Reprised: Ecommerce-Specific SEO Strategies - with Scott Walldren - Episode 309

In today’s episode are revisiting the most popular episode of 2023, featuring Kiri Masters and the director of SEO in Acadia, Scott Walldren.

Scott shares his insights and expertise on ecommerce-specific SEO strategies. With the changing landscape of paid traffic, SEO has emerged as a crucial long-term traffic strategy for retail and ecommerce brands. Scott dives into the key considerations and tactics necessary to optimize your online store for search engines.

Make sure you tune in!

Scott Walldren is the Director of SEO for Acadia since October 2022. Previously, he spent 8 years developing and eventually heading up the SEO practice at 360i for Dentsu international. In addition to SEO, Scott has managed millions in paid search spend for national brands at Digitas and Razorfish and as a consultant inside and outside of startups. He lives in the far north Atlanta suburbs (close to Lake Lanier) with his wife, 3 kids, and 3 cats.

Incidentally, he has some hands-on experience (albeit about 10 years old) setting up a store, product feeds and running ads on Amazon when he was at Case-Mate.

In today’s episode, Kiri and Scott discuss:

• E-commerce-specific SEO strategies - What's different about ranking content for ecommerce vs other types of sites - It’s blessed and cursed by the nature of its templates and functions and as a result, you need to think through both your indexation strategy and how your content will be syndicated.

• What has changed in this area / what should be the focus in 2023 - Reputation matters more than ever. Who you are as an ecommerce business extends beyond your website and should include how you take ownership of your whole discoverable presence. I’m not just talking making sure you’ve claimed and utilized social media profiles but am speaking more about claiming and maintaining your Google Business Profile, and if applicable your knowledge panel.

• Biggest mistakes - What are ecomm brands usually doing wrong with SEO?

  • #1 mistake: Launching without consulting with a competent SEO or developer with proven SEO chops. It’s easier to let the cat out of the bag than to put it back in the bag.

• Who’s getting it right? Scott is a huge fan of REI. Unlike many ecommerce sites, they have a strong brick and mortar presence which contributes significantly to their success. But strictly looking at their ecommerce approach they have put in the work to understand keyword strategy and how people search for product categories, products, and how-to guides.