E-Commerce SEO: Converting Product Pages with Freddie Chatt

0:00Freddie ChattYes. I think for the vast majority of e commerce stores, brand owners, and everything like the collection pages are always going Biggest like opportunity for commercial traffic.

0:11Blogs are normally quite good for volume of traffic.

0:14But it's like a low chance that you're probably going to be used the people arriving to they're probably not going to be ready to buy.

0:20They're probably more informational searches and not in that right mindset.

0:23Whereas collection pages I can target the relevant Kind of like keywords that people are looking for your actual product that you sell.

0:31Crystal WaddellWelcome to the third season of the Simple and Smart SEO Show. The podcast dedicated to empathy driven, brand building SEO.

0:39I'm your host, Crystal Waddell. I leverage my obsession with user experience to help business owners just like you optimize your website with confidence.

0:47Thank you so much for being here.

0:48Let's jump into another great

0:50episode.

0:50All right, Freddie, let's do this.

0:52Welcome back to the simple and smart SEO show podcast. I am here with Freddie Chatt, who is an e commerce expert.

0:59And just a really Kind, helpful guy.

1:04That I met through a mutual friend, Andy Holland, who's been on the podcast before.

1:09But Freddie is here to talk all things e commerce SEO.

1:13So Freddie chat, welcome to the simple and smart SEO show. Thank you for being here.

1:18Freddie ChattThanks for having me. Excited to be here.

1:20Crystal WaddellYeah.

1:20So we were chatting just a little bit before we got started about like your history With SEO and like how you got into the industry. So I was just wondering if you could do like a quick recap of like your SEO experience.

1:33And then tell us a little bit about, what you do now that's SEO related.

1:39Freddie ChattAbsolutely. Yes. So I fell into SEO as I feel like most people do. Back in 2012. So we've been doing it for 12 years now.

1:46And so I dropped out of university, lucky to get a job as a kind of marketing assistant at a local e comm store here in the UK.

1:55They sold kind of luxury homeware, home decor, furniture, lighting, and all sorts of things like that.

2:01And they knew they should be doing SEO, but they weren't exactly sure what to do. So they got me in who also didn't know what to do.

2:06But fortunately also had a consultant on hand to give me some direction and show me the ropes and things like that.

2:13And over the course of the next, I was there for five, six, seven years in total.

2:19We grew it from almost nothing to about 10 million pounds in annual revenue just from from seo.

2:26And we did it all pretty much internally. We built out the internal seo team We had awesome other teams that we worked with internally from pr, copy, development team and stuff like that.

2:37So we were super lucky to have such a kind of like strong internal team that kind of really backed seo.

2:42That's what it really takes to make successful work.

2:45Any business to have a true belief in it. And yes, I was really lucky there to do a whole cross section of SEO tasks and tactics from international SEO, domain migrations, content led projects.

3:00We ran a campaign that became an annual thing.

3:02Which basically a blogger awards for interior design bloggers and interior designers.

3:07One of them once called the oscars of the interior design blogging world. So that was One of the particular highlight which is what's epic to do.

3:14Crystal WaddellI think it's so neat that you were on the inside of a large company, a large e commerce company when you got your start with SEO.

3:22Because it's like, yeah, you may not have known a lot when you started. But you pretty much learned everything that you needed to know by the time you're finished.

3:30There's a piece of me that's a little bit envious because I started out just as, the solopreneur that I still am.

3:37You've gotten to see what it's like to work inside a big company.

3:39And, you know that it's a little bit different than regular SEO, right? I guess that's my point.

3:44Is e commerce different and how is it different than like regular SEO?

3:48Freddie ChattYes, so like the general principles are the Exactly the same.

3:51Like generally is content and links.

3:53But the almost like the principles and how you have different types of pages. You've got product pages.

3:59Category pages whereas like kind of service level business have landing pages and different types of pages.

4:04And it's how they like fit together.

4:07Ecom platforms naturally build out your kind of like the structure of the site.

4:11You've got filters on those category pages and things that can mess about with it. And bits and pieces like that.

4:16So yeah, so there's definitely some there's definitely kind of unique tactics and ways to implement the general approaches that you do.

4:23But the overall, overriding premise is still the same

4:26Crystal WaddellOkay, so take us through like you leaving that company and creating your own thing.

4:33Freddie ChattYes it was December 2019, so just before the pandemic. So. Not realizing that at the time.

4:38But also being quite lucky to be Specialized in an e commerce seo. I went freelance.

4:44Like did some consulting for a variety of kind of other ecom brands.

4:48A couple of SAAS businesses.

4:50But mainly e commerce brands.

4:52And yeah, i've basically been freelancing and consulting ever since.

4:55So for the past like almost five years now. And in that time I also set up my own ecom store, here in the uk selling kind of cricket bats cricket equipment.

5:05i've been played cricket for most of my life.

5:08There's a big opportunity Online where it's a lot of the Specific kind of cricket brands weren't tapping into SEO in itself.

5:16But also a few of the like other channel, like online digital channels. Whereas there was like a handful of retailers that were doing like, most of the, getting most of the traffic, but they weren't that authority.

5:27They didn't seem to necessarily know exactly what they were doing. It's more the fact that they were there first. So yeah, so I launched that with a friend and that's been kinda like we've been growing that slowly on the side for the last few years as well.

5:38Crystal WaddellThe question that pops into my mind is like, how do you chase the big dog?

5:44The one that got there first.

5:45And how do you find those opportunities where it's oh, they're not doing this as well. Because what if like their ad spend is. Outrageous. And you can just tell that they're generating all these leads from ads.

5:55But their SEO is like non existent.

5:57Can you compete with that?

5:59Freddie ChattAbsolutely. Obviously it depends massively on each market, each niche.

6:04Like specifically on who your competitors are, but. There's always normally some room for got opportunities for you To take some traffic off them or target stuff that they're not targeting what I found and both internally i'm working and consulting with some Large cover ecom brands since.

6:21Is that they're much slower to move on like new newer initiatives and newer opportunities.

6:27So as a small brand, you can be often be a lot more agile and nimble in terms of trying new things.

6:34Testing different like content ideas. Or link building tactics or whatever it is. To try and pick up things where they haven't.

6:41That's definitely an advantage of being smaller than bigger that you end up needing to go through multiple levels of sign off just to create a blog post, for example.

6:49Crystal WaddellSo there's a lot of different types of e commerce sites. And, some people are familiar with like print on demand, drop shipping. I happen to be my own manufacturer, so I make and sell giant numbers, like I make in letters. I make that, and I don't have any numbers right here, of course, because, oh wait, I do.

7:07For graduations. Yeah, we're already ready through 2028.

7:10What's the approach for SEO, like between those three types of e-commerce companies? And maybe there's more, you can let me know. But like specifically drop shipping, print on demand and like a self manufacturer, is there a different approach to SEO when it comes to the different types of e commerce businesses?

7:28Freddie ChattGenerally not, I'd say like on the whole, they're the same. You're trying to, at the end of the day, you're trying to get in front of the customers that want to buy your product.

7:36So whatever they are searching for to end up finding your product.

7:40Whether you're making it yourself, whether you're drop shipping, print on demand like selling other people's brand and stuff.

7:46Like you're fundamentally, you're just trying to You're trying to get your piece of the market, get in front of those the customers that essentially have the problem that your product solves.

7:55Yeah, the general premise of finding their pain points, finding what they're searching for and like making it as easy as possible for them to find your store remain the same. Across the different types of e commerce stores.

8:06Crystal WaddellOne of the reasons why I ask is because I have an e commerce store and then I have my SEO squad where I meet with business owners once a week.

8:13Every Wednesday we talk about websites.

8:15And then I'm also helping my brother launch a new business and it's a lawn service in Kansas, but he is into robot lawnmowers.

8:25And I'm like, this is a whole different area for me because, obviously we're going to have to procure the lawnmowers.

8:31And, choosing the right product is really important. So now we're trying to source the product for vendors.

8:37So I'm just curious, like, how did you choose, your vendor for your cricket bats and the equipment?

8:44Freddie ChattYeah, absolutely. So for us, so the vast majority of cricket bats in the world that are sold each year are made in India.

8:51India have their own version of Alibaba, Aliexpress type thing called India Mart.

8:55So most of the manufacturers in India are on that.

8:59Our process was we went through there, found a range of people that seem to sell the product that, that we wanted. Ours is a relatively simple, like not lots of customization. So it's relatively straightforward to make, for them essentially, as a manufacturer of cricket bats.

9:16And other equipment. We got about, I think we had five.

9:19So we spent a few hundred pounds on getting samples sent over.

9:22So we started with just a cricket bat. And so we got about five or six bats sent over. We went and tested them all out to see which ones felt the best for us.

9:32And we like then chose the one that we liked the best from there.

9:36And we Interestingly enough, we then temporarily moved away from that supplier because we found another one slightly cheaper. But then we had Product quality issues.

9:45And then we're back with the original supplier, which we probably should never have left in the first place.

9:50But we've now been with them for the last two years and it's like going really well at working with them.

9:55Crystal WaddellOkay.

9:56So tell me about what was that like when you changed suppliers and you noticed a drop off in product quality.

10:02What was that like from a customer service perspective? And what was it that made you say, we have to go back even though it costs a little more?

10:09Freddie ChattYeah, it was extremely stressful because we're like, cricket's a very seasonal sport, so it's just played in the summer.

10:16I'd say basically we make most of our money between kind of April and August.

10:20We get most of our stock in at the start of the year. And then that's pretty much what we work through.

10:24So for the year of that, we had the alternative supplier, like kind of things started off well, they like things are selling more than we were last year, which was fantastic.

10:35But then we started getting the issues coming in of like kind of the product quality issues that breaking.

10:41Issues with the bat handles. Which are like, very obviously a manufacturing issue.

10:46And we have we have a warranty of one year. So any issues we've replaced the bat.

10:51So, on the whole, most of The customers were like still happy.

10:56They contacted us. There was an issue We certainly that there was a handful of people that then it happened again, too and obviously then they were less happy.

11:02We refunded, and so.

11:04We didn't lose much in sense of a lot of unhappy customers. But I feel it definitely probably damaged the brand slightly in terms of people's trust and belief in us, but like we've been building that back up, ever since.

11:19Crystal WaddellThat is super cool.

11:20Good for you guys to be able to bounce back from that. And, I'm curious because again, because I'm a handmade slash manufacturer.

11:28I don't have to, or choose to keep stock. Like I do have the same name of collage and wood as an Amazon store.

11:37And I've learned that FBA for me is the most effective way to sell on Amazon. Shout out to Jonas Sickler who was on the show earlier this year.

11:46When it comes to measuring all the moving parts of e commerce, like what kind of tech stack do you guys use to make this happen?

11:54Freddie ChattYes.

11:55Currently we're on a WooCommerce.

11:57But I'm in the process of moving over this winter when it's all kind of quiet season. I'm moving us over to Shopify.

12:02So the tech stacks going to slightly change.

12:05But so the vast majority of my clients from the seo side have all done Shopify.

12:09So it was like I know it really well from an seo perspective. I know really well from like just a usability perspective.

12:16In the past i've always built websites on wordpress.

12:19So I knew how to Build sites on wordpress. Which is why it that's where it started and on wordpress and woocommerce.

12:25But I think it takes a lot more in terms of the maintenance to like update plugins and security stuff and hosting.

12:31And all those other things which I don't want to have to worry about I want to simplify that whole scenario.

12:38And so I can just focus on Marketing and then and selling more cricket bats, basically.

12:43So yeah, so it's going to be a Shopify.

12:45I use Klaviyo for email marketing. And we've got just over 10 000 people on our email list now and so yeah, they're pretty much like That's pretty much the two tools I use to run it on the MySpot.

13:00Crystal WaddellOkay, these follow up questions are so easy.

13:02I'm like, okay, so tell us how you built your email list to 10, 000 subscribers.

13:07Freddie ChattSo the biggest way that we've done so far is by doing giveaways.

13:12Giveaways seem to be able to sometimes can work, sometimes can't depend on what you sell.

13:16Like for us Cricket's a relatively like niche sport. So if You're not going to enter to win a giveaway to win a cricket bat if you don't play cricket. So That we know that almost everyone enters the giveaway.

13:27It's going to probably like give quite a good return on investment.

13:31So we've actually done some Facebook ads to the giveaway.

13:35And then track that and it's like we can have a positive like kind of return on investment. Through Running ads to a giveaway to then getting them to convert at some point over the cover the next couple of months.

13:46So the biggest one the biggest way so far has been through giveaways.

13:50We've also done some partner giveaways.

13:53So we've teamed up with other, a couple of other brands who don't sell competing products. So we don't sell cricket shoes, but there's some brands out there that sell cricket shoes. So we teamed up with them.

14:03They gave away like kind of five pairs of shoes.

14:05We gave away five bats and then it gives an extra incentive people to enter. So pretty much probably the, yeah, I'm trying to think probably 80, 90 percent of that email list is probably through giveaways.

14:16Crystal WaddellThat is such a unique and clever way to use giveaways. So I had done giveaways for a little bit.

14:23But it just seemed like it was taking a lot of my time and I don't think I found the right, like market fit for the giveaways.

14:30So it reminds me of when I was first trying to start my email list.

14:35It was like, I was trying to give away like credit and just, 50 percent off.

14:4190 percent off if you join my email list. It was like, nobody wants that.

14:46So I didn't know what I was doing wrong. Then I just realized I was like, you people, you have to give people like something they can use right now, like something that they're interested in.

14:55And that is just so smart that you guys did that with the bats.

14:58So that's definitely give me a whole bunch of ideas.

15:00One thing I wanted to ask you about do you blog?

15:02Freddie ChattYes. Yeah, we've got I think that's 70 posts on there at the moment.

15:06Crystal WaddellOkay when you blog on wordpress, it looks so much better.

15:10When you move to Shopify, are you going to utilize Shopify's blog? And do you have any ideas for making Shopify's blog a little more attractive?

15:19Freddie ChattI don't. No.

15:20I think there are some apps out there that can. That do make it a little bit more engaging. Or gives you the ability to add a few more interesting things in there for it. I've never have like really used them too much, but it's something that I'm going to.

15:34Explore in the, in kinda the next few months as I start to kind move the site over and move with the content over.

15:39We'll have to loop back on that one and if I find anything, I can share it.

15:43Crystal WaddellThe big one that I know about is called Page Fly.

15:45And I do have a few free pages from Page Fly, but.

15:50One bad thing iswhen you update your theme, sometimes all of your stuff can break in page fly. And then they also give you something in your theme that says, do not delete.

16:02Yeah. Don't delete that.

16:03I will also say I've made a little bit of a shift after reading your LinkedIn posts. It was a combination of you and one of our squad members, Sarah.

16:13We use surfer inside the squad to optimize things.

16:17Crystal WaddellAnd you were talking about optimizing collection pages.

16:21And we were looking at like the surfer insights and, okay, these are the pages that need to be made.

16:26And it was like, wow, this could really align with a collection page.

16:30And so we started really applying that to collection pages.

16:34So just on that note do you have any other like foundational SEO strategies for e commerce businesses that are just starting out or want to level up their website?

16:45Freddie ChattYes. I think for the vast majority of e commerce stores, brand owners, and everything like the collection pages are always going Biggest like opportunity for commercial traffic.

16:56Blogs are normally quite good for volume of traffic.

17:00But it's like a low chance that you're probably going to be used the people arriving to they're probably not going to be ready to buy.

17:05They're probably more informational searches. And not in that right mindset.

17:09Whereas collection pages I can target the relevant Kind of like keywords that people are looking for your actual product that you sell.

17:17And the I had a really good example of working with a brand a couple years ago that sold that they sell jewelry. All sorts of jewelry.

17:25But their main premise was that they were like waterproof.

17:29And they had their site was put out as pretty standard like necklaces, earrings, bracelets.

17:34Everything like that but They've done no seo essentially.

17:37So they had the collections for their products.

17:40But so they, what they had done is they mentioned on the site and the product pages that they, it was waterproof and everything like that.

17:46What they didn't do is on those particular collection pages, actually tell Google that's what this page was about.

17:54So to Google, they were looking at that page and just thinking it was necklaces.

17:57But I like add in waterproof. Into your page title. Into the category, their collection name.

18:05And into having a short description.

18:07Just doing those few things the fact that google already generally knew they were about waterproof jewelry, but not Those specifically optimized pages.

18:15And like, it was a relatively small brand from the SEO perspective.

18:19But within a month of making those changes across the few collections pages that they had. Traffic increased about 2000 visits a month just from those small changes.

18:31So I think that's like when you're getting started, just working out what your customers are searching for and making sure you've got a page that solves that specific query.

18:40And you can have a Look in google who else is ranking for that term.

18:42And see whether do you think there's an opportunity for you.

18:45If it's if there's only really high Authority competitors that are ranking you might need to try and go a bit long like longer tail like we did in that instance.

18:54We went for waterproof necklaces rather than necklaces because Trying to rank the necklaces isn't here on impossible unless you're like tiffany

19:00Crystal WaddellWow. That is such a great example. I think I remember either you talking about that in your course or on LinkedIn. So yeah, that sounded familiar.

19:09What about like trends in SEO and e commerce SEO specifically.

19:14How do you think it's changing now, like 2024 to 2025?

19:19Because little context.

19:21When I first got into SEO, I was coming in from this blogger world, like I, it was an early adopter of Jarvis before they changed their name to Jasper.

19:31And then I jumped into Surfer SEO. And so I'm getting all this amazing affiliate marketing, blogging advice, but.

19:38As I applied it to my store, I realized, Oh.

19:41Doing this to the collection pages and the product pages is going to have a lot more of an impact than just the blogs.

19:48That top of funnel traffic. What is going on right now in e commerce SEO and like, where should people focus?

19:54Freddie ChattYes. So there's two like emerging things. So I think that in general, focusing on your collection pages and stuff like that would still remain super important. And probably still the most important thing.

20:06There's two areas that are pretty fresh and new in terms of what they may impact e commerce SEO.

20:12Yeah, so the first is like google's free shopping listings.

20:17So they used to be all be free.

20:19Then they all become paid kind of google, google shopping.

20:22And now there's like a hybrid.

20:24There's still the paid but there's also a lot of free opportunities out there that are increasing. So we're seeing more organic product grids on commercial terms that appear.

20:35Not necessarily at the top of the SERP.

20:37About a few results down.

20:39There's not in much of the way of kind of documentation or insights into what you can do to optimize specifically to appear there at the moment.

20:48But it's something that I'm keeping a close eye on in terms of what like trying to do experiments and see what we can see that does impact that.

20:55Fundamentally Google, it takes from Google shopping feed. So which most people have set up for Google shopping campaigns anyway.

21:01But by just having that feed into Google Merchant Center, even if you're not running Google shopping campaigns.

21:07Like that should also pick up some a little bit of a low hanging fruit traffic potentially in there.

21:13And then over time then we should find out more about what we can do to Improve visibility around that.

21:18So that's like One of the key things specifically around ecom.

21:22And the other is the cover ever evolving ai input within google search and outside of google search.

21:29So whether the users are asking chat GPT for what's the best cricket that to buy? Or are they still going to google and things like that?

21:38So and again, this is all still very new in terms of What you can do to optimize to appear in chat GPT and google ai.

21:48But it's something that is Increasingly more visible in terms of people are getting more and more traffic from ai tools.

21:56Google's rolling out their ai to them in serps for more and more countries.

22:01So again, I don't really have much insight into what you can do. But it's more something to keep an eye on.

22:05And definitely try and keep on top of any latest kind of updates and stuff around those elements.

22:11Crystal WaddellYeah thank you for that. And one other thing I wanted to ask is randomly thrown in here, popped into my head.

22:17Could we talk about conversion rates for a secomd? And I don't want to put you on the spot, okay?

22:23So let's talk in generalities here of things you've seen.

22:28And, just in your experience working with, a variety of e commerce brands, cause you've been doing this for five years.

22:34I don't want the industry standard answer here. I want a real answer of what you've seen in terms of ecommerce conversion rates. Particularly of Shopify stores

22:48Freddie Chattin terms of what they are or what? Yes, I've seen anything from half a percent as and that was a pretty standard for this store to some stores that seem to be able to achieve seven, 8%.

23:00Like consistently.

23:02One of the things that I would say in which we had in the past when I was in house.

23:06Is we, for one year did a big push on like blog content and growing the blog. And we used it to grow the email list and things like that.

23:14So by Doing lots of like blog posts and rolling lots of those out that are more informational like that.

23:20Does appear to have been a negative impact on your conversion rate, even though it's not like that person would ever Convert in the first place.

23:27You're just attracting you almost like building visibility.

23:29So. One of the things that I try and do is look at almost the conversion rate of someone who sees a product page or something like that.

23:36They probably have a slightly more buying mindset.

23:38So it's a more. accurate representation.

23:41But yeah, in general, like I've seen conversion rates all over the place, but ours personally hovers around 1%. But yeah, and it's about 1. 8 for people that view the product page.

23:52Crystal WaddellOkay. So I love that takeaway right there. I think it's going to be so important for myself, any other e commerce store owner who's listening and has a Shopify store.

24:02To look at the conversion rate for specific pages versus your overall site.

24:08Because if you do have a lot of content, like you said, you're going to have a lot of just, random people. Like for me, I built a site all around senior night.

24:17And I want to be a resource for people who are celebrating sports senior nights, either in high school or college.

24:24So I definitely want to bring them in as they're like, what is senior night? You know what I mean? And what do you wear to senior night? All of those types of things.

24:32But I'm hoping that the same person who is wondering what they're supposed to wear to their kid's senior night or what they're supposed to do, and be responsible for on senior night.

24:41Is also the same person who is going to be shopping for a senior night gift.

24:45And so for me, it's a natural progression. But I do get a lot of people who come in for that. What is query? Versus gift for football player. Which is more of a product page or collection page.

25:00I'm definitely taking that away and definitely going to make it a point to share with the squad to really take a look at those product pages specifically.

25:08And is there a way that you do that in or in your analytics or. Is it just a manual thing?

25:13Freddie ChattSo yes, in old universal analytics. I had a segment that I could just apply.

25:18In ga4, I think I had built some Look at dashboards that use that data and just and filter it through that.

25:25But you just you can just add a filter within ga4 for basically "has viewed." That includes like forward slash products, which basically means they've seen a product page on that journey.

25:36And then that will but yeah, that will just show people that are in that bracket of people. So you can track that number over time rather than come at the overall one.

25:45Crystal WaddellNow, I'm not sure if you'll know this, but is that the same idea as creating an audience in GA4?

25:52Freddie ChattI think it's separate. It's just, okay.

25:54It's just filtering the view that you're looking at.

25:56Crystal WaddellOkay.

25:57I'm going to make that part of my follow up Friday work for this particular episode.

26:01Because that is something that I can combine with a GA4 project that I'm working on. So that is outstanding.

26:08Thank you so much for that.

26:09Because sometimes it's just there's so much data available.

26:12How do you find the data that's actually important? And going to help you grow your business? Because there's just so much to look at.

26:19Absolutely. Okay.

26:20You talked a little bit about long tail keywords.

26:23Here's my problem with e commerce. It's okay, you've got your products. And then you got your categories.

26:28And then you've got your blog posts. That hopefully will relate to your categories and your products. And they all relate to each other in some way.

26:35So it's like, how do you avoid like duplicate content. And, cannibalizing pages that are similar, But hopefully have different search intent or intended function.

26:47Freddie ChattYeah, so I actually, I use a tool called Keyword Insights to help with this. So they started off as like a keyword clustering tool.

26:55So you chucked in like the keywords and they told you which ones, in the search results Return the same result.

27:00So basically For like kind of 50 keywords, you might only need to create five pages because they all rank for the same thing.

27:06So my kind of like super quick way of Setting almost like a keyword targeting plan is to pull together a batch of keywords.

27:16So normally what I do is I've put in a seed keyword. So for me, I put in cricket bat into a keyword research tool.

27:23Set it to what they called it, like matching. Matches term. So basically it pulls out all the long tail all the keywords in their database that have the word cricket bat.

27:31So it for us it was there's like kind of sorts things called like longhand, or cricket bats, junior cricket bats. So there's lots of different terms in there. And then you can export that.

27:41Put it into keyword insights.

27:42And what they do is they classify each one by intent. So they'll tell you whether it's like kind of a collection page, product page that ranks, or if it's like more of a blog post that ranks.

27:53And then what that does is that immediately gives you an output of almost like a total list of pages you can target. You can create content for.

28:01Whether that should be on a collection page, product page or as a blog post.

28:05And then. You basically run through that list and be like, sometimes there's things that you don't sell, or it doesn't make sense, you can just remove them.

28:12But then that gives you a really good insight into all the different pages you could create. And for some brands that I've done similar work for, it's made them realize that there's actually new products that they could launch into these new categories where they don't currently service.

28:26So that's probably the best way. I know it uses a couple of tools which are paid. But you can often get free trials or Sign up for a month and get a load of data out.

28:34But that will then give you that insight into all those different kind of like kind of content opportunities whether it's from a collection perspective or cover more blog posts.

28:42Crystal WaddellOkay.

28:42Let's talk about your favorite tools to run an e-commerce site. You just mentioned the keywords one, which I already forgot, but it's good thing we have recorded.

28:51I use surfer, I have Shopify, I use tinypng.

28:56There's like a long list of different. Websites and tools and stuff that we go through and go to. So I was just curious kind of what's in your list of go to tools?

29:05Freddie ChattYeah, so my main, from the SEO side, I use Ahrefs is the main tool that I use for like key research and link link build analysis and things like that.

29:14Keyword insights. Takes that data and makes it like a lot more usable for me and for clients. So they're like the two tools I use mostly from kinda like the, on the SEO side.

29:24And then I think I mentioned earlier, I'm moving to Shopify, so I'm excited to, to play around with all the different apps and stuff that I can find in there.

29:32And then, yeah, as I mentioned, Klaviyo or all my emails.

29:35Crystal WaddellOkay, so what about product page optimization?

29:39What makes a product page SEO friendly? And how can you make it drive both traffic and conversions?

29:48Freddie ChattYes. So in, in some cases your product pages, don't, won't drive that much traffic.

29:54And it's more collection pages focus on. But oftentimes if you get, really specific like product types within your products.

30:01I work with a lighting brand at the moment, so they sell like wall lights.

30:05But then they've got really specific within that collection.

30:08They've got wall light and stuff like that. But they've only got one product.

30:11So it makes sense to optimize the product page rather than a collection page that only has one product.

30:16So in terms of kind of optimizing product pages, it's generally the essentials that you like would probably perceived to have on there.

30:23Like a decent description like a longer form description is always, there's always more helpful.

30:29Like a great product imagery is from a conversion perspective is fantastic, but also great for SEO.

30:34Making sure the keyword that you're targeting is in the page title.

30:37If you can get the keyword that you're trying to target in the product name.

30:41It's like some people, it aligns quite well that the keywords they target are the product names.

30:46Some people like to call their products more unique things. So it's slightly harder.

30:50So yeah, so they're the main things to get on that, that, that product page.

30:54And then making sure like you'll have links from the collection pages that they're in, but also trying to get internal links through from blog posts that you write.

31:03And various things like that into these pages will only help them even more to rank.

31:08Crystal WaddellIs there a rule of a minimum or maximum number of products that should be in a collection?

31:14Freddie ChattSo I there isn't I don't think google's ever said anything from their side.

31:18i've I worked with like kind of collection pages category pages that have got 2 000 products in.

31:25We had created lots of sub collections beneath that.

31:27But yeah, and that and they rank really well, so there's no detrimental effect like effect that way.

31:33In terms of kind of the lower end, like I generally normally think three is probably the absolute lowest, but you probably want probably five or more.

31:40Again, it probably depends slightly on what you're selling, whether it makes sense that you have should have more or get away with less.

31:47Crystal WaddellAnd then what about link building because you said content and links, you know. That's just like the game of seo.

31:53Like what ideas? Can you give us to build links for our e commerce stores?

31:59Freddie ChattYeah, so there's a couple of Ideas that I use for a lot of brands that I work with.

32:03One of them is like product led link building through gift guides.

32:07So Like almost every major publication out there, it's like kind of creates gift guides every year for different occasions for different topics and everything like that.

32:17And getting into these some of them whilst they, they focus a lot on affiliates themselves.

32:23But there's still a lot of opportunity for brands to, to get involved. So the process that I run through with clients to, to do this is look back at who wrote gift guides In the last year.

32:36And then basically reach out to the people who wrote them and be like saw you wrote one gift guide last year.

32:42Are you gonna update it for this year? We'd love to like potentially get involved.

32:47Like if you can offer to send them like a product sample.

32:49Or a free kind of like product so they can have a check it out.

32:52Then you can end up getting some really good high quality links, from that way.

32:57In the past i've done this and got in like refinery 29 vogue in australia.

33:02And like a whole kind of batch of really high places that I would never have like possibly thought was was possible.

33:09But yeah, so that's one of my favorite tactics for people that If you sell something that's quite giftable. Getting in those sorts of gift guides at the various times in the year.

33:18I think I did a , blog post or linkedin post on this recently.

33:22And I checked back in ahrefs in their content explorer and there was over 19 000 gift guides written in their kind of like specific database like across the last Last 12 months.

33:33So there's a lot of opportunities out there for some are really specific in niches like that.

33:36We like have star wars toys and things like that.

33:40So it's like quite not everyone can then reach out to that person.

33:43But there's lots of really relevant ones that you can find and that feature similar products to what you sell.

33:47Crystal WaddellI guess just a couple more questions, because I thought voice search was going to die.

33:53And it seems like voice and Large language models are merging in a way.

33:58And how they do that So do you have any ideas for optimizing for voice search?

34:03Freddie ChattYeah, like I agree that like it seemed to die. And I feel like it's now linked back into the ai side, like you say.

34:11i'd say carry on doing the general things that you do to try and rank in Google and another search engine.

34:17I think like I worked out earlier this summer when I was playing around with if I could get my brand to appear in Chat GPT and stuff like that.

34:24And at the time, basically if you search for What the best, so we sell affordable cricket bats. So it was like, what's the best budget cricket bat.

34:31And you could see it. All it did was go to Bing's look, look at the top few results. And then basically bring it gets its results from that.

34:39It almost implies that you should people should potentially pay more attention to Bing in terms of Your rankings there.

34:46And it's what you could do to optimize into chat gpt that way but like I say like they seem to change things all the time and things are moving so fast It's hard to keep up in terms of how exactly it all works.

34:58Crystal WaddellWow.

34:59Now that's a nugget right there because most of the time it's all about Google and what it would look like to try to optimize specifically for Bing.

35:07But that is super. Insightful.

35:10So what about you? You said you guys have seasonality. So how do you handle seasonality as a business?

35:16Because I have multiple seasons, so I'm like, I don't really do big Christmas, but I do big football and big soccer.

35:23And then big baseball and big basketball or whatever. But if you just have one or two months, like, how do you manage that? As a business owner?

35:32From your website to your budget.

35:35Freddie ChattYeah. So it is pretty tricky. Like we with our products inventory, where we basically place an order at the end of the season. Ready for next season.

35:44So in terms of cash flow, it works. Okay. So that we get all our cash in through the sales over the summer.

35:50And then at the end of the summer, we put that money into the stock for the next season.

35:54So then basically we don't, I don't, we don't spend too much on ads anyway, but all our ads get turned off over the winter when no one's playing.

36:01We're currently running a warehouse sale to try and like clear through some excess stock. We'll do like Black Friday sales. So we'll do almost like do slightly more promotions outside of season.

36:10And like some things, even though it's out of season, like there is still some giftable elements around like the holidays and Christmas and stuff like that.

36:18There's a few things like that we do after at the end of the season. And then from january it's like slowly starts ramping up through the year.

36:26We just slowly start ramping up activity. We spend a lot of the winter time almost like trying to improve the site ready for next year.

36:33Or like just cleaning things up that we haven't got round to, 'cause it's been so busy over the over the peak period.

36:39Crystal WaddellMan, I could talk to you all day because everything you say just leads me to more questions and thoughts.

36:45And it's interesting talking to someone who deals in e commerce. Because even though I manufacture My own product, I'm like, I should do exactly what you're doing.

36:55At the end of April, that's when we should invest it into next year's stock. Based on the previous year's numbers.

37:02And we could go ahead and get a lot of that cut and paid for, at that time.

37:07And then, that just, I don't know, from a management perspective, it just really streamlines it, versus just trying to. Catch up and stay caught up throughout the year. I'm like, Oh my gosh, how could I have thought about that before?

37:19Okay. Last question, because I have a thousand more. I'm looking away because I have more on my list.

37:25But if I let you leave without talking about UX and SEO alignment.

37:30I would do a disservice to myself and our audience. So how do you think that user experience impacts SEO?

37:38And what kind of best practices do you recommend to align those two things?

37:43Freddie ChattYeah, absolutely. So like I think it's super important.

37:47People don't realize how much bad ux can negatively affect or like hold you back.

37:52I think like within ecom SEO, particularly trying to optimize for SEO, people go too far in certain directions.

38:00So like the general premise of more words on the page means better rankings and things like that.

38:07On particularly collection pages, people would then put like a thousand word block of text at the bottom of the page. Underneath the product grid and hope that helps.

38:14And the thing is in the past it's worked to some degree of the time but from a user experience if they ever find that they're probably just Like thinking what is this?

38:23This is just so weird.

38:25Crystal WaddellThat's totally CVS.

38:26Freddie ChattWayfair used to do it, but they do it. They do a bit clever now as well. And yeah, so it's like it worked but there's things you can do to You can still have that thousand word of text and I found a site recently that Do it quite nicely in the sense that underneath the product grid.

38:40They've got like a layout of image one side text the other side. And then it like rotates and so it just allows them to add some more content to that page.

38:48That is helpful content like it answers questions around what people might be searching for around the products they sell.

38:55So It's a way to get it that looks a bit nicer. That doesn't make users confused and bounce around. And wonder where they're going.

39:02So I like that's like just one specific example.

39:05Doesn't matter if you've got the traffic and they get lost and get confused.

39:09Crystal WaddellYou have to follow freddy on linkedin because he drops these Just Little tips like almost every day.

39:16But you could just go back and make a class like slash course for yourself out of his LinkedIn post.

39:23Because he's like, Oh, do this and like your life's going to improve 100 times.

39:28It really is true. He doesn't say that, but that's what it feels like.

39:31Freddie, tell people how they can find you and like how they can work with you and make sure that you tell us about your course.

39:37Because I'll drop a link to that in the show notes.

39:39Freddie ChattYeah, beautiful.

39:40So yes, I mainly hang out on LinkedIn. Just search Freddy Chatt.

39:43I think I'm the only Freddie Chatt on there or something. So it should be quite easy to find. Hopefully. Other than that, you can sign up to my email list freddy chat.

39:51com. And there's a free e commerce SEO checklist who sign up from the homepage as well. So that'd be useful.

39:57And then, yes, I've got a really affordable. It's only 150. Ecom course which basically guides you through the process to from zero to ten thousand pounds or ten thousand dollars a month.

40:09From seo for your store and everything that I did for my store to get it to that point.

40:15And yeah, so that's at the e commerce seo boot camp So just google that and it should be near the top

40:21Crystal WaddellAnd of course I'll make it simple for him.

40:23I'll put the links in the show notes. So hopefully that will all go well. But Freddie, Oh my gosh, we've got to do this again at some point. Maybe in 2025.

40:31It's been a pleasure to just, learn from you for so many months. And then now get to meet you virtually. So thank you so much for coming on the show.

40:40Freddie ChattThat's right. Thank you so much for having me. It's been great to finally get here.

40:43Crystal WaddellAwesome. All right guys, I will catch you next time and thanks for joining us.

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