Zappos Secret SEO Sauce For Branded Pages
This isn’t a new topic here at Get Elastic, but since search engine optimization is such a key part to ecommerce success I’m going to bang the same drum once again on optimizing for brand names.
Zappos appears to have covered all the bases and then some in optimizing its brand category pages. For example, its Nine West page (below) includes 272 occurrences of “Nine West” on this page - that’s 4.55% of the entire page copy. This is what is referred to as “keyword density.” Though keyword density is not as important to SEO as was once thought (title tag, keyword rich backlinks from other sites and the domain’s overall authority have more impact), this page certainly is considered highly relevant to “Nine West” by Google.
Like Karmaloop, Zappos includes a paragraph about the brand itself. Most ecommerce sites have category / brand pages that consist of little more than images, links and a page title.
Also included at the category level are customer reviews. Each product with a review appears on the same page. Though the links to the product pages are “nofollowed” (link includes an HTML attribute telling search engines not to crawl the linked page or pass Page Rank), the keywords count towards the overall relevance to the page.
Get you’re scrolling finger ready, you’ll need it.
Believe it or not, I cut out some of the shoe styles with reviews, the page just went on and on. You can see the current version of Zappos’ Nine West page (just to throw them a little extra link love, as if they need it).
The usability of this design is questionable - I imagine some will appreciate scrolling through different styles with ratings previews and others will absolutely hate it. I’m not a huge fan of Zappos’ web design, anyway. The Canadian version is even uglier.
*Note: Kyle, one of our readers, tipped us off to a Zappos redesign currently in Zeta.
SEO Results
Zappos ranks #3 in between some of Nine West’s own domains. This is significant because search engines can recognize brand names’ official pages and consider them “vital” results. To outrank vital results takes skill. Sure, this is just one page, but run a few brand or product searches in Google and you’ll find Zappos in the top 3 most of the time.
Even at position 3, Zappos may be enjoying better click through than other results because its title tag includes a compelling call to action - “Free Shipping Both Ways.”
What do you think about this strategy? Is it keyword-spammy? Is it ugly? Brilliant? Talk to us.
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I’d have to lean towards this coming off a little too spammy for my taste.
I guess you can’t argue with the results, but to me, when its obvious that you’re only including content for the benefit of search engines and not end users then I loose interest.
I know this article is about SEO and not design, but man Zappos has a terrible interface and has to be one of the most unusable “successful” sites online today.
I agree with you about usability–the page is too long. But those user reviews provide great supporting content, content that I would argue is beneficial for users. The call to action in the SERP title is effective. I’m not seeing any spam here, just good search-centric design. If the usability were improved, we’d have a big winner here.
I’m no SEO expert by any means, but if it works, go for it, right? I love Zappos for many reasons. They do SO much right. However, from an email marketing perspective, they don’t seem be up to snuff.
Kimberly Snyder and I are gearing up for another (bigger, better, cooler) live version of BrontoFire - http://blog.bronto.com/category/brontofire/ on email subscription landing pages. Be on the lookout sometime in early May.
However, to whet your appetite…suffice to say, it was *very* difficult to even find the email subscribe link/button on their site…and 5 days since I first registered, I still don’t have the ever-so-critical “Welcome Message.”
Stay tuned for more details on BrontoFire.
dj at bronto
(Linda - how about an entire “series” of posts on Zappos? Kinda evaluate their entire online/offline marketing)? Just a thought.
@Sam - I agree the content is definitely beneficial - no doubt about it. Scrolling won’t bother everyone either, design is so subjective you can’t please everyone all the time. There is also not important content below the reviews, so it’s not obstructing any functionality of the site. If you don’t want to scroll, hey that’s fine.
It does appear though that the redesign http://zeta.zappos.com (design preview) removes the long string of reviews. A result of user testing? Is the design project incomplete? Will SEO benefits go down without them?
@ DJ
Your upcoming report sounds interesting! There is much that can be said about Zappos’ tactics, if you’re interested Marketing Sherpa has some articles on their strategies (Membership Required)
https://www.marketingsherpa.com/barrier.html?ident=30070
Worth mentioning are the indexed pages with internal links pointing to the Nine West brand page, with “Nine West” as the anchor text. Yahoo returns Zappos as #3 for “nine west” and report 182 internal links indexed. Google is not showing much if anything in that regard.
Yeah, Google’s link command will only show you a sampling of what links it knows about and counts. Yahoo’s more comprehensive.
I always wondered if they were every going to improve their site from a coding, usability, and design perspective. The current site is ugly, cluttered and pretty crappy HTML.
I have to say I am pretty impressed with the new design and code. As a front end developer I am pretty impressed. Everything is nice and semantic and clean.
Sorry to be off topic.
Not off topic, totally on topic :)
Sure the usability of the page stinks because their are so many reviews, but the bottom line is they work. They work for search engines in helping you rank. They help in getting more customers to convert. Take a look at what Amazon does with reviews. Very helpful for search engines and users alike.
Zappos’ new design does look well conceived. It looks like they’re giving more emphasis to email marketing too, with a “notify me” feature. Or did they have that before and I didn’t notice?
they have actually had the “notify me” feature for a while. They didnt seem to be up to speed on some other things, but as you can clearly see, they are on the wagon now. :)
The reviews of each shoe is what the customers are actually looking for. Yes, the use of “Nine West” is pretty excessive and looks ‘ugly’ to people who have SEO-eyes but to a regular pageviewer, the attention is on the review and the viewer doesn’t even notice “Nine West” written everywhere. That’s pretty shady SEO