One of the most common ecommerce SEO services is hands-on coaching and consulting programs. Ecommerce SEO coaching and consulting programs are popular among smaller ecommerce sites (e.g. local retailers and boutiques) that do not have large marketing budgets and multiple chains in command. For these reasons, small ecommerce brands are more apt to embrace coaching and education over a full-fledged ecommerce SEO service program.
If you’re an ecommerce SEO service provider or SEO consultant, you should leave the door open for more affordable SEO programs of the like. That is, if you’re willing to create a system that’s easy to re-purpose across numerous SEO coaching clients, then you can generate a solid revenue stream that’s not to difficult to sustain.
To help you on that path of creating a system for ecommerce SEO coaching, below are three ways to embrace educating your clients and giving them the lessons and tools they need to thrive with their own SEO practice.
Start With The Basics of Ecommerce SEO
The first component of any SEO coaching program is teaching your students that basics of SEO. One of the best ways to start is assign some quality reading material that will help lay the foundation to a good education. We suggestion the Beginners Guide to SEO from Moz.com. This extensive read provides up-to-date and professional guidance on SEO best practice and how Google functions to rank websites.
After your students have absorbed some good foundational reading material, start teaching them the basics of on-page SEO and all of the common elements and HTML tags that should be keyword relevant, or optimized. When it comes to ecommerce SEO, the on-page component can be very in-depth. For this reason, we suggest setting up a test site for practice.
Practice With a Test Site
Ecommerce SEO coaching should involve a lot of hands-on experience so that students will better grasp the concepts and learn how to perform on-page SEO. Setting-up a test site is a great way to give a students risk-free reign how to execute proper SEO functions, in addition to SEO copywriting and content development.
An ecommerce test site can be established with dedicated sections for specific lessons. Rather, certain sections of the ecommerce site may be left blank for students to populate and optimize. For example, leave the footer completely blank and either teach students what elements should be used to populate footer links, as well as what those links should comprise of.
For advanced SEO coaching, let them try to figure it out. Are they linking to core “money” pages of the website with SEO? Are they linking to a Sitemap? What anchor text are they using? These are questions that can help make an ecommerce SEO coaching program successful.
You can take this concept across multiple components of on-page ecommerce SEO. Whether via navigation structure, internal linking, URL naming, or basic keyword optimization of titles, metas, and copy – the blank canvas approach can yield great outcomes for students learning SEO.
Don’t Forget Link Generation
One of the most important component of ecommerce SEO that often gets overlooked in most SEO coaching programs is off-site link generation. Perhaps it’s because some of the most adept SEO specialists struggle with link generation, but neglecting this component won’t get your site very far in the rankings.
Educate your students on the importance of building natural (looking,) relevant, and balanced links from other websites. When we say balanced, we mean using a blend of anchor text, as well as types of links (e.g. in-copy links, side column links, image links, etc.) You should also offers some ideas as to where they can find good link opportunities and how they can go about researching for link-worthy websites.
This is a sensitive topic in the SEO profession, and many experts have their own unique approach to link generation. Just use some of the basic principals, and stress the importance of investing time and effort in earning or building good links.
For more information on ecommerce SEO services, coaching programs, or auditing, visit www.ClickCentricSEO.com, a premier ecommerce SEO company that offers a wide range of solutions in ecommerce SEO and digital marketing.