics, not keywords
When you’re creating content, focus on topics and not keywords. So gone are the days where you just want to create your page and stuff it with as many keywords as you can and you start ranking and print out dollars. Not so effective anymore. You basically want to look at each page on your site covering a topic that you have a focus.
While you’re doing that, then you want to make sure that you have the most comprehensive page that answers that searcher’s intent. Cyrus Shepard actually has a great
Operating an e-commerce business is a rewarding experience. However, venturing into online selling without a plan can hamper your chances of success. You may ask yourself, “Where do I start planning? What does it truly take to operate an e-commerce business in today’s age?” Thankfully, we’re here to help answer those questions. This post will teach you how to start and grow your e-commerce business! Let’s dive in. Before entering the e-commerce world, you need to define your business idea. Defining your business idea will ensure you have a clear vision of what you want the business to be and determine if it will be successful. By doing this, you’re finding your niche in the e-commerce market and learning how to do it better than the rest. This step takes a bit of brainstorming and research, but soon, you will be on your way to financial freedom. Choosing your product can seem like the easiest part of creating an e-commerce business plan, but the truth is that it takes quite a bit of forethought. To find the right product for your business, you need to do some market research and sense what you are passionate about. Deciding what to sell means more than purchasing goods from a supplier. You are identifying which market you want to tap into. Consider selling and creating a new business from various niche markets and products. If you are unsure of what products or which markets you would like to tap into, here are a few examples: No matter which product or market you choose, performing research is critical. Once you’ve decided what your product will be, you must validate your e-commerce business idea. This process entails researching to ensure an audience for your product, learning about the market’s problems and why they are facing them, and finding out how to solve them. You should also see if there are potential trends you can capitalize on. Answering the questions above will give you the insight you need into whether a business will succeed. Any business idea can sound ground-breaking at the moment. But moving forward is put on hold until you validate it by ensuring that there is a market for your product or that you can create the need for it. Beyond discovering if there is an audience for your product, you will also need to define your target audience. Is your audience the younger crowd that enjoys and needs trendy items and marketing? Or is it an older audience that prefers straightforward marketing and practical products? Of course, the gender, income level, and general location of your audience also factor in. Further, you must know your intended audience’s lifestyle factors, interests, wants, and needs. Implementing a solid definition of who your target audience is will help you shape your marketing approach and tailor your product offerings. This definition will give you a sense of direction before jumping into the launch of your product or business. Then, you can visualize the prize you should focus on. Brainstorming how your business will differ from competitors is vital. You need to give potential customers a reason why they should choose you over what else is available currently. Without a solid aspect that sets you apart, your business can become lost in the sea of emerging e-commerce businesses. Knowing what sets your business apart from others in the market is critical. That’s why we also recommend spending a substantial amount of time researching your competitors. To start researching your competitors, pretend you are a potential customer and search for the popular keyword and search queries pertaining to your business. Then, take note of the pages with the highest rankings, as they will be your main competitors. Don’t stop there! Dive into your competitors’ social media accounts and note how they brand and market themselves on the platforms. (Also, don’t forget about Amazon!) Use the infamous online retailer as a database to identify similar product offerings. After you gather all of this information, organize it into a spreadsheet, listing the top competitors for your business. Branding is everything when marketing your products and your e-commerce business. It conveys the overall message that your company believes in and offers. For example, brands like Nike will use motivational language to motivate their established customer base and draw potential customers. But what does branding entail? How do you build your business with strong branding? Building a strong brand doesn’t have to be costly; it simply takes consistency, planning, and research. Your audience persona is what customers will come to know your business for. As previously mentioned, companies will utilize specific language to convey a message regarding branding. That helps build a company’s persona and brand identity. You can implement your brand persona in all forms of marketing, from the colors you use in the marketing campaign to the vocabulary you use in social media posts. This implementation will help formulate the characteristics and emotions customers associate with your company. When you are creating your persona, remember who your target audience is. For example, the persona for a brand like L.L. Bean will not have the same effect on a younger modern audience. In addition to vernacular and language, brand voice is critical for conveying your message. It will further tell your audience what your company is and what it can do for them. This branding portion focuses explicitly on the language and vernacular part of the branding strategy. To create a strong brand voice, you should first figure out how you want customers to feel when interacting with your brand’s online presence. If a relaxed vibe is what you are going for, a laid-back tone and casual language are what you want when creating e-commerce marketing materials. But on the other hand, if luxury and glamor are the vibe of your company, sophisticated language with flowery descriptions is what you need. In our digital age, branding efforts extend into the social media sphere with most audiences, including older generations. In short, social media is the number one place to reach potential customers. Your brand’s social media presence should be more than posting advertisements and product launches. Engaging with your audience is critical for building rapport and further ingraining brand voice, persona, and identity. You can increase your audience engagement by hosting polls, commenting back to followers, and organizing live streams where they can interact with you and your company. Finally, we reach brand identity. This encompasses your voice, persona, and social media presence. It gets into the fine details of your visuals and content choices that will set you apart from your competitors. With a proper brand identity, customers recognize your brand through adverts and social media posts without seeing your company’s name. To establish your brand’s identity, you will want to choose your brand colours, design your logo, create content creation guidelines, and formulate your strategy. Your branding guidelines should entail information about marketing copy, colour palette, brand story, and image guidelines. Your strategy should also entail plans for reaching your intended audience through stylized branded content and marketing materials. If you need help formulating these guidelines and plans, professional brand strategists are available on freelance marketplaces such as Upwork and Fiverr. They can help take your current vision and turn it into an actualized plan. Next, incorporate that information into setting up your e-commerce website. Your company’s website is a hub for selling your products to customers and establishing a home base for all things relating to your brand. In addition, this website is the place for driving your brand voice, persona, and identity into the hearts of established and potential customers. So, remember to strictly enforce your brand guidelines when building and maintaining your website. Again, if you need help building an e-commerce website, you can find website builders and your brand strategist on platforms such as Fiverr and Upwork. If you are running an e-commerce business with physical products, like clothing, home goods, or kids’ toys, you must create a shipping strategy that gets the product to your customers safely and efficiently. First, you must determine if you will transfer the shipping costs to your customers or factor shipping into the product’s price and offer free shipping. Offering flat-rate shipping is also an option. Additionally, no matter which shipping cost method you choose, you will want to keep a database of the weight of your product(s). This data will help you consistently track the price of shipping your products when it is dependent upon their weight. Finally, you need to source your packaging materials. From boxes to envelopes and wrapping materials to filler, your packaging should help safely deliver the product to the consumer and leave a lasting impression with its presentation. If you have downloadable digital products to sell online, you will want to find the best platform and software for delivering these materials. Consider these top five: Each has unique offerings, and depending on the type of digital products you sell and your target audience, some will be more suitable than others. After choosing your products, formulating a brand identity, creating a website, and developing a shipping strategy, it’s time to launch your e-commerce business! Although you have accomplished so much already, the adventure is still ongoing because you need to start selling products. When launching your business, it’s critical to remember that anything can happen, and you may have to reformulate your previous plans. But don’t be too quick to jump ship; the plan was created for a reason. You simply want to open yourself up to new possibilities. From here on out, your mission is to achieve financial freedom, which sometimes requires testing variables to improve performance. After getting your business up and running, you must increase your marketing efforts to ensure your business grows. But unlike decades past, with your online business, physical advertisements on billboards and in print newspapers won’t cut it. So instead, you need to learn the ways of e-commerce marketing. Learning the basics of search engine optimization (SEO) is your ticket to boosting your business among the Google ranks. To start venturing into the world of SEO, you need to have a baseline. By utilizing a service like Semrush, you can see your domain overview, and it will tell you how visible your business/webpage is on mobile and desktop apps. Its domain overview section covers all the data and analytics you need to understand where your business currently stands. Additionally, you will want to research and learn the most prevalent keywords and search queries for your type of business. You can then use this information to create content that will help lead shoppers back to your website. Backlinks are also essential for creating online traffic for your business, as they are links to your website from other websites. The more links you have from trustworthy and high-traffic web pages, the more search engines like Google and Bing will see your business and website as valuable and reliable sources. But the most critical component of all when it comes to basic SEO is staying informed. SEO is an ever-evolving world that takes ongoing reform to remain successful. While looking for the best ways to market your e-commerce store or business, you may have seen the phrase “content is king.” But what kind of content is best? Blogging is one of the best forms of online content for marketing your business. By publishing blog posts consistently and utilizing the keywords and search queries that pertain to your business, you can increase your chances of climbing the Google ranks and accruing more backlinks. Your blog posts should always surround topics pertaining to your business. For instance, post frequent blog posts about what’s trending in fashion if you have a clothing business. Or, if it’s a digital service company, publish articles that discuss the benefits of utilizing a service like yours. We live in the golden age of social media, and if you’re searching for more customers, you need to utilize Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and more. You can do this by posting relevant branded content frequently. Your social media content should also utilize hashtags to help further increase your visibility among your target audience. Like SEO keywords, hashtags can help lead potential customers back to your page, and the more interaction you have on a post, the more likely you are to appear on Explore and For You pages on social media. Building and growing an email list is the best way to create a direct line to your customer base. You can ensure they return and purchase more products by staying in touch with them. But people prefer to keep their personal information, like email addresses, private. So how do you grow an email list? You need to offer a deal in return for a customer’s email. Whether it’s free downloads or special sales offers, customers will take note of what you are willing to give in return. Adapting your e-commerce business to the ever-evolving world is crucial for long-term success. After spending time in the market and gathering data, you should analyse your results. You will want to look at critical metrics, like your popular products. Once you notice consistent growth in your business, you will want to optimize your online storefront for high-scale volume. Think about performing the following as your business grows: No matter what your results are after performing an annual analysis, being prepared to make a few changes is always wise. You can start an e-commerce business without money in a few different ways. One of the best and easiest ways is to sell your expert service. Whether you are a great writer, marketer, virtual assistant, or graphic designer, you can create an online e-commerce business today with zero or minimal start-up costs. You can also start a drop shipping business, where you have an online store that customers can order from, and the supplier does the product fulfilment directly. AliExpress or Alibaba are popular suppliers for such storefronts. Starting an e-commerce business on Amazon is simple. First, you must choose what kind of products you want to sell; the possibilities are endless when you choose Amazon as your e-commerce platform. Afterward, you must sign up for an Amazon seller’s account and select your business model. Wholesale, private label, and retail arbitrage are the most popular. Once you have the basics covered, it’s time to start listing your products, send them to Amazon to handle storage and shipping, and then market yourself. An e-commerce business is a business that sells goods or services online. These goods and services can range from writing and graphic design services to clothing retailers and home goods storefronts. What industry leaders commonly refer to as the four traditional types of e-commerce are business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B), consumer-to-consumer (C2C), and consumer-to-business (C2B). Each type has specific traits and offerings that set them apart. The most common type is B2C. E-commerce can be an incredibly profitable business venture. But if you’re looking for an entirely passive way to generate income, this venture isn’t for you. Running an e-commerce business takes time and dedication. You have to be willing to devote all of your time to managing the business and potentially marketing yourself to thrive. Suppose you want to start up an e-commerce business. In that case, you must follow a plan to define your business, create a branding and marketing strategy, and perform market analysis regularly. Free and low-cost start-up options exist whether you want to sell a service or a physical product. No matter what e-commerce business you decide to open, be prepared to dedicate a lot of time to starting it. However, it is a rewarding venture. Whether you want to operate a small business like a small-scale online retailer or an industry-leading digital service, e-commerce is a way to set yourself up for future financial freedom! All it takes is time and dedication to ensure smooth sailing in e-commerce. So why not start today? Start researching your ideas, get to know the current online marketplaces, validate those ideas, and start drawing up a plan. Christopher is the driving force behind Financially Well Off – the ultimate destination for those looking to achieve financial independence, explore the world and stay motivated daily. If you’re ready to transform your perspective on money and take charge of your life, you’ve come to the right place.
Define Your E-Commerce Business Idea
Choosing Your Right Product(s)
Validate Your Idea
Define Your Target Audience
Brainstorm What Will Set Your Business Apart
Research Your Competition
Build Strong Branding
Audience Persona
Brand Voice
Social Media Branding
Brand Identity
Visuals and Content
E-Commerce Websites
Create Your Shipping Strategy
Launch Your Business
Market Your Business
Learn Basic SEO
Have a Baseline
Know Your Keywords
Discover The Power of Backlinks
Blog Consistently
Implement Social Media Marketing
Build and Grow an Email List
Analyse Your Results
FAQs
How Do You Start an E-Commerce Business Without Money?
How Do You Start an E-Commerce Business on Amazon?
What Does an E-Commerce Business Do?
What Are The Four Types of E-Commerce?
Is E-Commerce Really Profitable?
How Do You Start up an E-Commerce Business?
Start Your Journey to Financial Freedom Today!
Sourced from Parent Portfolio
Psychological and socioeconomic factors
So when you’re creating your content or you’re trying to devise your content strategy, always look at the emotion, psychology, social, and economic factors that are affecting your audience. It’s easy to look at data on your site’s traffic and obsess about what could have gone wrong in terms of your competitors or other factors. But you might also want to take a step back and look at what’s happening in the lives of your audience, like what are they struggling with right now.
So in the past 18 months also, every one of us have been experiencing the pandemic. So that has changed the way people search for things. Searches for keywords like remote, things like delivery, those searches have gone up over the past few months, and that’s based on the social factors that are affecting people. It means they can no longer do things that they were able to do before, so now they’re having to adjust in different ways. So always look at what’s happening to your audience and then react accordingly.
Brand affinity and trust
The brand affinity and trust also affects the way people interact with your site. If people are familiar with a brand, they are more likely to trust them and interact with them more.
So if you’re a newer website or a brand, it might be a good idea to let the content speak for itself and not try to make your brand the front and centre of attention. Whereas for a bigger brand, it might be a good idea to do the opposite. So a site like Amazon would do good to have their brand name in the title tag for example because people know their brand and they can trust them and click on the site, whereas a brand-new website it might be a good idea to not necessarily make that the focus of attention.
Trends and seasonality
So other things to look at are trends and seasonality. As you’re looking at your SEO data, if you notice a dip, you might not be doing anything wrong. It could just mean that it’s the nature of the time of the year. So I’m sure certain keywords would trend upward around the holiday season, for example, for things like electronics, video games, etc.
Then towards like February or March, maybe those searches might reduce. It doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. It’s just the seasonality.
Search behaviour
So the search behaviour as well. People’s behaviour changes over time. Humans are not robots. They are very dynamic.
Things change, things that they search for. As I mentioned before, when their emotional, psychological, social, and political factors are affected, it also changes how they search for things as well. So always try to react to that or pay attention to what people are doing. Try to understand what’s changing in their search behavior and react to that accordingly.
Customer journey
The customer journey is very important. Always understand the touch points that your customers have with your business. Even outside of your business, look at their journey before they get to your business. This allows you to know the types of content you need to create to fill in the gap in their journey. This allows you to know who you might need to collaborate with, so other information sources that your audience has, where they hang out. You are able to understand those things and be able to create the perfect content for them and also promote it in the right places as well.
Struggles
The struggles. What are the things keeping your audience up at night? What are they struggling with? Understanding this allows you to create content that no other person would be able to create. It would almost be to them like you have like some magic wand where you’re able to predict what’s going on with them.
Try to understand what are their struggles. You can find out the struggles by looking at questions that your audience asks your help team, for example. That’s a good place to start and use SEO tools to do your keyword research to know what some of those questions that they’re asking, that indicate struggles. Go on forums like Quora and Reddit. Those types of places allow you to find those struggles.
Location and language
Location and language affects how people search for things. Different locations have their own slangs, have their own culture, behaviours, and ways of doing things. Try to understand the location that you’re targeting. Try to understand what the culture is like, what the language is, and try to create your content with that in mind. If you don’t have that expertise or knowledge, it’s a good idea to partner up with someone in those locations as well.
Also make sure that your site is internationalized as well if you’re targeting multiple countries. There are lots of resources that teach you how to do this. You can find that in the Moz [SEO Learning Center] as well.
Accessibility
Accessibility, different people search for things in different ways. People have different needs. So make sure that your site is universally accessible to everyone. So make sure it’s mobile friendly. Make sure you don’t have like annoying pop-ups everywhere. Make sure that you provide an alt tag for your images to make your content more accessible to all.
So these are the factors that are affecting the searchers. There’s a lot that I probably missed, so I would love to know what you think and also other ones that I forgot.
Boss #3: Search engines
So the last but not the least is the search engines. In order to win for SEO, you really need to understand that the search engines are businesses as well.
Business model
So in order for them to rank your site, you have to be a site that is in line with their business. For Google, if you want to understand what their business model is, there is a video on YouTube that you should watch.
It’s called “A Trillion Searches, No Easy Answers.” It’s a very interesting video that shows you the behind the scenes of how they think about things, what challenges they have, and the future of where they’re heading. This would then allow you to be able to know where they might go next so that you can react accordingly.
For Google, once again, I mean ultimately they are just trying to provide content to their searchers that is valuable, that is from sites that are indexable, that provides a good experience, and of course it has to be relevant content.
Natural language processing
They put a huge emphasis on relevant content. That leads us to the next one — NLP. So every additional change that Google has been making over the past few years is geared towards that goal of helping people get answers to things that they search for in a natural way, so making search basically more human.
That allows them to be able to help people find the relevant content to them by using more advancements in machine learning. So in order for you to do well for SEO, you need to understand what are they doing with these updates. Read the release notes. Try to understand what each update means and then try to cater your content to match that goal as well.
E-A-T
E-A-T, it means expertise, authoritativeness, and trust. Google is very strict on this when it comes to sites that are in the money or your life categories. So that’s health, finance, and fitness, things like that. So make sure that your site is displaying the signals that they need for this authority.
There are a lot of resources out there. I wish I could spend more time to explain this, but we have limited time. But make sure you look into this so you can follow the right guidelines for the E-A-T.
Links
The links, I don’t need to explain this too much. Everyone that works in SEO is pretty much familiar with this. But links are basically the digital word of mouth. A lot of people are familiar with getting backlinks.
But just as important to getting backlinks, you also want to make sure that you’re spreading internal links as well. So make sure that the pages on your site that are getting high traffic, you are also linking to pages on your site that might not be getting as much traffic, but they are just as important to you.
Core web vitals
This is a recent update, the Core Web Vitals. So it’s meant to basically build better websites in the world. A lot of people debate the effectiveness of this at this very moment. I would say you should do your best. Use tools like the Moz Performance Metrics Beta and try to improve your site as best as you can to at least be prepared when these changes do start affecting your ranking power.
Indexability
Indexability, of course make sure your site is indexable to the search engines. So the things like your robots.txt file is well set up. Make sure that there are no HTML or JavaScript errors. Make sure that you are reducing pages on your site that have no value so that you’re not taking away from that crawl budget for the most important pages. Look at your site’s architecture. Make sure things are set up correctly so it makes your site very indexable.
Schema markup
Take advantage of schemas. These help the search engines understand your website very clearly. Having schemas doesn’t mean you would always win the SERP features, but at least it gives you a fighting chance. So take advantage of them as well.
Query deserves freshness
QDF is “query deserves freshness”. So for certain queries, the search engines determine that more up-to-date information is more relevant than other types of content, so they refresh them more frequently. So if you notice that some of your content did not perform quite as well, it might just be because that they are outdated.
So a little quick refresh can help you take advantage of the opportunity to rank better.
Ongoing updates
Last but not least, ongoing updates. SEO is not stagnant. It’s continuously dynamic. It’s moving, and things are changing. All the search engines are pushing dozens of updates on a daily basis.
So keep an eye on, like I said, their business model, try to understand where they are headed, and try to be able to predict where they’re going. Keep on top of the updates and then adjust as you go. But yeah, so these are the three bosses of SEO, and these are all what they need.
As I mentioned, I probably missed a lot of things. But the whole idea is not for this to cover everything. The idea is just getting to think of SEO from a very holistic perspective. You might be wondering this is a lot. Where do I even start from? Well, the most important thing is your business. Try to make sure that you’re doing the right thing for your business.
Then make sure you do the right thing for your searchers and then start satisfying the search engines to get results. But yeah, so that’s all I have for you today. Leave your comments below. I would love to have a discussion with you and see what we can learn from each other as well. All right. See you next time.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com.
