Aaron Orendorff - Getting things that matter RIGHT

Intro: Perhaps the most memorable encounter I’ve had with anyone every single time I dug into it, what I’ve found is it’s not the highest domain authority that wins. It’s not the most links. It’s not the oldest or the most prestigious. It’s whoever has the least amount of long-form quality content that isn’t confusing Google. They win in the end. Welcome to the own, your commerce podcast. We’re leading experts, friends and innovators from deals, strategies for e-commerce growth. I’m your host, Jay Myers. And this show is brought to you by bold commerce. 

Jay: Hey everyone, just a quick reminder, bold is a proud sponsor this year of sub summit. It’s the largest conference for subscription e-commerce brands. So if you’re a subscription brand, make sure you attend. There’s going to be a ton of good learnings. Just head to sub-summit.com and find out. Also everyone’s getting ready for black Friday for the holidays. And every year people forget to set up their sales ahead of time. So I just want to do a special call-out. If you don’t have a proper sales or bundling or an upsell app, now’s the time to do it. Bold does have a lot of these apps. So make sure you check out either bold discounts, bold bundles pulled up, sell bold quantity breaks. A lot of these apps are crucial during holiday seasons when you’re running sales and promotions. So just make sure you get them installed early. And actually, we’re going to talk about that a little bit on this episode. So here we go.

 Welcome to another exciting episode of own your commerce. I’m so excited about the guest we have today. Aaron Orendorff is the former editor in chief at Shopify plus this guy knows e-commerce and he knows content, and he knows how it all works together. The reason we’re rushing this episode out is because well, Amazon announced prime day is October 13th and right off the bat, Aaron dropped some knowledge bombs and some real tactical advice on what you need to do as an e-commerce store while Amazon is having its prime day little tip, it’s not just going to affect and be for Amazon. It’s going to affect all e-commerce stores. So make sure you pay attention to that. So you can be ready.

   Also Not all emails are equal. That’s one of the things that Aaron touched on this as well, depending on when you capture them, actually makes a big difference. So make sure you pay attention to that. And are you using quiz funnels in your store? If not, you probably should be. And we’ll dive into why and how easy it is to set them up what they are. Make sure you pay attention to that part as well too Man Aaron dropped a lot of knowledge bombs on this one. He also touched on the three key reasons why you need to invest in content as an e-commerce brand. Lastly, never kill your support articles. There’s a good chance they might be one of your highest-ranking pages for search. There is a better way to handle outdated articles, man we covered a lot on this. You’re going to love this episode. Let’s go

Aaron: A little bit more let’s go with a lot more set, incredibly high. 

Jay: The bar has been set. 

Aaron: which is the opposite of what we’re supposed to do it’s supposed to be low, lower the bar. So I probably should have said, no, this is not going to be tactical practical. You’re going to own less of your commerce by the time you’re done listening to this. And then if they all know a little bit more we’re golden,

Jay: Man. I love it. You know why I love it because actually I just had Tommy Walker actually on the show. 

Aaron: (03:24inaudible)  

Jay: No, it hasn’t aired yet, but I was just, so now actually I’m going to make it a personal goal of mine to have every former editor in chief at Shopify plus on the podcast.

Aaron: Do me a favor put his out after mine because he’s probably more creative. 

Jay: Well, I was going to say, speaking of setting the bar, so let’s, depending on, on who drops more knowledge bombs, that’ll determine which episode gets aired first so. 

Aaron: I’ll look out for that. 

Jay: Tommy, the gauntlet has been dropped, buddy. Well, why don’t we start right off from the top? Let’s start with if someone only listens to the first five minutes of this podcast, which would be a crying shame, but if they only listened to the first five minutes, is there anything you can give as a couple drops right off the bat that a merchant can apply and take away within a couple of minutes here,

Aaron: Depending on when this airs, we maybe before, during, or after October 13th. And the important thing about that date is that the delayed date, the new day that Amazon prime day is going to hit. Google research indicates that something around 45% of respondents to one of their surveys said, they’re going to begin using prime day to shop for gifts. So if anything, that is the date. That’s the official unofficial start date of holiday online shopping. So if you only listen to the first five minutes, Mark that date on your calendar and above anything else in this episode, as it relates to content and commerce nailed down your on-site email capture at least two levels, one a straight discount with a welcome series that follows into a preview of what your, your black Friday cyber Monday, early holiday gift, giving guides, whatever that’s going to look like, load up a second on-site capture to capture that and then begin building out those two welcome sequences. 

  So you can turn one on during October one on early-ish, mid-November, and then also set up a single, at least one robust 30 ish day post-purchase email sequence. That includes those initial review requests delayed based on when people will start using your product and then an aggressive mid holiday gift-giving and post-holiday New Year post-purchase sequence to follow it up. The costs of advertising are never going to be greater than they will be this holiday season. I mean, they might go up next season, but with everything that’s gone down this year, it’s this perfect storm of new holiday, online shoppers and a lot of enterprise retailers that have been holding off polling back, spend all through the year. And the way budgets work is they are going to dump those advertising dollars into Omni channel meaning, especially in the digital spaces. And to try to compete, head to head with those sorts of spends is going to be murderous. Get your email content on lock.

Jay: Man, you nailed it I’ll make sure this gets out before October 13th, because I could not agree more. I mean, Amazon prime what’s always been like in the spring. When was it before June or something? Yes.

Aaron: It’s always like Midsummer, I think, or early yea early summer mid.

Jay: And so like An even take Amazon prime day out of the picture, like there are so many questions about what black Friday is going to be like this year with, I don’t think the days of, camping outside of best buys and stampeding into stores, like that’s over, that’s done. Like I don’t even, I think I heard Wal-Mart and target and some stores or even physical locations are going to be closed right on. 

Aaron: Yeah they have all those and more to come. I’m sure. Announcing they’re closed on Thanksgiving possibly, thinned out crowds on Black Friday and they’re all just going to be trying to push that back and forward into the weeks preceding and postceeding if that’s a word. And then that just means those too those folks that got to make their money somehow. And they know it’s going to then be full rush on digital.

Jay: Yeah. And the ones that are open, some of them are talking about doing a lottery system to get in. So you can’t have people lining up and rushing in, so you’ll, it’ll be a draw if you can shop at the physical best buy location. Yeah. It’s going to be interesting. I think normally like we are at bold, like, because we have a few products that help merchants with black Friday, we feel, I can tell you, it’s not until usually early November that we start getting like, Hey, I got to set up my sales. I got to get my set of sales set up now like with one of our apps. And so like merchants don’t usually think about black Friday. Now you’re saying, get prepared for October 13th. 

 Even if you don’t have sales active, make sure that if they’re on your site, that they know that there’s something there. Because they’ve got X amount to spend and they can go give that money to Amazon or they can, oh, you know what? ABC site over here has a sale. They’ve announced it. If I get on their list, I’m going to get exclusive access to that. I think that the whole concept of collecting emails around black Friday is like, that’s the gold that most people miss out on. It’s not even about how much extra money you make. It’s, you’re getting a whole new series of customers shopping your store that have probably never shopped with you before. It’s like, it’s really customer acquisition. So you’ve got to look at it that way. So I could not agree with you more

Aaron: Really interesting things. We, we passed the five minute mark, but one of the really interesting things about getting to work for common thread collective is we’re also majority owners of four by 400, which is now a collection of five, possibly six, very soon D to C e-commerce brands, that Andrew Ferris runs essentially in house. So we get all of the data, not just from our clients, but from them. And in a lot of times can go full kimono and what we see across the board and they do a lot of different verticals. They’ve got everything from like dirt bike and ATV wash to jewelry and bracelets, wallets, and men’s accessories. Like they just, they’ve got a variety of different types of products, all operating under different brands. And what we saw is right, the value of an email address is exponentially more the earlier you get it during Q4 in the holidays. 

  So prioritizing that now, just that aggressive capture on the front side. Even if like, say something with advertising now it’s less expensive. If you’re able to purchase more traffic, more visitors, that’s great for retargeting, but at the same time, those visitors getting their email addresses, even if it’s at an initial loss and you can afford that on the advertising front, knowing that it’s going to pay off very soon.

Jay: Yeah. Because I think you need to look at what you’re gathering that email with, maybe a bit of a loss on the sale. Like that’s customer acquisition costs and people don’t bat an eye when it’s, when they’re spending $40 or $50 to acquire a customer through an Instagram ad or Google or some form of paid advertising. But they think it’s so bad if they have to, discount with, through an email to collect that email, but like its customer acquisition costs. And if you have a good understanding of what the lifetime value is of your customers and you know those metrics that you can play with those numbers and you can do some really neat things to acquire those customers. 

  And I think you’re bang on because I think I’m thinking of myself when I shop and when I’m shopping, like right on black Friday, I will enter my email address to get the 10% off coupon, but I might not be a super committed customer. But if someone’s, entering an email address in October, they are thinking about that store. There’s a product they want. They’ve probably been on it. Their friend has that product. They’ve researched it. That’s a really valuable customer. So, you’re right guy. I had never thought about that. That the value difference between emails collected now versus like the day of Black Friday, where people just want the 10% coupon and they enter their spam email address that they just use for coupons or so, not that I have those, I’ve heard people have them

Aaron: Quiz funnels, man quiz. Let’s push that back into the first five minutes. Somehow let’s reverse it. Quiz funnels octane AI’s new quiz builder with landing pages is it could be a game-changer for a lot of folks we’d done this in-house with bamboo earth, one of the four by 400 brands as a skincare, a predominantly female natural skincare product. And they built that with good tight form that they just plugged into. Klayvio sync that with their product catalog and those quiz funnels, people love quizzes. It’s. I don’t know what the half-life on that is, but for now people thank you Buzz Feed love taking quizzes and it’s a great, like you can even pregame and some of the advertisements of the quiz and exactly what it looks like. And that’s seductive. It’s people love clicking and doing that sort of thing. And then you get more information on the front end, even if you’re not selling something. Initially,

Jay: Man, I, you know what, I love the guys octane AI are great partners of ours, definitely check out their new quiz tool that they launched. And even if you don’t use a quiz tool, we’ve seen stores do it, like you just mentioned with simple forms. And, we just actually saw brand do this with our subscriptions. They all they did. They sell like dog and cat and, and pet treats like gummies that they chew on and they had a big mega menu and you would hover over it. And it would be dogs, cats, chewy toys or toys for healthy teeth or whatever. And you, you literally had to pick from all these items. And it was just confusing as a customer. You didn’t know where to go. 

Then they put on the homepage, they still have the menu, but right in the main hero banner, there’s just a dropdown. It says I have a, and its dog or cat and you pick dog or cat. He has trouble with chewing. He’s too active. And he likes rips up the carpet or the couch, or he has bad teeth or whatever you select a couple of things. And then all it did at the end was it linked to a collection, of, of a preexisting collection that the customer could have got to by select the menu. But I feel like that’s the product I need. And I don’t know if this is true. I don’t have any data for this, but I can tell you anecdotally when I do one of those quizzes, I’m way more likely to buy, because I feel like I’m invested. Like there’s, this old adage that less clicks is better. How many clicks can you reduce?

But I think there’s something that quiz adds clicks, but it gets you down a funnel and you’re, I don’t know. There’s something about it. 

Aaron: This is what I love. Okay. 

Jay: Okay. I just have to interrupt you for a second because what Aaron’s about to say is really important. Shoppable quizzes work, and right now they’re working excellent. They might not in two years, we don’t know, but right now, taking your customer down a funnel where they answer questions and get a personalized product recommendation is killer two great stores doing this are Kong box.com and Hey, globe.com. They’re both using it with Bold subscriptions and it’s made a huge impact on their conversion rates. Check, both them out. Okay. Back to the episode

Aaron: So, Coleman is the brand manager at bamboo earth. And the very first time I went through this, like months ago, Bambu earth skin quiz funnel. The first time I went through it, I remember messaging him. I’m like, dude, there’s a bunch of extra clicks in here. There’s like, this is like a 26 screen quiz. Some of these are just like filler. Like, man, you could really tighten this and get more conversions. And he came right back to me with like, no man, we test it. 

Jay: Yeah.

Aaron: The more clicks we add, the more screens we add the higher. And there’s like a breaking point at that. But it’s just wild. The kind of things that you discover that are counter-intuitive to that. And for somebody like Bambu earth, where again, yea very similar. They’ve got a bunch of different mini kits. They’ve got a bunch of different products. They’ve got these full kits and getting somebody’s information during that skin quiz, a lift for customer acquisition is huge. And then it creates a really natural segue from like mini-kits or individual products, right into higher price point items like the full kit or ongoing subscriptions, which they also offer.

Jay: Yeah. And I think it’s important to know, like not all clicks are equal and there are definitely clicks that would reduce conversion, but clicks through a funnel quiz like that. That’s an investment into the brand and that’s psychologically you feeling with each click that this brand knows me better. Every time I click, if I’m clicking around Amazon and I have to spend 12 clicks to find a product, I don’t think Amazon knows me any better. I’m just its just annoying to try to find it. But if I’m going through one of those and actually octane, I just, I know they’re always posting different stores that did it. One of the recent ones, I think it was like 19% of people that went through the quiz. It was like 19% of people bought something, which is insane. So I’ll put a couple of good examples of that in the show notes of stores that are leveraging quizzes. And maybe if you have some, I’ll get you to email me over because I think that is a definitely a tool that is under-utilized.

Aaron: Absolutely. I’ll send you the, we’ve done a couple of write-ups on bamboo earth and we’ve also got a client who I can’t show as much data on, but love wellness has a fantastic quiz as well. I’ll, I’ll hit you with the visuals on those.

Jay: Okay. So if a listener got to the 15-minute mark, anything else, anything else you want to make sure they take away? Cause I do have some questions loaded up here that I want to get to, but I, I feel like you have the, like, these are two random knowledge bombs that I wouldn’t have even thought about, but they’re amazing.

Aaron: Oh, the last thing, and I swear, Jay did not engage me, to do this is back in my Shopify plus days I wrote what felt to be a throwaway article on gift wrapping. And that’s when I discovered what bold commerce offers. And so one I’m like praying and cross my fingers that that’s still an add on that. People can use that, Oh man, that sort of thing this year, where more and more are buying those gifts online because they can’t go to the store. Oh, write that down. Absolutely that’s a big one. 

  And then also having a backup so that’s big, it’s just such a, it’s an, it’s an extra lifts if you charge for it, it personalizes it. So it’s more memorable for the person sending it. They feel better about it than they do about just sending a Brown box. It’s better for the experience of the person that’s receiving it. And right on top of all that, looking out for ways to create those digital experiences that are thoroughly branded for delays in shipping that I also expect are coming, whether that’s gift cards or even just a mini three-part email sequence that both the giver and the receiver can both, have as a fallback so that it arrives and it’s fun. And it’s got music, all those kinds of things just to keep the experience strong, knowing that shipping’s going to be a real fight as well.

Jay: That is a great tip and now I’m Just mentally thinking. Yeah. I got to make sure our marketing team is letting our merchants. We’ve written so many blogs over the year about like different, you can do it in so many different ways. It can be a free thing that gets added when they spend a certain amount. You can add it as an option on products. You can do it as kind of like an upsell thing. When they’re clicking checkout, its like, would you like to add gift wrapping? The thing that I would say that’s the most important, however you choose to do it is don’t wait until the end to let the customer know that gift wrapping is an option. Have it right in their face at the beginning, because it puts that shopper in the mindset that they’re shopping for a gift.

  So like I might be shopping, because I want a new hiking watch And if on their homepage, it’s like, order between now and October 30th and we’re including free gift wrapping, like, Oh yea I might want to get something for a friend, but like, I hadn’t thought about buying a gift there. So, it just, I want to get people. That’s why they play Christmas music in shopping mall. So it gets you in that frame of mind to remind you. So what’s that psychological Christmas music on your website? Not actually saying play Christmas music, but say, letting people know right up front that, that’s an option and not like the last click. Oh, what’d you like to add it? So that’s

Aaron: Honestly, I just Googled it myself. Incognito e-commerce gift wrapping Number two, result, shopify.com on the Shopify Plus blog by Aaron Orendorff You folks are like the go-to tool all through my article.

Jay: Well that sir is what you call evergreen content. Well, shameless plug here, but the holidays are coming up and gift wrapping is pretty essential to a lot of people as when they’re shopping online. So if you’re looking to do it, Bold has three really good options to do it. You can use our product options app and apply gift wrapping to one product or a certain collection or your entire website. You can use bold upsell and add it as an upsell option. When customer is checking out where you can use motivator and make it like a free add on when they spend a certain amount, they get free gift wrapping. So check any of those apps out to do gift wrapping. 

  I can’t let you get away without, drilling you a little bit on some content because you are a master of it. And I guess when, when it comes to an e-commerce store, because that’s, who’s less thing, e-commerce merchants, why should they even care about content? Like they’re not running a blog that they’re selling advertising on and they’re not trying to, be a professional blogger. Why does content matter for e-commerce stores?

Aaron: I suppose there are 3 reasons. The first and actually the first two are indirect reasons to invest in content. Number 1 the brands that succeed most in paid acquisition are brands that take content seriously. So that the folks that are creating long-form video content, mini-documentaries that invest in a high-quality user-generated content, or even just aggressively acquiring user-generated content and then repurposing it in their ad accounts or law (22:03inaudible) content, email aesthetics, all of these things. the greatest benefit of having a dedicated content team and we could call it creative if you want, is it ends up being fuel for paid acquisition, for paid campaigns, that other brands simply can’t compete with. 

  Because somebody like Track smith, man, I love Track smith’s commitment to the running community and the way they tell stories and the way they do photo-shoots, 15, 10 mile runs where they go out with the athletes. They’re not sponsoring mainstream athletes, but sort of right on the cusp of, or athletes that really reflect their core audience. And so they create all of this beautiful long form content. Sometimes it’s when a new product collection drops. They invest in photography. They invest in the video. They write these long-form collection pages when a new release comes out, but then what they’ve got at the second, those all ship is this arsenal of creative in various different sizes and lengths that just demolish anyone else in the DTC space, in that realm, when it comes to freshness and engagement and the ability to sell and repurpose that content. So it’s kind of indirect, but it creates this arsenal behind the scenes as reservoir to tap into for paid acquisition. 

 The second has a lot to do with SEO. It’s like the primary, the primary thing the content can do, how to content instructional content can do is it can rank for instructional, how to phrases organically in a way that products simply never will. It doesn’t mean it’s going to lead directly to sales. I mean, if you get on the first page of Google for how to apply eyeliner or other makeup related tutorials, it doesn’t necessarily mean somebody is going to buy from you directly, although that can happen inside of it, you can build your email list through it. But when you write that sort of content, other people are far more likely to link to it. So if you host that content on the same domain as your store, the indirect benefit, there is all the links that people throw to that top quality content that’s not gross and salesy. All of those links build up the domain authority of your main site. And it’s sort of one of the, rising tide lifts, all ships. And so the moneymakers, the product pages also get huge lifts in organic search traffic.

Jay: Do you generally like with the brands that you work with run ads to the content pages or to the mix or to the product pages or there’s an experience you want to take a visitor down, right? Like it’s, you would t want to take them well, I’ll let you answer, I guess I’m just thinking out loud now. So how do you work that in?

Aaron: We do both. And so, but really the divide comes down to size. So if you’re a sub to probably sub five, maybe even $10 million annual revenue business, then this route can just destroy your margins. So with the larger clients that we work with, though, we do this in two ways. The first is they simply create blog content and it’s blog for lack of a better word, but its articles how to written some visuals and pictures, embedded videos, that sort of thing. And they do run ads, knowing that what this ad is going to do is either gets somebody into our email list when they hit the content or build our remarketing audience in a qualified way. So that’s one way to use content. The other is to host it off-site, and use those offsite publications. Usually, it’s pay for play where you just there are folks that run these aggregate sites, of greater and lesser quality. And then essentially they’ll give you then the access to the pixel. So you can grab those audiences that are coming in and you run the content ads through their accounts instead. And that gives it a much better feel of, it’s not like I’m clicking on a deodorant brand about what are the five best deodorants and it’s incredibly clear, or like, how to avoid pits staff and those sort of like that one step removed makes it much more effective for social proof. And then also pre-gaming them for the eventual sale.

Jay: So this is like getting on like the Forbes, and the Mashables and these types of content,

Aaron: A way lower hanging fruit than that. I mean, you can look for niche publications around men’s health and women’s health, and relationship advice. And there are some folks that just do this specifically is they, focus on you basically come to them with an article idea. They created, they hosted on their site. And then you just run it through their account. So you don’t even have to like get earned media. I mean, that’s awesome to do, but no, you just go looking out for those content hubs.

Jay: So what’s your secret to getting in? Or I like, I guess maybe some of these content hubs are different. Because I get an email probably, I dunno, 10 times a week, people asking to guest post on our blog, and we kind of keep it exclusive for partners. Like we would, I mean, I’d love to have you as a guest post on there or any other bold partners, but, it just feels like there’s like so many people that, just want to get it. So how do you get through the noise as an e-commerce brand and you’re selling razors and you want to write a blog post on like how to do the ultimate shave and how do you do that?

Aaron: Most of the sites that I’m talking about are, they do their own content creation, but there’s just really clear almost like affiliate level sponsored posts, type things. And most people simply do not pay attention to what’s sponsored and what isn’t. So you’re paying to get a place, same way entrepreneur, New York Times and studio. Like you couldn’t even go way up in the price scheme for sponsor concept it’s the exact same thing. But instead you’re just targeting. I would say I’m looking for, if I use something like MAs a free plugin for Chrome measures, domain authority, and you can do things like, just search for related colon men’s health.com related, and then any publication that’s really top tier, you start with those. And what Google will do is it’ll feed you back. Here’s what we think the related publications are. And instead of looking for something like an 80 or 90 domain authority, which a hundred is the max that Ma’s will give it. And that means, Oh, like Forbes is in the nineties and Shopify is in the nineties, those sorts of things I’m looking for like 40 to 50. 

Jay: Yeah. 

Aaron: And then I just click through to those sites that have the 40 to 50, and usually they’ll have sponsored post affiliate marketing, something very clearly advertising the fact that you can do this through their site.

Jay: That’s great. Yeah. Better to get a bunch of fifties than spend all your time trying to get on that one 90.

Aaron: See, this is the thing this is not about guest posting guest blogging, building backlinks. This is just a way to hire somebody that isn’t your domain to publish content that shines a positive light on your product and then run ads through them as well as using that content in your ads. So it appears to be social proof. I mean, it’s a little gray Hattie, but not really. Cause you’re just paying it’s pretty upfront and onboard.

Jay: Yea I agree.  I think it’s a super smart idea. Okay. So that’s some great strategies. What are some of the big mistakes you see e-commerce stores doing when it comes to content?

Aaron: Volume over quality is the killer in content strategies.

Jay: And you’re just talking about the volume of individual content, not the total amount.

Aaron: Yes. Volume and I think of these in terms of a URL. So a URL is a YouTube video. It lives. That’s the basic unit of measurement same thing goes for any of your pages, products, blog, posts, anything like that. The URL that it lives on the fundamental mistake folks make, especially when they’re starting out. And then it just continues we think, all right, we’re going to post three times a week. That’s what we’re supposed to do. Or maybe they really aggressive there like once a day, that’s what everybody says, keeps them coming in. And so they end up creating a whole bunch of different URLs, different units, different videos that are basically all about the same thing. And while that can be good for reoccurring or for visitors that come back, returning visitors or even email subscribers to do something similar, but with a little different, then that’s great for the audience that you already own. But for generating organic traffic, what you end up with is all of these different properties that are competing for what Google thinks are the same keyword.

  So you can do that piecemeal here and there, and it’s not a big deal, but you do that for longer than six months or a year, especially for high volume terms like, and my favorite to do this one with is how to apply eyeliner. Experiments a while ago this is my secret sauce. When it comes to B2B, organic traffic is to figure out what Google thinks is cannibalizing your current results. So you Google site colon your own domain.com. So I Google these shortcuts set up site, colon, common thread, code.com Facebook costs. And I want to see if Google thinks I have multiple pages all competing for the same term. So it limits it to just that domain, really easy to check these kinds of things. But with consumer brands, I did this a while ago with how to apply eyeliner, different makeup tutorials I did with t-shirts and shoes and all of these content instructional types of queries and how to type of queries

  And every single time I dug into it, what I found is it’s not the highest domain authority that wins. It’s not the most links. It’s not the oldest or the most prestigious it’s. Whoever has the least amount of long-form quality content that isn’t confusing, Google, they win in the end. And so to consolidate, it’s not about volume. It’s about quality for these high search volume terms. Not about how much you put out, but how good it is, and then making sure you’re going through your back catalog and consolidating 301ing deleting and 301ing anything that Google is confused about. So you’ve got one unit when URL to rule them all.

Jay: This is good. So you’re pruning the old posts or so you say 301 or what if they link to, so you don’t 301 them, but if you have 8 different posts, say with the razor example or the lip gloss applying eye shadow eyeliner, here you go. If you have a bunch of different posts about it, like the ultimate guide to putting on eyeliner, how to do eyeliner for business or how to do this, but there’s one that you want to rank for Google. Are you saying it’s better to after those blog posts have served their purpose? Like you’ve written the blog post on like eyeliner for work or for business and after a month then, or whatever, three months, 301 it to your main one that Google looks or would you keep it, but everywhere else in your site, like on eyeliner product pages and on your homepage, it’s to learn more about eye liner you direct them to that one blog post.

Aaron: I kill him. Not interlinking, not letting them live. Google is confused about. And one of the reasons for this is like, so with the eyeliner one, the winner was, there was only two, for the content search, how to apply eyeliner. There were only two results from actual cosmetic manufacturers. One was Maybelline and one was into the gloss. Everything else on the first page of Google was like cosmopolitan and those sorts of its content. So Google is serving up content. The only two winners were Maybelline into the gloss, and into the gloss. Glossier had the lowest domain authority of all the fewest articles about it. And then what they did was they were very disciplined about their use of keywords in the URL and the headline and on the page itself. So that while they had various eyeliner tutorials that also existed, there was only one that had those words, how to apply eyeliner everything else was like business eyeliner made simple not how to apply business eyeliner, right? So it’s that disciplined approach. But even, even for myself, like I just ruthless about the payoff, Oh my gosh, dude, hitting position three, two, and one is so dramatically geometrically different than 20, 30 articles at the bottom of page one and scattered throughout pages two and three, right? When you hit those one, two and three positions, it just craps traffic on you. And as long as you don’t mess it up, that is an evergreen source of emails, leads, and sales.

Jay: Interesting. I’m doing it to our site right now. I’m doing site colon, bold commerce.com and then subscriptions and our product pages come up first. So for, for the apps, but interestingly enough, like 9 out of the 10 results are our support forum. So like our support dot bold commerce.com. And then, and then, there’s only one blog article, how, eight build box subscription, examples, and how to set them up or something like that. 

Aaron: When I was at Shopify, plus I caught this like kill it and redirect it, one URL to rule them all. When I was a Shopify, I would go through month over month and I was calling it a pruning it so dramatically. I would go over to the people that run the Q and A forums. And if it, if the QA thing was on like page one or two of Google using that site, colon, like just some forum posts, I would make these requests of, okay, it’s older than a month. Can you start redirecting that to please? So even those, I would like redirect and the wins were enormous.

Jay: Oh, I believe it. So, but like, if the content is still relevant, so like the top one that comes up for us is managing your subscriptions page so that content is relevant. So like, we can’t kill that content, but you’re saying if we update it, create a new page and then redirect this old one to, or if the content ever becomes obsolete, because I were guilty of this and I’m thinking out loud right now, like when an article no longer applies, we just delete it and we create a new article, but we’re basically throwing away golden pages right there.

Aaron: Yeah. Those 301s and then I also, what I often do is try to consolidate. So if I’ve got three pages that are all sort of about this topic, I want to strip that content out sew it back together with transitions, a meaningful SEO optimized on page, text, kill all three of those, redirect them all to one new URL where those three pieces have been reborn.

Jay: Would you do this like for an e-commerce store, would you do this for everything? Like any time you remove a product or, anything. Because I bet you, a lot of merchants don’t when a product is discontinued, they delete it 

Aaron: (37:50inaudible) 

Jay: And platforms don’t do that by default. Like it’s going to be a 404 If you, if you delete a product and you hit it. So, I know there’s a lot of different ways you can do that with apps or you can do it in liquid or whatever platform you’re on. But, that is a great tip that I bet you, 90% of listeners are not doing.

Aaron: And just being really disciplined about what you use as the URL, the H one-page title H one, whatever your H twos are. And we should actually get into this if we if we have time because this, I think,

Jay: Well, that was like the, the next kind of chunk I wanted to get out of your brain was any considerations around SEO? Like what are some merchants obviously like if you really want to go ahead and hire an SEO agency, but like, what are some quick wins that like they can at least set themselves up for some basic success when it comes to SEO

Aaron: Pick, I would say 5 to 10 of your top product pages. Do that site colon search and see if you’ve, if Google has index pages that are 401 on those first two result pages, but then you can just,

Jay: Just quick question, if you just site colon, your site, site, colon Jay’s razors.com, the order that Google displays them, that’s Google’s page rank. So whichever if there are five products on that page, and then there’s like my, about or contact page is the top has the most page rank with Google. Is it in that order?

Aaron: That’s like 95%. That’s true. As long as you’re doing Google incognito, and even that’s not perfect, Google takes your data and does whatever they want with it. Even when you tell them not to, right that gets you as close to what Google thinks is the most important one. Yes.

Jay: Do that for your products,

Aaron: For your products. And then the thing that I see over and over and over again, is e-commerce merchants pay a ton of attention to how the page looks and the words that are on the page. And nobody is behind the wheel on the technical side like I’ll go into a lot of sites and see the designer or the dev., whoever built it can code, every large block of texts as H one. So there’s like 50 H ones on the page and some of them are completely worthless. So one that’s terrible Google get super confused and it will punish you accordingly. So to just pick five or 10 of yours, use the Google inspect tool, which lets you like hover over different parts of the page. And just check to see on your top 5 or 10, is this following an H one at the top? Everything else is then coded specifically for H two H three body copy H four, whatever you need it to be. So that it’s very clearly structured around that. And then adding things like alt image tags, like this is not sexy work at all, but it makes a big, big difference. And the reason it makes such a big difference is because a lot of sites simply aren’t doing this so little edge wins like that really make you stand out on the SEO side.

Jay: Well, I, I see SEO as really a game of a thousand inches that you’re trying to use. And then you eventually get there, like, okay, just, you mentioned Google inspector. Is that, is that a different eye? Are you thinking Chrome inspector or what? Is there a different tool? 

Aaron: chrome inspects you are right.

Jay: Gotcha. Okay. Okay. I just wanted to make, I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t some secret Google tool. I didn’t know about any other, SEO, like high-level things that stores can do for quick wins?

Aaron: for quick wins I’m not sure, but I’ve had a ton of success recently with just aggressively looking into link-building and I think maybe, maybe this is just the warning. A lot of quote, unquote SEO agencies will try to sell you is basically content and like minimal technical SEO. Like if you, if you want to hire somebody to technical SEO, give them one page, have them identify exactly what we just talked about. Go through it. They should be looking for all tags, keyword density. How are the H ones to H five structured and get them to get you a report on exactly that on one page optimize and see if it makes a difference. If they’re not willing to do that with you, then they’re probably trying to rip you off. Like, I just don’t want to work with anybody that I’d pay them for that. And then, okay, now I’m going to unleash you on the other 10 or 20. The other thing we’ll often try to do is sell you on a content package. And I’m really before I go creating onsite contents, the things that I really want are, I just want more backlinks to the pages that I want to rank my actual product pages. And if you can’t get a contract from an SEO agency that is paid per link by domain authority, they’re trying to rip you off. There are tons of places out there that won’t find them,

Jay:  that will get you links by domain authority.

Aaron: they can build it into the contract. Like as soon as you’re going to have an SEO, if they say something like editorial strategy or outreach, it’s like the death of, oh, we’re going to do outreach. I’m like no you can give me 10 links at your higher sites. This is how much this one’s going to cost. That’s the contract. And the good folks will be like, hell yea that’s what we’re doing. And the bad folks will give you some dumb reason about why they can’t.

Jay: What are some of the tools you use to monitor for SEO, for monitoring backlinks, for auditing your sites or any, any ones we can throw in the show notes that would be useful for merchants?

Aaron: my favorite Is SCM rush. We have a bunch of CTC clients inside SEM rush, the large one. That’s what I use for common thread collective itself. But a SEM rush is about probably the easiest updates every day. I’m impatient. So I want to see what happened overnight. That kind of thing is another good one, spend like a day or find somebody on your team, just be like, you, get us in here and start monitoring, get all those keywords in. and they should be able to like get up to speed on their own within a couple of weeks.

Jay: Yeah. And you mentioned MAs earlier, is that one you use as well, too

Aaron: Ma’s is a free one Ma’s is just great. The Ma’s extension for chrome Yeah that’s a great one just to install and then constantly use whenever you’re searching, because it will give you a little PA and DA PA underneath each one of them getting a score 0 to 100, what they think the page authority is based on the backlinks directly to that page. And then the domain authority is the overall. And that’s just such a great gauge of when you’re looking for what sites to target, who to reach out to, and then your own site as well, the free group. That’s great.

Jay: I’ve used it just when I’m shopping too. Like you want to know, is this a legit? It kind of just instantly gives you a how credible is a site in seconds. So are there any trends you’re following in SEO that you’re excited about or really paying attention to that you think might change things up

Aaron: The interrelationship between words and video and this probably even a bigger deal in e-commerce than it is in B2B content where I actually do my day in and day out work. What do you mean by that? I mean, hosting on YouTube, whatever the tutorials and things you put out are paying attention to how you optimize the words on that Google page and for that video and in that video and on the still images that might be the cover tile for it. And then what I’m really paying co-tenants to is how to embed that into specific pages. Because what Google is now doing is it’s actually pulling, I’ve noticed like embedded videos that are on pages and then it’s about, oh, okay. I got to align those to this video asset with the written asset. So that for one targeting the same idea or semantic range of keywords and the boost like that one, two combo, I haven’t seen a hit yet, but I’m super excited about this trend and using those two.

  And then on top of that, right? Like in either direction, write an article or do a tutorial, that’s a video and then flip-flop repurposes like crazy. So whichever one, you’re more natural at doing, especially as like a brand owner as an e-commerce merchant, if you like getting in front of the camera and doing little mini-tutorials or talking about your product, that sort of thing, let’s start with video, transcribe it, turn it into a post, like never be one and done and then feed them together. So that one is hosted on the other where the link is embedded in that sort of thing

Jay: So are you saying that you think there might be some correlation with your H ones that are on your page and then if you have titles in your video because Google is transcribing them, you can search them and they’re searchable, like you just said. So if there’s a yeah. Transitions in the video and titles and headers of any type, having that aligned with the content H one’s like Google might actually be paying attention to it or that that’s, you’re, you’re kind of keeping your eye on that

Aaron: I’m keeping my eye on it yea because Google is trying to

Jay: That’s interesting that’s super interesting,

Aaron: Right, Google is a word thing. So there, with podcasts, with videos the transcription that they automatically do all of that like the way Google knows how to read things is words. And so the more I can do with words, even if it’s in a different actual media format, the more I’m future-proofing myself,

Jay: that sound means it’s time for the lightning round. Let’s get Aaron in the old e-commerce hot seat. Are you ready? 

Aaron: Let’s do it

Jay: What is the biggest mistake in e-commerce while either you’ve made or you see merchants making,

Aaron: Not creating a robust, at least 10 part email flow post-purchase so much is left on the table or it’s just crappy experience post-purchase and I mean, also immediately post-purchase the transactional emails matter.

Jay: Yes. And it’s such an easy thing to do. What is your pet peeve when Aaron is shopping online?

Aaron: When I abandoned a cart, get an email, but don’t get a dynamic product ad on Facebook a few days later. Crazy I’ve been on your collection page I’ve been on your product page. You’ve taken the time to make an email capture. Can DPA me on Facebook with that specific product is just about connecting the feeds and then a few other that are closer related to it, or at least the collection level. So if I was looking at pants, I see pants.

Jay: So even if you didn’t buy the product, you’re saying it still annoys you when you see an ad for it or, or you buy it.

Aaron: When I don’t, when I, when I go say I’m collection product, page checkout, and I leave and I sometimes get the rescue cart abandoned thing, but I don’t get that dynamic product ad. I want it, I want to see it. And then I’m, I’m down,

Jay: I’ve added products. I’ve been like been really busy or something and I’ve added a product to cart and I’ve done it because I know I’m going to either get an email or I’m going to get re-targeted and I’ve intentionally added products to cart to get retargeted. 

Aaron: Yes. 

Jay: And I’m fully aware of how it works and I do it on purpose. So yea like that’s interesting when you’re the first person, that’s mentioned that as a pet peeve,

Aaron: And not some Broad brand play retargeted, that has nothing to do with the thing I was looking at. I made it all the way to the checkout can tee me up; give me that product or related product.

Jay: I love it. What’s your favorite thing about your job?

Aaron: Channeling the collective genius of common thread collective and in particular Taylor holiday,

Jay: What’s your favorite online store?

Aaron: Nuggs, the vegan Chicken nuggets. And so those people are amazing. I love their ads, I love their emails I love their site nugs N U G G S they did a product drop.

Jay: I feel I feel like they’re killing it. Yeah. They’re killing it on social media too. Yeah. The Tesla of chicken, (50:01inteposed talking) Nuggs 2.0 the Tesla of chicken. I’ve actually so funny. You mentioned that. Because I just saw a bunch of their social and someone people were re-tweeting it they’re apparently killing it on social to 

Aaron: Like a product drop for nuggets and they sold out. 

Jay: It’s a great time to be alive. It’s all I got to say. What’s the number one thing you think that stores could be doing to grow sales right now, but they aren’t?

Aaron:  let me pick your, your, your choice. I know, I feel like you mentioned a lot today, just email sequence or locking down those retargeting DPA’s

Jay: Yeah. Most of our listeners are business owners or entrepreneurs. Any favorite quotes or advice?

Aaron: Honestly, the best piece of advice I ever got was from my ex-wife when I was 19, I had no business being married. I was being a little prima donna and we were going to olive garden and I just didn’t feel like I looked good. And she looked at me and said, you gotta learn to be happy, ugly, (51:05inaudible) man be happy like Regardless of how it’s just if you can learn to be happy, ugly,

Jay: I would say I’m happy, ugly. I love it. Okay. But, last one. If you had to give some advice to someone, who’s just launching and they’re trying to go from zero to a thousand sales, and then someone whose hit that thousand sale Mark. And they’re trying to get to a hundred thousand any advice for the two different scenarios. You can give a merchant

Aaron: in the Zero to 1000. I would say, hone in on your early adopter advocates, the people that buy from you, stalk them on social, get that UGC into the email, get the reviews, invite them to private Slack groups, invite them to a Facebook page. That’s private. That’s only accessible to them. Just cultivate those relationships because that’s sort of the insights you’ve gleaned from them. And their advocacy will be the thing that propels you into that 1000 to 100,

Jay: I think it was Seth Godin. And he has talks about your 1000 loyal fans. And that’s like; you’re building your brand on top. That those are your advocates for your company and get as close to them as you possibly can understand them, is intimate with them because that’s the future of your business. Okay? So you’ve got your thousand, any advice getting into a hundred thousand.

Aaron: build a marketing calendar around seasonal events that coincide with the story, those 100 fans, those 1000 for the build, a marketing calendar for campaigns, paid campaigns organic campaigns email campaigns across the board that coincides with at least four seasonal events that matter to your customer base. It might be international women’s day. It could be other events. Every, niche has their own super bowl. So that’s another event, but if you don’t do that early, you’re basically going to end up in the position of the ad account, driving the sales, the ad account, driving the story instead of the story, driving the ad account.

Jay: Yep. And then you’ll eventually not be able to spend enough to drive. It’s a leaky bucket,

Aaron:  diminishing returns. It’s just the more, the less efficient you’ll get. But by tying into those events, you build that identification with the audience and then you also just have almost an endless supply of every year. These new ones are gonna come up. And this is the campaign around that.

Jay: Aaron, thank you so much for coming on. I, I really, really appreciate it. I know our listeners really appreciate it. I guarantee I’ll get a ton of feedback after this shows. I get all the messages. Thank you. Thank you. People tell me what they took away. There’s just so many here. If someone wants to follow you on socials or, I don’t know, learn more about you. Is there anywhere you want to direct them?

Aaron: I’m most active on Twitter, Aaron Orendorff. And if you go to Google and do A A R O N space, O R E, I think that’s when it autocompletes to Orendorff. 

Jay: Oh, okay. 

Aaron: Someday I’ll be famous enough to be like Aaron O R will really know I’m somebody then, but I’m pretty easy to find. There are not many Aaron Orendorff

Jay: When it autocompletes to Aaron Orendorff on own your commerce podcast. Then, then

Aaron: Mic drop. 

Jay: and we’ll leave it at that. Thank you so much, Aaron.

Aaron:  My pleasure.

Outro: So that’s it for another episode of own your commerce. If what you’ve heard has helped you in any way, I’d love it, if you’d leave us a review in iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts, it’s a new podcast and reviews really help spread the word. And if you know someone you think that might benefit from this podcast, share it with a friend. If you’d like to learn more about bold, visit bold commerce.com, you can view all our past episodes. And if you have a story you’d like to tell, we’d love to have you on the show. You can apply to be a guest or suggest a guest on our website as well. That’s all for now and we’ll see you next week.