There was once a time when Google peered through rose-coloured glasses. Everything out there on the web seemed just awesome. Google would just love every word and every link that could be found online. The colour of these glasses has changed, unfortunately, from rose to black. Google now has an eager eye for quality content. That is why we explained in our first round of SEO tips why the wording of the content is very important for SEO (Search Engine Optimization): it helps make your Spreadshirt shop get visible for Google and other engines. Of course, these are designed to help people enter keywords to find what they are looking for. And in your case this means finding what you offer in your shop. This is why SEO is important for any online business.
In the first part, our SEO team has explained how you can improve your shop directly by implementing some content changes – name, meta-data, text, URL, associating shop content with search engines. Today, we will explore what external factors will contribute to the shop’s higher ranking on search engine results pages (also known as SERPs).
Links are important, but why?
Search engines judge the quality and credibility of a website by links set up on other sites, and it counts as a positive vote for your site when other sites (which already meet the criteria) link to your website. So remember: the more links you get from external sites – provided they are considered to be good quality – the better the reputation of the website for search engines. And better reputation means better placement. But getting links is a tricky business, and you should be careful to get the right links. Here’s what you need to know:
1. Building topic-related links
If the shop is specialised in cartoon t-shirts, try to find websites with content that suits you. In your case it wouldn’t be wise to accept links from sites that specialise in let’s say cars, stock trading or politics. Look for links that seems a natural fit for your area. It would be nice, for example, to get a link from a blogger writing about comics, cartoons or clothing.
2. Success calculations
You can get links from good quality and poor quality websites. Do not ever accept links from these sites:
– So-called “link farms” or repertoire sides; websites specializing in listing a large number of sites and link to them
– Forums: a few links are acceptable, but do not let it look like you’ve tried spamming hundreds of forum threads with links.
You should prefer links coming from blogs and websites with quality content such as news sites or specialised online shops.
In addition, you should check out the sites’ success in terms of their location. Criteria for a site can be determined by using indicators such as PageRank, number of domains linking to websites, website age, whether the content is updated regularly, etc. You should also prefer links from sites from the same country as yours. You can check the success metrics with sites like Open Site Explorer or Page Rank Checker. You should avoid the ones with no page rank (or 0) or a number of linking root domains close to 0. The mantra here should be “the more, the better”.
3. Anchor text
Google gets suspicious if all connections use the same anchor text. For example, if the shop is named “Jenny’s Shirts” and you specialise in kids’ T-shirts, avoid calling all links: kids T-shirts. Try to create variations for the anchor text. “Jenny’s T-shirts”, “Find children’s tees here”, “Kids’ T-Shirts Betty”, etc. It would still be fine, to just use your own name, though.
4. Link placement
Repeated links are an absolute no-go. This would, for example, be the case if a link in a web footer appears on every page of your site. Google doesn’t like this at all, so get rid of links like this (if you need them). Another no-go example would be links in the side bars or main menus. A link must be included in a natural context. This is why the best links to get are those from news articles or blog posts.
5. Be creative!
Having said that the best links come from blog articles, it does not mean you should just pay a blogger to talk about you in his next post. In fact, Google is very strict about paid links: should they get suspicious about links that look like they are sponsored, they can downgrade your website ranking to a degree that it will be buried somewhere in the no man’s land of the wilderness of the World Wide Web.
Just be creative so that people will link to you. Of course it will not do any harm to ask a friend to connect to your site. Be funny, invent exciting content or criticise Apple to be heard! And if someone writes about you, you can also ask them to add a link to you in their post.
This is it! We hope you found this advice useful. And we are excited to see how creative you got in terms of promoting your shop!
You can already look forward to our third and final part of our SEO tips trilogy, so watch out for your next newsletter and check out the blog from time to time!
SEOly yours!
Spreadshirt SEO team
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