SEO Tips

SEO Hacks

🛑 STOP creating new blog posts.

Take a few minutes and look at your existing content. If you've been cranking out new posts every month but not updating old content, you're missing out.

• Go to Google Search Console
• Filter keywords for the last 3 months
• Cut down the list to only keywords ranking 4-20
• Prioritize these keywords based on commercial value
• Work through this list and update your content with a focus on these keywords
• Update the page title or headline
• Update existing sections with new data
• Add new sections to add more depth to the content

You will always get quicker traffic through existing content optimization vs only creating new content. Focus on this content for the next 3 months. Your sales will thank you.

⚙️ What’s the Unsplash Link Building tactic?

Freddie used his client’s existing product imagery to build backlinks, by:

1. Uploading the images to Unsplash.
2. Uploading the same images to Pixsy (a tool that tracks image usage across the web).
3. Waiting for an alert when an image has been used.
4. Reaching out to the website owner, asking for a link to the product webpage.

🎯 What was the result?

• 30% success rate on backlink requests.
• 4x increase in organic traffic.

🔺 Why does it work? Decent stock images are in short supply. So if you have great shots to share, people will want to use them. In addition, as it is your own image, the small ask to add a link feels authentic, which stands out in a sea of spammy SEO outreach.

Thanks Freddie for sharing this tactic!

Impactful SEO may look like:

• Explosive overnight growth
• 50 new blog posts
• 100 backlinks

But it also looks like:

1. Adding 5 internal links
2. Fixing a URL structure issue
3. Adding alt tags to improve accessibility
4. Spending a whole day creating a post that drives sales
5. Negotiating a partnership with a non-competing brand

It might not be sexy. But it’s all important work.

✌️ Underrated SEO tool that nobody seems to talk about.

Underrated SEO tool: Wayback Machine!

Analyzing how content has changed and matching it up with data is so valuable to SEO. You can use it to research:

• Old content that was lost in a migration
• Old URLs from your site that have never been redirected
• What UX changes have happened (although sometimes this is a bit clunky)
• How competitors have updated their content over time
• How the navigation was structured before a redesign (that may have caused a drop in traffic)
• What former versions of the robots.txt used to look like (one of my favorites)

It's so often an untapped resource for SEO.

SEO is NOT free.

It requires time, effort, and money. But these efforts compound and will continue to build over a long time. Traffic doesn't dry up when your budget runs out.

How I reached over $10k/month in sales with an MVP SEO strategy (read this):

When you're starting out, don't overcomplicate it.

1. Understand your ideal customer demographic
2. Research the SEO market for your industry, learn the terms they use, look at what your competitors are doing
3. Optimize your collection pages for terms like 'cricket bats'. Add copy to increase context & FAQs to help users
4. Target product pages with long tail keywords ('long hand cricket bat'). Make sure your images are amazing.
5. Create content on topics like 'best cricket bats for beginners' and more informational content around what you sell. Link back to products & collections.
6. Build great backlinks. Utilize your images if they are great. Reach out to journalists who write gift guides - send them your product.

Don't overcomplicate it.

And don't worry (too much) about technical SEO. What have I missed?

The SEO status quo:

• Get some keywords.
• Create some content.
• Build some links.
• Hope for the best.

Disrupting the status quo:

• Create a brand.
• Build a business.
• Make a major impact.
• Stand out with and be unique.

There's never been a better time to be unique in a world filling with AI content.

Quick SEO tip: Please remember those redirects when migrating.

It's a lot easier to just get it right early in the process. Your bank balance will thank you.

Unsplash is an untapped SEO goldmine 👀

All you need: REALLY good lifestyle photos of your products

What to do:

1. Go to Unsplash and create an account
2. Upload your photos (you can only do 10/day to start with - so start with your best)
3. Head to Pixsy and create a free account
4. Upload the photos you've uploaded to Unsplash to Pixsy
5. Pixsy will then automatically find when your images are used
6. Reach out to people using your images
7. Get those links to boost your SEO

What you will get: New link opportunities on autopilot. People will continue to use your images from Unsplash, and you can keep reaching out and getting those links. You can get links directly to product pages, category pages, or blog pages - wherever you are using the image itself.

It takes time to get some traction, but once you do it really takes off 🚀. I'm currently getting over 100 links/month using this tactic with a 30% success rate (outreach email to link placement).

18 months of SEO coaching with this client, here's what we did:

1. Minor technical quick wins such as fixing the product URL structure.
2. Optimized collection and product pages, adding supporting content, FAQs to inform the user.
3. Created around 5 bottom-funnel/pain point articles per month that actively directed users to our product that solves these.
4. Started creating top of funnel content, with the core goal of driving more email subscribers.
5. Began reoptimizing content with Google Search Console data after 6 months.
6. Targeted product-led link building, through product round-ups and gift guides. Picking up links across major lifestyle publications.
7. Implemented a new dynamic internal link approach, flowing authority from product pages to collection pages.
8. Optimized for brand searches to capitalize on easy traffic win opportunities, including creating a reviews page and discount code page.
9. Started with ~100 clicks/day and reached over 1000.

What more do you want to know?

Quick SEO tip for domain migrations

How to speed up the process of Google picking up your redirects.

🔍 Submit the old URLs in an XML sitemap.

It encourages Google to crawl those old URLs still and notice the redirects. This helps Google pick up the redirects more easily. You'll see the transition from old URLs to new URLs much quicker. Just remember to remove the sitemap after ~1-3 months when you’re confident that the new URLs and redirects have been registered.

I'm an SEO consultant, not a wizard.

I can't guarantee results or performance. I can't tell you precisely what your traffic levels or ROI will be. You 100% will get the best strategy for your brand to drive converting organic traffic to your site using all my experience from the last decade working with ecommerce brands.

SEO insight can help a full-funnel approach to marketing, from top-of-the-funnel brand awareness to bottom-of-the-funnel content - and even post-purchase content. It is a combined effort of the brand and freelancer to grow your business. If you can't see the long term - SEO might not be the right channel for you.

A 5 minute Shopify fix that can double your traffic.

And it's so easy. Fix your URL structure.

In your Shopify Admin, go to:

• Online Store > Themes > Customize > Theme Actions > Edit Code > Snippets > product-grid-item.liquid

Find in the code where it says: “within:collection”

Delete it.

Save it. Your profit will thank you.

This continues to be one of the highest ROI SEO tasks for Shopify stores.

What's your best quick win for SEO? Drop it in the comments.

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.

Biggest Ecommerce SEO mistakes:

1. Broken links
2. Unoptimized meta titles & descriptions
3. Duplicate content
4. Slow loading times
5. Unoptimized collection pages
6. No content strategy
7. Thin content

Fix this.

And you'll rank higher on Google.

How I added over £500k in SEO revenue with a new product launch

Quick background:

• Worked with this brand for the previous 18 months
• Brand was heavily invested in SEO as a channel
• Owned most of the core terms for the main product

The brand wanted to expand their product range as a growth lever for the business.

We used a combination of talking to existing customers + keyword research to work out the best options. Brand went away to do more research and made their choice.

The SEO plan supporting the product launch

• Created supporting content early (6 months out)
• Launched with fully optimized collection and product pages
• Seeded the new products out early to relevant journalists and bloggers for backlinks
• Instantly added internal links once products went live

The results:

• Over 2000 new ranking keywords within 2 weeks of launch
• Over 5000 new organic search visitors per month
• On track to do over £500k in revenue in the next 12 months from this new product

SEO can be quick when you have momentum. This didn't happen overnight from a standing start. We've been working for over 2 years to make this possible.

Stop applying for jobs on LinkedIn.

🔍 Head to Google and search for:

site:apply[dot]workable[dot]com "[your industry]"

BOOM. Loads of opportunities.

Only get the latest ones by:

Heading over to 'Tools' on the right and set it to 'Past week'

You can add other variables such as 'remote' or 'freelance' to be more exact.

Use this little 'hack' to find jobs that aren't always the best advertised (on LinkedIn etc).