Friday, 24 May 2024

How to outrank your Competitors with SEO

 As a quick note: My agency is not currently working with small or upstart drop shippers only those with over $10k in sales per month average. However, some of the content and tools I recommend below are owned by myself or my agency which is why this post is called "Marketplace".

Tools and Resources for your Dropshipping SEO

1. Figure out your target keyword(s) for each product

Use tools like the Google Ads Keyword Planner Tool, Moz Keyword tool https://moz.com/explorer, Ahrefs https://ahrefs.com/, SEMrush https://www.semrush.com/, Spyfu https://www.spyfu.com/, or KeywordTool.io https://keywordtool.io/ to find keywords about your products. Typically though most products will have straightforward main keywords. 


For example, the most common keyword for a new pair of sneakers is the full name of the shoe + the colourway. Still, keyword research can reveal more challenging things to detect, which will help your SEO as you go.


Of note, here we are only looking at product keywords not keywords for the overall site, collections, or content we might create later on. If you know what you are doing or it's a small product selection store, you can do all that keyword research simultaneously.

2. Write Title Tags and Meta Descriptions using your chosen keyword


SEO 101 ensures the title tag and meta description include your chosen keyword(s) or at least a close variation of one.


  • Title tags don't have to be boring and can be structured more like a phrase today.

  • Meta Descriptions that define the product, speak to the possible new customer, and entice clicks tend to perform the best.


If you buy one of the WriteAI packages mentioned above it comes with awesome SEO tools like generating various Title Tags and Meta Descriptions for you to choose from.

3. Give your products keyword-rich names

The trick here is to create a keyword-rich name without being spammy. For example "Yellow Widget w/ Silver Subwidget for Hobbyists" to target the keyword "yellow and silver hobbyist widget" OR incorporate the exact keyword "Yellow and Silver Hobbyist Widget w/ Subwidget" to target the same keyword.


  • Do not name your product "Widget" or "Good Widget".

  • Do not name your product with a lot of keywords the way you see it done on AliExpress and sometimes Etsy or other marketplaces.


You can come up with your own pattern for consistency if you like, but trying to get the main keyword in will help.

4. Write compelling product descriptions that include your target keyword


A compelling product description can help you increase sales while simultaneously improving your SEO which will increase organic traffic and in turn further increase sales. It's a big win if you can land it correctly. A few notes here:


  • You are trying to sell the product, not an idea or brand. Make sure the content is focused on selling but also describing the product.

  • You want to include your main target keyword(s) in a way that reads natural and does not feel spammy.

  • Do not use the manufacturer's or wholesaler's description alone. If you do use it make sure it is augmented by additional content.

  • Most platforms allow you to write a short and long-form description for a product. Write both.

If writing descriptions or rewriting them sounds time-consuming there are some ways to hack this. For example, you could use the "Rewrite" feature of WriteAI.net and tell it to make the copy 'sizzle' to create a compelling new product description that drives sales and SEO. Likewise, you may have other AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, You, and Bing Chat may be up to this task.

5. Give all images SEO-friendly file names and alt attributes


Make sure all images have good, human language-based, file names. For example instead of "image_0003_final.png" use "yellow-silver-widget.png" for our above fictitious image. If that image is based on a background or has something unique about it add that in like this "yellow-silver-widget-onbeach.png" or "yellow-silver-widget-cowboyhat.png"


Also make sure to give each image an appropriate and if possible, unique alt attribute. Not only will this help your customers with vision disabilities but search engines use it to improve rankings. For our image above instead of "widget" as the alt attribute you might use "yellow and silver widget" or you can get a little more expansive like this "yellow and silver widget used by hobbyists" or for a unique image "yellow and silver widget with a beach background".


6. Figure out your target keyword(s) for your collection(s) / category(ies)


Here you are going to use the same tools and process as in No. 1 above. Except for instead of a product name or variations of it, we are looking at broader terms. For example instead of figuring out which of these 2 product titles to use: "Yellow Widget w/ Silver Subwidget for Hobbyists" and "Yellow and Silver Hobbyist Widget w/ Subwidget", you will be trying to figure out what the "fat head" keywords are that include this product and others. For example, that might be "Widgets for Hobbyists" "Hobbyist Widgets" "Yellow Widgets" "Yellow and Silver Widgets" or just plain "Widgets" - you might even realise you want to build more than one collection based on this research.


7. Craft title tags and meta descriptions for your collection(s) / category(ies)


Like in No. 2 we are going to use our keyword data to inform the metadata we provide search engines. Following similar logic with one or two possible changes:

  • Consider making your collection title tag a listicle style title (i.e. 25 best Hobbyist Widgets)

  • Consider making your meta description about what sets your collection apart (i.e. "See the largest selection of hobbyist widgets on the web" or "The highest quality hobbyist widgets you'll find guaranteed!")

8. Move your collection description below the product listings

Edit your theme/template to move your collection description BELOW to the product listings. The goal here is to be able to add USEFUL CONTENT for SEO and UX purposes without interrupting the user's ability to quickly see the list of products in a collection/category. 


This is sometimes easy and sometimes very difficult or impossible depending on your CMS and theme/template. For example on Lightspeed Ecommerce this is impossible to do, but on Shopify you should be able to do it by editing the theme's liquid code. Here is one example of doing that (it may be different for your theme): https://www.joeyoungblood.com/shopify-tips/how-to-add-a-description-to-your-shopify-collection-pages/


9. Write a guide to your product collection/category

This part baffles many would-be retailers. They assume that someone looking for the product category/collection knows what they are going to buy, but that is not always the case. For example an aunt, uncle, or grandparent trying to buy fidget spinners during that craze had no clue what to consider a good product for their young family member.


Creating a guide helps your users find the right product if they aren't sure what they should be looking for - AND it helps your SEO when done right.

10. Perform keyword research again, this time you are looking for content ideas to add to the blog

This time you can use the same tools as in No. 1, look at competitor blogs / YouTube channels for ideas, or use tools like Also Asked and Answer the Public to find questions potential buyers might be asking. Consider making things like "Ultimate Guide to Widgets" "Best Widgets for 2024" "How to Use Widgets to Cure Male Loneliness" etc…


This content can be AI-informed but it should not be AI-written. That is, use AI to help you craft it but make sure humans are editing and researching too. This is important for multiple reasons including AI can produce duplicate content easily AND can frequently miss important things or say things totally wrong.

11. Link to your products from your blog posts

Make sure to internally link to your most relevant and highest margin and/or popular products from each blog post. This helps build internal link values that improve SEO AND it helps drive consumers who read your content to purchase your products.


You can use tools like the Jump Links app to help automate this process so you can focus on creating content and filling orders instead.


12. Patience young Padawan

The thing about SEO is that it takes time, even though some of my colleagues like Mike King will say that's a misnomer today, you should be prepared to wait a little while after you do SEO work to see those SEO results. 


This is not only because Google's algorithm likes to move slowly (especially with new sites) but also because of the fierce competition in today's e-commerce SEO segment. You're not just battling Amazon and eBay and Etsy but also every other dropshipper and retailer in your space. 


Whereas big box retail used to be just Walmart, Kmart, Target, and Costco - those same products can now be sold by a larger variety of retailers via drop shipping or centralised warehouse e-commerce like Fanatics, Home Depot, and of course Amazon out of the countless thousands of other online competitors. Not to mention affiliate networks.


Retail still holds a lot of promise and value and small sellers and dropshippers can do quite well, but it means probably waiting a little longer to get SEO success that brings in the sales you want. While you are being patient for the preliminary SEO work to kick in, it's time to move up a level in your SEO efforts. Again, these won't be in-depth but will be helpful.


13. Indexing work is a requirement now

Welcome to 2024 where Google hates your site and your SEO doesn't matter (if it's not indexed). Seriously, Google's indexing sucks today and has gotten worse from the perspective of website owners over the past 2 years. 


Google's default setting is to not trust your content if you are a new website. That means a very low percentage of products, collections/categories, blog posts, and other pages being indexed by Google.


To improve this you'll need a Google Search Console account to do something that went obsolete over a decade ago - ask Google to index your content. Once you have your GSC account you do this by placing a URL into the box at the top of the account page that says "Inspect any URL". If it comes back as not indexed click the "request indexing" button on the right-hand side. 


It can take multiple requests to get a page indexed but the results can be amazing. Recently we increased a client's organic search traffic 277% with just this technique alone. None of their blog content, which was created by an expert, and about 80% of their main money pages were not indexed by Google.


14. Build some links

Hyperlinks have long been the great differentiator to search engine algorithms and they or something similar will also likely be required for AI chat systems as the web floods with low-quality content again. 


That means you need to get links to show you can be trusted to search engines and that the internet "votes" for your website. There are hundreds of ways to get links and various classes of links. Let's first look at the classes:

  • Spam Links: These are low-quality links anyone can get or purchase with little to no effort. Things like blog comments or news article comment spam, article marketing links, automatically claimed links like website directories, and links you purchase from a link seller on a blog or publishing website that only sells links. Most of these carry zero value but might also carry negative value.

  • Low Value Links: These are still easily obtained links, but more likely to not be considered spam at least in some capacity. Things like profile links for setting up a profile on a social media website, blog content distribution, links from social media sharing, links in a press release, links from those fake "interview" websites where you can nominate yourself and they send you a form of questions or a random link on a small website. 

  • These could be a zero value as well depending on what attributes they carry and how engines treat those attributes. For example all links on Facebook carry the 'nofollow' attribute so while these might carry some value in a normal setting, with that attribute applied it is more likely engines give them a zero value.

  • Good Links: These are links that carry probably the standard amount of PageRank value to help your SEO efforts. They aren't always going to be of the highest value and they might come from controllable outcomes but they tend to do well in providing the value you need to get things busted. 

  • This includes guest blog post links (on websites that are legitimate and not link farms), resource directory links, listicle links, photo credit links, sponsorship links, business/industry directory links, and links obtained through tactics like broken link building.

  • High-Value Links: These are links that likely carry the highest amount of PageRank and come from high-value websites that search engines trust. Typically these are links from media mentions by helping reporters/journalists (i.e. HARO), links to content you've created from blogs and forums, and links from high-tier websites like governments and large nonprofits.



You can spend some time getting low-value links first without it causing any problems, especially since they can be easy. For example, Making social media accounts to claim your brand's handle might already be on your list, go a step further and place a link on each one too. It has little to no value, but also quick and easy to do. 


Also consider if a press release is a good idea. Sites like the Voyage network, Magellan Commerce, and others are simple websites dedicated to helping you tell your story, they also frequently give you a link. They are not high quality but easy to get.


You can use low-cost services like AB News Wire to send one without breaking the bank.

There are plenty of other tactics as you start to try and gain Good Links and High-Value Links. One of my favourites is to create a link magnet - a piece of content so compelling it gains links naturally from the web with no effort on your end.


Here's a big list of link-building tactics you can review to go get links for your site/products: https://www.joeyoungblood.com/education/seo/link-building/list-link-building-tactics/


It is important to remember link building is an ongoing effort AND the links you build only count if the document that contains them is considered to be of good enough quality AND that document is indexed by the search engine.


15. (Brick and Mortar Only) Gain citation listings

Since this doesn't apply to most of you I'll be brief. If you have a brick-and-mortar location, get a Google Business Profile and then go find business listing directories to get listed in. This will help your rankings in Google Maps but can also be a nice source of inbound links. Be aware though that it comes with a downside of spam phone calls by scammers who scrape this data.


16. Add sitemaps to Google Search Console


This is pretty easy to do and any seasoned SEO has already done this back when they set up GSC. Shopify will actually give you separate sitemap files based on content type like products, pages, blogs, and collections.


You can find them at www.examplestore.com/sitemap.xml


Find the ones you want Google to crawl and add those to your GSC.

17. [Advanced] Google Shopping

During the early days of the pandemic Google gave ecommerce retailers something new to help market their products in a bid to compete with Amazon -> free shopping search listings. To get listed and compete in these you still have to create a Google Merchant Account and upload a feed of products, which can be an agonising process. 


Shopify has this integrated and their 2023 guide is quite comprehensive, highly recommend reading it as you get this set up: https://www.shopify.com/blog/google-shopping-product-data-feed


The research study mentioned above is based on how e-commerce SEOs assume Google's Shopping engine rankings things.



18. [Advanced] Remove junk content

Junk content is content that has no useful purpose to a human user and is determined to be "unhelpful" by Google's engine. The more of it you have, the worse your site will perform ever since the Helpful Content Update of late 2022 started running: https://www.joeyoungblood.com/seo/everything-we-know-about-googles-helpful-content-update/


One of the problems of running an e-commerce store of any kind is inventory turnover. Eventually, the product you have in stock is obsolete, that's a given in nearly all cases. When this happens you have to decide what to do with that URL. In MOST cases the right answer here is to 'noindex' it and remove it from the site so customers and search engines cannot find it.


Apps added to your Shopify or even your theme can also create junk content. For example, one Shopify site I recently worked on had thousands of testimonials but they were all entered as "blog posts" as a sort of hacky way to get them on the site and were all 1 or 2 sentences long. 


The solution here was to noindex these ASAP.


You should ensure your site:


  • Has a good policy on removing outdated products via noindex

  • Has a good policy on redirecting URLs

  • Has a good policy on using the Rel Canonical

  • Has a good policy on what types of content should be indexed


If you don't have Shopify or WooCommerce you need to make sure your CMS allows you to:


  • 301 redirect URLs

  • Noindex all URLs

  • Add a rel canonical tag to all pages / content types

19. [Advanced] Gain reviews for your products

This is probably the single toughest thing for dropshipping merchants to do - especially those running multi-product stores. Search engines love to see signs that humans found your page useful and one of the best is the classic review stars.


There's a reason Amazon allows non-verified customers to leave a review on a product - it helps them sell the product.


Amazon got in early on this but now the FTC has cracked down so there are not a lot of ways you can legally entice reviews (if you're in the USA) including giving the product away. However, you can allow your friends to borrow or use the product and ask them for a review on your Shopify.


Shopify (stupidly) does not have a native reviews app (any more). They didn't have one, then made one, and have now deprecated it. That means you have no choice but to rely on the app marketplace here and pay a recurring fee if you want to display product reviews. The best appears to be Judge.me and for good reason, but there are a lot of them now. 


Ecommerce Gold did a great job IMHO comparing them here: https://www.ecommerce-gold.com/best-shopify-review-apps/


Shopify help document on their deprecated reviews app: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/products/product-reviews


20. [Advanced] Be cautious about what SEO apps you install

Shopify's store is flooded with apps that have features you do not need. For example, Shopify already compresses images so image compression apps could make your images look worse as they get double-tripled compressed. 


There are also unnecessary features like Google Analytics or Google Search Console charts - just use those websites instead. Finally, some apps add third-party content and slow your website pages down which is a big no-no.


Instead, you're looking for SEO apps that do any or one of the following:

  • Add Schema markup to your products and pages

  • Automatically or semi-automatically build internal links

  • Create an HTML sitemap

  • Use AI to generate possibly better versions of content

  • Generate reviews

  • Automatically fills in image alt attributes

  • Offers pagespeed assistance such as DNS-prefetch tags, lazy loading, deferring javascript code, ejecting unused code


Here's a help document from Shopify explaining their automatic compression for images: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-store/images/theme-images


21. [Advanced] Measuring success

SEO is like all other forms of marketing - worthless if it doesn't make you money and frustrating if you can't determine roughly how much money it is making you. Thankfully Shopify does a pretty decent job here of tracking sales in your Analytics report under "Sales by Traffic Source".


Since SEO can take time though you may want to track other sources that might be leading up to the future sales from organic search traffic or "search".


For example, if you do rank tracking on the keywords you think might bring in sales such as "buy yellow widgets" or "yellow hobbyist widgets" then you could see daily / weekly how your rankings are improving over time leading ultimately to those coveted sales. 


You can also track Shopify revenue inside of Google Analytics GA4 though the new system is still far inferior to Google's Universal Analytics and is more likely to be a headache for you right now than a boon. You should still install the code (or use a Tag Manager instead with your GA4 code in it) for future use and reference.


22. [Advanced] Continuing SEO forever

SEO is a never-ending battle of you against the machines and against all of the competition. Take a moment to create a plan and find time in your day to execute small amounts of it. 


One way I've seen small businesses do this successfully is to do 1 SEO task each week. For example, Week 1 might be researching keywords for a product, Week 2 might be doing some link building, Week 3 might be checking up on the technical health of the site, and so on and so on.


The most important part is to never stop doing good, solid, high-quality SEO work or you stand to lose all of the gains you've made.

Note: I wrote this in about 30 mins then tacked a bit more on, so if you're a seasoned SEO and see something I missed that should be included let me know (probably a lot). Also note some of this might be oversimplified for brevity purposes.

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